Tone systems

This paper presents a comprehensive phonetic and phonological description of Northern Sangtam, an essentially undescribed Tibeto-Burman language of central Nagaland belonging to the Aoic subgroup. It is a noteworthy language from a number of phonological perspectives, not least because its phoneme inventory contains two of the world's rarest phonemes: a pre-stopped bilabial trill, and a doubly-articulated labial-coronal nasal. These unique segments are described in detail, and an attempt is made to determine how they might have developed their phonemic status. The tone system is also of interest, as it demonstrates evidence of debuccalization resulting in the development of a new high tone. Following a systematic description of the syllable and word structure, the tone system, and the segmental phonology, some observed age-related differences in the phoneme inventory are discussed. The paper is linked to an online repository containing the audiovisual data and transcribed word lists of approximately 900 items, based on the recorded utterances of eight speakers.

Mada [mda], a Plateau language spoken in central Nigeria, has a large number of seemingly inexplicable tone alternations that occur between the singular and plural forms of many nouns. These alternations find straightforward and reasonable explanations if one assumes the existence of underlying representations that include floating tone prefixes and certain nouns with toneless stems. Another fascinating aspect of Mada addressed in this paper is that despite any other evidence of consonant-tone interaction in the language, there is a direct correlation between the proposed floating tone singular prefixes and the surface realizations of the singular diminutive prefix: diminutive nouns with floating (L) prefixes take only və-, and those with floating (H) prefixes take only fə- .

This paper classifies dipping tones in the framework of the Multi-Register and Four-Level Model, using new, firsthand acoustic data. Seven dipping types are identified. Four of them are produced in normal clear voice and affiliated with the Modal Register: (1) Central Dipping, typologically transcribed as /323/, (2) Back Dipping /523/, (3) Front Dipping /324/, and (4) Double Circumflex /4343/. The remaining three are produced with non-clear voice qualities: (5) Slack Dipping /213/ in L Register, (6) Creaky Dipping /202/ in the Lower Register, and (7) Fortis-Creak Dipping /405/ in the Upper Register. Each of the seven dipping tones contrasts with one or another with four distinctive features [± RgM, RgL, Hfront, Hback].

Winner of the 2013 ALT Gabelentz Award --- Mian is a non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’) language of the Ok family spoken in the Highlands fringe in western Papua New Guinea. Mian has approximately 1,400 speakers and is highly endangered. This grammar is the first comprehensive description of the language. It is based on primary field data consisting of a text corpus that covers different genres of the oral tradition, namely myths and ancestor stories, historical accounts, accounts of the initiation ritual, conversations, and procedural texts. The corpus was recorded by the author during a total of eleven months of field work from 2004 to 2008. The book provides a thorough description of all areas of Mian grammar and gives an in-depth analysis of many points of typological interest, such as the complex system of lexical tone, the interaction between a gender system and a system of classificatory prefixes on verbs of object movement, manipulation or handling, which allows the highlighting of certain characteristics of a referent in a given situation, the complex verbal morphology which allows fine-grained tense-aspect-mood distinctions, and a switch-reference system in which switch-reference suffixes on medial verbs are homophonous with and derived from suffixes functioning as tense and aspect markers in final verbs. The book is rounded off by a collection of traditional and contemporary texts (fully glossed and translated) and a word list comprising some 1,600 items, giving lexical tone, word class and meaning.

Since Hyman (1981)'s seminal paper, Somali has usually been considered to be a tonal/pitch-accent language. Recently, phonologists have cast doubt upon the pertinence of such a prosodic class, arguing that pitch-accent languages do not form a coherent category with distinctive criteria and can be reduced to either stress/accent or tonal languages. This paper outlines a tonal analysis of Somali. It aims at showing that the multiple pitch patterns observed in different classes of words and syntactic contexts find a more accurate account within an approach using tonal features only.

