Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Reassociated tones and coalescent syllables in Naxi (Tibeto-Burman) |
| Author: | Alexis Michaud |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Homepage: | http://ed268.univ-paris3.fr/lpp/pages/EQUIPE/michaud/en/ |
| Institution: | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique |
| Author: | He Xueguang |
| Institution: | Laboratoire des langues et civilisations à tradition orale |
| Linguistic Field: | Phonetics; Phonology |
| Subject Language: |
Naxi
|
| Abstract: | The Western dialect of Naxi has four lexical tones: High, Mid, Low and Rising; the latter is rare in the lexicon. Rising contours on monosyllables are frequent in connected speech, however, as a result of a process of syllable reduction: reduction of a morpheme carrying the High tone results in re-association of its tone to the syllable that precedes it in the sentence, creating a rising contour. An experiment (with one speaker and five listeners) establishes that there is not only one rising contour that originates in tonal reassociation, as reported in earlier descriptions, but two: Low-to-High and Mid-to-High – as could be expected by analogy with phenomena observed in Niger-Congo languages and elsewhere. A second set of experiments (same speaker; six listeners) investigates the reduction of Mid- and Low-tone syllables: they reduce and coalesce with the preceding syllable (in Naxi, syllabic structure is simply consonant + glide + vowel). Unlike High-tone syllable reduction, this process stops short of complete tonal de-linking. These experiments aim to provide a complete picture of syllable reduction patterns in Naxi. It is argued that the notions of floating tones and tonal reassociation can be usefully applied to the Naxi data. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Journal of the International Phonetic Association Vol. 37, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