This dissertation is a description of aspects of the phonetics, phonology and morphology of Teotepec Chatino (ISO 639-3 identifier: cya; here abbreviated as TEO), an indigenous language spoken by approximately 3800 people in the Sierra Madre del Sur, Oaxaca, Mexico. This work presents a synchronic description of the language based on data collected in the eld over the course of six eld trips totaling eighteen months. This investigation is based on a corpus of thirty hours of transcribed and analyzed texts of naturally occurring speech, narratives, data gathered during elicitation sessions, and an expansion of my earlier grammatical sketch (2011). The final result is a description of the phonology and phonetics of tone and some of the morphological processes that exist in the grammar. The focus of this work is to describe the structure of the language produced by native Teotepec speakers and how it is used in an array of contexts. This is reflected in a rich body of procedural texts, conversations, speeches, rants, polemics, prayers, and narratives. These texts are the basis for the description of how the language encodes speakers' knowledge about the world and their greater context. This work arrives at a description of the details of the language while also making broader generalizations about these details. It is not possible that this work cover all aspects of the phonology, phonetics, morphology and so part of the focus has been to capture particular facets of the language and explain them in a way that is detailed while broad enough to be useful to as many as audiences as possible. This includes scholars interested in typology, tone languages, historical linguistics of Otomanguean, linguistic anthropology, anthropology, and the history and culture of the Chatinos, southern Oaxaca and Mesoamerica. The dissertation is written in English; however, I often create grammatical write-ups and practical pedagogical materials for a Spanish literate audience. Materials for TEO have been and will continue to be made available to Spanish and English speakers in order to reach an audience that includes, but is not limited to, members of the community, local and regional educators and literacy efforts, and scholars engaged in the study of Chatino language and linguistics. The approach to this work is data-driven and text-based. It is written in basic descriptive terms, as outlined in Payne (1997); Shopen (2007); Dixon (2010), and Haspelmath (2010). In this way the writing is carried out with fewer aprioristic notions about the language. The goal is to describe the language in its own terms. Thus the researcher is open to discover completely new, unexpected phenomena, can be guided by the data and their own thinking (Haspelmath, 2010).

In the course of the first half of the 1990s, while still working at the University of Illinois, we worked relatively intensively on Shingazidja, the Comorian languages spoken on the Grand Comoros island. Our consultants were two young men who were studying English at the University of Illinois in preparation for seeking undergraduate degrees in the United States. One of the consultants was particularly adept at recognizing different possible prosodic realizations of sentences and pronouncing the variants in a fashion that was helpful to our non-native ears. This permitted us to particularly focus on the accentual structure of the language. Although we published a number of articles on the topic, much of the material we assembled remained unpublished. The departure of our consultants and our own move to Tel Aviv, effectively ended our data collection. Over the subsequent years, we analyzed a fair bit of the material we had assembled and started to prepare a lexicon of Shingazidja, but one that focus on the tonal structure. Each entry identified the tonal structure of a word in isolation and then illustrated its use in a variety of phrases and sentences, all of which were tonally marked. The present "Contribution to the Study of Shingazija" contains a draft of this project as it existed in 2010. By then, the second author had retired from Tel Aviv University and returned to the United States permanently, but he found himself soon immersed in returning to projects that had been begun in the 1970s: the study of Chimiini and Emakhuwa. There seems little likelihood that we will do new work on Shingazidja, so we are making this 210 draft lexicon available. We have made no corrections or additions to the draft.

Research on Mixtec languages (Otomanguean, Mexico), has long recognized a bimoraic/bisyllabic “couplet” as an essential structure for the description of the phonology and morphology (e.g. Pike 1948; Josserand 1983); however, what exactly this structure is in terms of the structure of the word, as well as the nature and extent of its influence in the grammar has not been adequately addressed. Most researchers have assumed that the couplet is the root, but this is problematic since some synchronic roots are larger than a couplet, other couplets are multimorphemic and some couplets have a reduced form when not the stressed element in compounds. For a more adequate understanding of this structure, I turn to prosodic phonology where units of higher level phonological organization arranged in what is called the prosodic hierarchy form the domains for phonological patterns and provide the shapes of templates. Of particular relevance to the problem at hand is the foot, which is identified in the literature as a constituent between the syllable and the prosodic word in the prosodic hierarchy (Selkirk 1980a; Selkirk 1980b). Cross-linguistically, the foot is integrally connected to stress assignment, has a small inventory of basic shapes, plays an important templatic function in the synchronic and diachronic phonology of many languages and provides the domain for phonological rules and phonotactic generalizations.

In this dissertation I show that the couplet in Ixtayutla Mixtec (IM), an underdescribed Mixtec variety spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico has all of these properties of the foot. I first show that the couplet is the locus of stress assignment in IM, a structure intermediate in size between the syllable and prosodic word and has the shape identified as a moraic trochee in Hayesʼ (1995) inventory of foot types. Although IM stress is not the iterative kind usually used in metrical arguments for the foot, Spanish loanword adaptation in IM clearly demonstrates that stress is obligatorily realized in a left-headed, bimoraic structure.

Strong evidence that the couplet is a foot comes from the way this structure to which stress is assigned also functions templatically to create foot-sized structures. As the minimal word/root template, the foot triggers the synchronic augmentation of underlyingly monomoraic /CV(ˀ)/ structures to bimoraic CV(ˀ)V. Fossilized stems also show how subminimal forms were combined to create foot-sized stems at an earlier stage of the phonology, while at the same time the foot provides a template for the truncation of larger structures down to foot-size. Beyond mere size/shape, evidence for foot structure is seen, for instance, in the loss of unfooted, and therefore prosodically weak, pre-couplet vowels, as well as the loss of couplet-medial consonants, which stand in the weak position of the trochaic foot. Like the foot, the couplet also provides the domain for the realization of a number of diverse phonological patterns including distributional restrictions on contrastive laryngealization, nasalized segments, vowels, labial consonants, epenthetic laryngealization and tone. The end result of the foot-based analysis provided is in this dissertation a coherent explanation for a disparate set of phonological patterns encompassing the synchronic and the diachronic dimensions of the phonology.

Several Indo-European branches point to the existence of (possibly subphonemic) tones in Proto-Indo-European. These tones can be connected to Indo-European root-structure and are clearly connected with the Indo-European place of the accent and Indo-European ablaut.
Those cases in which root-structure, accentuation and ablaut do not agree provide evidence about the rise of the ablaut system. The paper first gives an overview of the known evidence for the tones in Sanskrit, Greek and Slavic and their relation to Indo-European root-structure. This is followed by a discussion of the relation between the tonal characteristics of Proto-Indo-European and its accentuation and ablaut. The article finally explores how Indo-European ablaut may have arisen and how this could explain some irregularities of Indo-European ablaut (e.g. the o-grade of proterodynamic nouns like Greek δόρυ ‘wood’ and γόνυ ‘knee’) and some of its derivational patterns (e.g., Greek μένος ‘mind’ next to -μενής).

This dissertation is a description of phonetics, phonology, and word and clause-level morphosyntax of Dzongkha (dzo), a Southern Tibetic language within the Central Bodish branch of Tibeto-Burman. Dzongkha is spoken as a native language by about 160,000 speakers in Bhutan. The dissertation draws primarily on conversation data, and makes use of elicited and monologic data as noted in specific examples. The dissertation begins with an overview of the language situation of Dzongkha and its speech community, then turns to an overview of the phonetics and phonology of Dzongkha, followed by chapters on select aspects of morphosyntax.

The objective of this article is to document a Nyo variety spoken in Kut Kho Kan village (Khok Samran subdistrict, Loeng Nok Tha district, Yasothon province), which has not been previously mentioned in the linguistic literature about Nyo dialects in Northeast Thailand.

Among the Nyo speakers of Kut Kho Kan village who contributed to this research were two students of Roi Et Rajabhat University, still aware of the use of a distinct dialect in their native place. They helped the researcher reach Nyo speakers as well as speakers of other Tai dialects in a micro-linguistic area comprising districts belonging to three provinces (Mukdahan, Yasothon, and Amnat Charoen) of Northeast Thailand, where specific varieties of Tai languages (Southwestern branch) such as Phu Thai are also spoken. Further studies should thus include the documentation of those varieties, especially those of Phu Thai.

Nyo as well as Phu Thai are language names as well as ethnonyms which can be found not only in Thailand, but also in neighboring countries such as Laos and Vietnam.

Keywords: Language documentation, Nyo language, Phu Thai language, Tonal patterns, Micro-linguistic areas.

The paper discusses the accent of kako ‘how’, tako ‘thus’, ovako ‘this way’, onako ‘that way’ and some other related words (like nikako ‘no way’, nekako ‘somehow’) primarily in Štokavian and Čakavian from a dialectological (including standard-dialect sources) and historical perspective (going back to Common Slavic). The alternation kȁko ‘how’ — kàko ̮ je < kakȍ ̮ je ‘how is’ is discussed in some detail.

This thesis investigates various aspects of phonology and grammar in Kakabe, a hitherto undescribed Mande language. The aim of the study is to provide a unified account of the segmental phonology, the tonal system and the intonational patterns of Kakabe, accompanied by a short grammatical description of the language. In offering a grammatical sketch and a thorough phonological description, this thesis increases the knowledge on little-known Mande languages. Even for those Mande languages that have been described, detailed accounts of tonal, and, especially, intonational phenomena are difficult to come by. Apart from increasing the knowledge in the domain of Mande studies, this research project is intended as a contribution to phonological theory, in particular, the typology of tonal and intonational systems. Sentence-level prosody in languages with lexical tones is a domain which has received very little attention until recently and one of the aims of the present study is to contribute to filling this gap. Finally, the analysis of the various aspects of the Kakabe pragmatics, morphology and syntax, may be of interest for the typological studies in these domains.

This thesis aims to provide a full scheme of tonal development of Tai, from tonogenesis in proto-Tai to different diachronic hierarchies of tonal splits in different Tai groups and varieties, and further suggests a new viewpoint on Tai classification as well as the revised Tai tone box based on tonology. The analysis is based on data of tones from 42 Tai varieties, most of which were collected during my fieldworks in China and Thailand. Data collection and analysis has been accomplished by a revised version of Gedney’s tone box (Gedney 1989[1972], Liao & Shen 2012), which is supposed to contain the basic patterns of tonal split and merger in Tai languages. Any tone split which is not reflected in the tone box is emphasized to discuss.

The discussion of the diachronic processes of tonal development of Tai languages is the main body of this thesis. Tonogenesis is treated as the very first step of the arising of tones in proto-Tai. After tone arose, two groups of proto-initials (voiceless-voiced) conditioned primary tonal splits whereas splits conditioned by other pharyngeal features, such as aspiration and pre-glottalization represent stages of secondary development. Some secondary tonal split patterns result in three-way register splits. However, the bearing capacity of the tone numbers in a language often cause the third register to merge into one of the other two to make two-way register splits always be the mainstream. On the basis of the full tonal development scheme explored, the other two hypotheses are attested as follows.

First, based on the analysis of tonal behaviors with supplementary evidence from initial behaviors, vocalic behaviors, and exclusive lexical items, this thesis suggests two levels of Tai division as follows. Primary, it agrees on the two-term system suggested by Haudricourt (1956) to divide proto-Tai first into Dioi or ʔyai vs. Tai proper, by another two-term system, NT-YN (Northern Tai-Yongnan Zhuang) and Southern Tai. Li’s Central Tai and Southwestern Tai (Li 1977) can be divided from each other under the Southern Tai sub-group, in contrast Northern Tai and Yongnan Zhuang differ from one another under the NT-YN sub-group.

Second, based on all the possible conditioning phonation types of initials at time of tonal splits, an integrated tone box is provided. However, a unified Tai tone box have been proved to be cumbersome if a Tai variety’s affiliation has been known. It is because not all Tai varieties obtain all types of secondary tonal splits. For instance, Northern Tai varieties lack of contrastive aspirated sounds, and unaspirated stops in NT never go with glottalized initials to condition secondary tonal splits. Therefore, a tone box designated with the divisions containing the rows of aspirated sounds and unaspirated stops appear to be unnecessary for Northern Tai. For this reason, Tai tone boxes designated with specific pertinence to different Tai periods and different Tai sub-groups are first suggested if the diachronic period of a Tai variety or the affiliation of a modern Tai variety are known. Nevertheless, the integrated Tai tone box is finally suggested to be able to capture the tonal distinctions in any Tai variety.

This thesis is an investigation of the sound system of Lopit, an Eastern Nilotic (Nilo-Saharan) language traditionally spoken in South Sudan. The primary aim of this study is to develop a phonetically-based description of aspects of Lopit segmental and tonal phonology, with a focus on the Dorik variety of the language.

This is first approached via analyses of phonological and morphological patterns in Lopit, using data collected during extended fieldwork with members of the Lopit community in Melbourne, Australia. A number of hypotheses regarding Lopit phonological contrasts and processes are put forward, including proposals for nine monophthongs, an inventory of 27 consonants, and three tones used for both lexical and grammatical distinctions. Some differences in the number and nature of contrasts are found compared to observations in the limited existing materials on Lopit.

Four production experiments are then undertaken to examine the acoustic and articulatory evidence for three phenomena of particular interest. The first is the phonological feature ‘Advanced Tongue Root’, widely attested in African languages and here suggested to distinguish monophthongs /i, e, o, u/, labelled [+ATR], from /ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ʊ/, labelled [-ATR]. The results of an acoustic experiment reveal lower first formant frequencies as the primary correlate distinguishing [+ATR] from [-ATR] vowels, and a following ultrasound-based experiment shows that vowels in the [+ATR] set have a more anterior tongue root position than those in the [-ATR] set.

Length contrasts proposed for selected obstruents and sonorants include a contrast between singleton glides /w, j/ and geminate glides /wː, jː/, a typologically uncommon distinction which has received little phonetic attention crosslinguistically. The results of an acoustic investigation of Lopit glides show that duration is a robust correlate of glide contrasts at the same place of articulation, with the putative geminates being significantly longer. Furthermore, they have a more constricted articulation, as evidenced by lower first formant frequencies and lower root-mean square amplitude values.

An acoustic experiment testing the proposed contrast between High, Low and Falling tones confirms that these three tones are distinct, with higher fundamental frequency values for the High compared to Low tone, and a trajectory of high to low values for the Falling tone. It is also shown that the fundamental frequency and duration characteristics of these tones are sensitive to the tonal context in which they occur.

These experiments contribute the first phonetic data on Lopit, and, combined with the phonological and morphological analyses, significantly increase the level of description of an under-documented Nilo-Saharan language. This study also develops typological understandings of the phonetic implementation of ATR contrasts, the status of length distinctions among glides, and Nilotic tone systems, and demonstrates the value of incorporating phonetic data into the documentation of African languages.

This dissertation provides a description of the Chácobo language, a southern Pano language spoken by approximately 1200 people who live close to or on the Geneshuaya, Ivon, Benicito and Yata rivers in the northern Bolivian Amazon. The grammatical description emerges out of an ethnographically based documentation project of the language. Chapter 1 contains an overview of the cultural context in which the Chácobo language is embedded and a brief ethnohistory of the Chácobo people. I also discuss the general methodology of the dissertation touching specifically on issues related to data collection. Chapter 2 introduces the phonology of the language focusing on the categories necessary for its description. Chapter 3 provides a discussion of morphosyntactic structures and relations. This chapter provides a discussion of how head-dependent relations and the general distinction between morphology and syntax are understood throughout the dissertation. Parts of speech classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are also defined and motivated based on semantic and formal criteria. Chapter 4 describes predication and its relationship to clause-typing. Chapter 5 is concerned with constituency which refers to hierarchical structures motivated through distributional properties and relations and the relative degree of contiguity between linguistic categories. Chapter 6 provides an extensive discussion of morphophonology and its relation to constituency. Chapter 7 and 8 are concerned with the language’s alignment and valence-adjusting systems. The next five chapters provide a description of the functional domains relevant to the verbal domain including; Tense (Chapter 9); Temporal distance (Chapter 10); Aspect (Chapter 11); Associated Motion (Chapter 12); Perspective (Chapter 13). The last two Chapters focus on categories in the nominal domain. Chapter 14 provides a description of noun compounding, adjectives and possession. Chapter 15 provides a description of number, quantification and deixis inside and outside the nominal domain.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive description of the tonal and intona- tional phonology of Lhasa Tibetan (LT) in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. It is based on recorded data elicited from members of the Tibetan-Canadian community in Ottawa and Toronto.
The first two chapters of the dissertation contain background information about LT, a summary of previous research on LT tones and intonation, and an overview of the theoretical framework and conceptual tools used in the rest of the dissertation.
The third chapter deals with word tonology. I establish that the prosodic structure of LT brings evidence for four main constituents at or below the word level: a) the mora encodes vowel length contrasts, b) the syllable is the tone-bearing unit (TBU), c) the prosodic word, which is maximally binary, delimits the application of most tonal processes, and d) the prosodic word group, which matches grammatical words, is the domain of downstep. This prosodic structure provides evidence against the universality of the Prosodic Hierarchy (Selkirk, 2002; Nespor and Vogel, 2007) in that it has no phonological phrase, but has two word-level constituents. I then argue that LT has three lexical tones (H, LH, and L) – L being limited to some suffixes – and propose that these lexical tones are subject to tone rules applying within the prosodic word and the prosodic word group. These tone rules are similar to those proposed by Duanmu (1992), but have been improved to accurately predict the tone patterns of long polysyllabic words. Based on phonetic evidence, I also come to the conclusion that LT no longer has stress, and that the stress pattern found in other Bodic varieties has been reinterpreted as a part of the tonal system.
The fourth chapter analyses phrasal prosody. I argue that LT forms intona- tional phrases around clauses and marks them with  nal lengthening, pitch reset, and a limited set of boundary tones (H% and L%). Although communicative functions and information structure are mostly realized by means of  final particles and morphosyntactic devices in LT, I show that boundary tones, focal tones, and deac- centing interact with word tones to form complex melodic patterns.
In the  fifth chapter, I present a phonologically-based F0 synthesis model to verify the adequacy of the proposed Autosegmental-Metrical model of LT. This F0 synthesis model consists of three main components: a) the tonal targets defined in previous chapters, b) an F0 interpolation component based on the PENTA model (Xu, 2004), and c) an evaluation component allowing a comparison of the F0 contours of real LT utterances with resynthesized F0 contours of the same utterances. The F0 synthesis model is able to generate F0 contours that approximate the F0 contours of real LT recordings, suggesting that the proposed phonological model adequately captures the overall tonal and intonational phonology of LT.

Title: "Ottoman corruptions of post-Byzantine chant!"
About the long history of exchange between oktoechos and makam music and about a certain ideological discourse to talk about it

German version: Gerlach, O., 2018. ‘Osmanische Verfälschungen im nachbyzantinischen Gesang!’ Über die lange Geschichte eines Austauschs zwischen Oktoichos- und Makammusik und den ideologischen Diskurs darüber. In M. Pischlöger, hrsg. Bericht der Internationalen Tagung Wien 2016. Theorie und Geschichte der Monodie, 9.2. Brno: Tribun EU, S. 651–679.

English version: Gerlach, O., 2020. ‘Ottoman Corruptions of Post-Byzantine Chant!’ About the Long History of Exchange Between Oktoechos and Makam Music and About a Certain Ideological Discourse to Talk About It. In M. Pischlöger, ed. Bericht der Internationalen Tagung Wien 2018. Theorie und Geschichte der Monodie, 10. Brno: Tribun EU, pp. 117–144.

Summary:

In confrontation with the differences between Byzantine music transmission and the innovations of the New Music School of the Patriarchate since the 18th century, H.J.W. Tillyard reproached the living tradition of Orthodox monodic chant (called hyphos, the "patriarchal style") that it corrupted the Byzantine heritage. Gregorios Stathis reacted by a lecture at Oxford, in which he stressed, that a Western philologist like Tillyard does not understand the difference of music composed according to the makamlar from the one composed according to the oktoechos. He referred to the distinction between external (exoteric) and internal (esoteric) music which was common in Greek music theory of the 19th century, after makam music became transcribed as well into Byzantine neumes since the school of the Archon Protopsaltis Panagiotes Halacoğlu.

Only recently handwritten Greek Anthologies or "Mismagia" had been rediscovered as important sources of Ottoman music. This discovery raises the question how to deal with common prejudices and misunderstandings, which became an obstacle to approach the current tradition of psaltic art and its creative potential.

In this paper, I provide an overview of tone encoding grammatical meanings, a phenomenon which to date has been insufficiently studied in depth by typologists, nor theoretical morphologists. A starting point for the present discussion is the newly published volume “Tone and inflection” (Palancar, Léonard eds. 2016), which contains a collection of papers focusing on inflectional tone in various languages, but mainly Oto-Manguean. I discuss basic formal and semantic properties of tone in grammar illustrating my claims with examples from the “Tone and inflection” volume as well as with cases from various African languages. I suggest and justify several implicational hypotheses covering typological patterning of grammatical tones; these proposed generalizations should be tested in a balanced survey in the future.

The proposed presentation will focus on the Saek spoken in Ban Na Kadôk (Khamkeuth district, Bolikhamxay province, Laos). In that Saek dialect, there are no initial consonant clusters with [l] and [r], [l] cannot be found as a final consonant, and, if some specific treatments of Proto-Tai initials are worth mentioning, there are sometimes not enough examples to determine whether they are regular or isolated. Whereas loanwords from Vietnamese are numerous, one might be disappointed to find very few words borrowed from other Vietic languages.
James R. Chamberlain (1998: 32) is the first who mentioned the existence of a distinct Saek dialect in Ban Na Kadôk. It was documented by Sarinya Jitbanjong (2010) in a PhD dissertation where she studied it along with two Saek varieties belonging to the dialect described by William J. Gedney (Hudak 1993). Sarinya Jitbanjong (2010: 125-126) has proposed for the Ban Na Kadôk dialect a tone system with a 1-234 split in the C column.
The data obtained from more than 10 speakers of the Saek of Ban Na Kadôk however support a uniform 123-4 split in all the 5 columns of its tone system, representing a two-way split between ancient voiceless initials and ancient voiced initials, as in Vietnamese and in the Southwestern Tai languages in the environment of which that dialect evolved. Borrowings from Vietnamese having been integrated in its phonological system, a more complete picture of its tone system can be given by discussing the tones of Vietnamese loanwords in the speech of present-day speakers.

References
Chamberlain, James R. 1998. The origin of Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history. Journal of the Siam Society. 86.1&2: 27-48.
Hudak, Thomas John, 1993. William J. Gedney's The Saek Language: Glossary, Texts, and Translations. Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan (Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia No. 41).
Kosaka, Ryuichi. 1997. On the Loans of Vietnamese Origin in the Saek Language. Southeast Asian Linguistics Studies In Honor of Vichin Panupong. Edited by A.S. Abramson: 127-146. Chulalongkorn University Press.
Sarinya Jitbanjong. 2010. A Comparison Study of Saek Phonology and Morphology in Lao and Thailand. PhD Thesis. Naresuan University. (in Thai)

This paper outlines a method of auditory and acoustic analysis for determining the tonemes of a language starting from scratch, drawing on the author’s experience of recording and analyzing tone languages of north-east India. The methodology is applied to a preliminary analysis of tone in the Thang dialect of Khiamniungan, a virtually undocumented language of extreme eastern Nagaland and adjacent areas of the Sagaing Division, Myanmar (Burma). Following a discussion of strategies for ensuring that data appropriate for tonal analysis will be recorded, the practical demonstration begins with a description of how tone categories can be established according to their syllable type in the preliminary auditory analysis. The paper then uses this data to describe a method of acoustic analysis that ultimately permits the representation of pitch shapes as a function of absolute mean duration. The analysis of grammatical tones, floating tones and tone sandhi are exemplified with Mongsen Ao data, and a description of a perception test demonstrates how this can be used to corroborate the auditory and acoustic analysis of a tone system.

Esta tesis es un estudio sobre la fonología del mazateco de Ayautla, una lengua popolocana de la familia otomangue, con un particular enfoque en su sistema tonal. La tesis incluye descripciones de la fonología segmental, tonal, prosódica y la morfofonología, además de un esbozo gramatical.

En esta tesis discuto sobre la fonología y la morfofonología segmental y suprasegmental del triqui de Chicahuaxtla, una lengua otomangue hablada en el estado de Oaxaca, México. Reviso aspectos relacionados con el sistema consonántico, el sistema vocálico, los rasgos laríngeos, la palabra prosódica y las funciones fonológicas y morfológicas del tono.
En la parte segmental, discuto sobre el sistema consonántico y el contraste fortis-lenis; con argumentos fonológicos, fonotácticos y fonéticos, muestro que dicho contraste es pertinente. Asimismo, presento una amplia discusión sobre el estatus fonológico de los segmentos laríngeos definidos en términos de rasgos como [+glotis constreñido] y [+glotis extendido]; propongo que son tanto segmentos como suprasegmentos, dependiendo del contexto en que aparezcan. Como segmentos considero que carecen de un articulador oral y por ello son susceptibles a procesos de transparencia laríngea, como la armonía vocálica.
En la parte tonal, reviso el sistema de cinco niveles propuesto en estudios previos y concluyo que sigue siendo pertinente. Sin embargo, propongo que los tonos pueden ser analizados en función del morfema léxico y el resultado es un inventario de patrones tonales asociados a morfemas monosilábicos y bisilábicos. Asimismo, exploro el comportamiento del tono en la frase nominal y propongo que existe un tono de borde. De forma similar, describo la función del tono en la morfología de la lengua y explico que en algunos casos los cambios tonales son predecibles pero en otros tienen función gramatical. Muestro que en la morfología de la lengua existen tonos flotantes como exponentes de persona y número. Concluyó que el tono tiene tanto función léxica como gramatical.
De esta manera, considero que esta tesis contribuye al conocimiento de la fonología, la morfología, el tono y la fonética del triqui y de las lenguas otomangues en general. Además, es un aporte para el estudio de la tipología tonal y la teoría fonológica.

Contrastive lexical tone occurs in quite a few languages of the north-western corner of the Indo-Aryan language territory. A preliminary survey of these tone languages suggests a grouping into three classes. In “Shina-type” languages (including Shina itself, Burushaski, Indus Kohistani, and probably quite a few others), a surface contrast between a falling and a rising pitch is possible on long vowels (sometimes on bimoraic syllables in general). In “Punjabi-type” languages (including Punjabi itself, Hindko, Pahari-Pothwari, Gojri, and possibly others) there is a three-way surface contrast on stressed syllables between a mid or level pitch, a high or falling pitch, and a low or rising pitch. Finally, there are a number of languages (including Gawri and Torwali) that have more than three contrastive tonal melodies on the surface. In the current paper, I report on the tone systems of two little-known languages, Ushojo and Khalkoti. Both of these are displaced varieties of Shina. The Ushojo-speaking community is settled in a side valley of the Swat river, where the predominant language is Torwali. The Khalkoti speaking community is settled in the upper Panjkora valley, where the predominant language is Gawri. A first analysis of recently collected data on these varieties suggests that Ushojo is still maintaining a Shina-type tonal system, whereas Khalkoti has by-and-large adopted the Gawri tone system.

Bantu languages commonly signal tense, aspect, mood, polarity, and clause-type distinctions with tonal as well as segmental cues. The inflectional tonal melodies on verbs may be viewed as underlyingly floating H tones (henceforth ‘melodic Hs’) contributed by the morpho-syntax that are assigned by rule to different positions within the verb. Along with a small set of construction specific tonal adjustment rules, the number and position of melodic Hs distinguish one tonal melody from another.

The present dissertation makes two contributions to the study of the special role that tone plays in Bantu verbal morpho-syntax. First, it contributes extensive novel documentation of the verbal tone system of Idakho: a variety of the Luhya cluster of Bantu languages spoken near Lake Victoria in western Kenya and eastern Uganda. Second, I show how aspects of the Idakho system and that of other Luhya varieties like it have contributed to the development of rich diversity within the verbal tone systems of Luhya.

Part I comprises the descriptive component of the dissertation and emphasizes the impact of several factors known to influence verb tone in Bantu. Because many language consultants contributed to the project, the dissertation makes note of variation within and across speakers of Idakho. In Part II, I demonstrate the role that a preference for prosodically well-cued morphological boundaries has played in two striking tonal developments within the Luhya macrolanguage: the loss of a lexical tonal contrast reconstructed to Proto-Bantu and the introduction of tonal melodies in constructions for which there is no historical precedence for tonal inflection.

Asian languages reveal a continuum from quasi-disyllables to highly eroded monosyllables. These variegated states are now understood to be different stages along a common evolutionary path. An overview is proposed, beginning with the earliest stages of monosyllabicization, before the generalization of a strictly monosyllabic phonological structure. The well-documented processes of consonantal depletion which lead to the development of phonation-type registers and tones are presented within a general model. Lastly, phonological evolutions observed at advanced stages of segmental depletion are discussed. The concluding note concerns the aftermath of segmental depletion: the re-creation of polysyllables.

Ganza is a previously undescribed Omotic language of the Mao subgroup, and is the only Omotic language found primarily outside of Ethiopia. This paper presents the results of nearly a year of phonological fieldwork on Ganza in the form of a descriptive phonology. Included are presentations of the consonant and vowel phonemes, syllable structure and phonotactics, notable morphophonemic processes, and an overview of the tone system. Some interesting features of the phonology highlighted in this paper include the existence of a nasalizing glottal stop phoneme, lack of phonemic vowel length, a lexically determined vocalic alternation between ja~e, and the existence of "construct melodies" in the tone system. Given that both Omotic languages in general and especially the Mao subfamily are understudied, this paper provides much-needed data and analysis for the furtherance of Omotic linguistics.

Smolders, Joshua A. G. 2016. A Phonology of Ganza (Gwàmì Nánà). Linguistic Discovery 14(1):86-144.

In this dissertation, I provide an analysis for word level prosody in Cherokee, a Southern Iroquoian language spoken in Northeastern Oklahoma and Western North Carolina. Focusing on Cherokee as it is spoken in Oklahoma, I analyze right edges of Cherokee words, showing that the boundary tone is predictable, though its distribution is conditioned by lexical tonal phonology and other word-final phenomena. In order to account for the distribution of the boundary tone, I must first provide an analysis of lexical tone in Cherokee. There have been previous comprehensive tone analyses (Lindsey 1985; Wright 1996; Uchihara 2013), which argue for a tonal inventory with two underlying tones (high and lowfall), a superhigh accent, and a default low which does not interact with the tonal phonology. I summarize these previous analyses and discuss what generalizations they can and cannot account for. I also argue that some low pitches in Cherokee are the surface realization of an underlying low tone. By including an underlying low tone in the tonal inventory of Cherokee, problematic surface pitch sequences from previous research can be explained. Before analyzing the boundary tone, I show all possible syllable shapes and discuss Word-Final Vowel Deletion, an optional fast speech process which often results in non-canonical word-final codas. I argue that there is a prosodic word which maps to a morphosyntactic word, as well as a larger prosodic word which includes enclitics. I also describe clitic linearization and attachment, and discuss how Cherokee clitics show a number of typologically unusual properties. Finally, I describe all possible alignments of the boundary tone. While mentions of the boundary tone in previous literature claim that the boundary tone only appears on word- final vowels, I show a much wider range of possible surface positions for the boundary tone: 1) the boundary tone appears on word-final vowel, 2) the boundary tone appears on a non word-final vowel, and 3) the boundary tone does not appear at all. I use a Stratal OT framework to account for the alignment of the boundary tone, as well as interactions between the surface position of the boundary tone and lexical tonal phonology, clitic attachment, and Word-Final Vowel Deletion.

This paper provides a systematic account of the emergence of contour tone, based on a ‘syllable-tone-register’ model and a large body of new firsthand acoustic tonal data. The emergence of tone is a process of pitch upgrading from an accompanying feature of phonation types to a distinctive feature. It involves three linguistic prerequisites, which bring about three processes: (L1) various phonation types, clear voice, breathy voice, falsetto, etc., which intrinsically induce pitch differences. (L2) Mono-syllabic (with great sonorous power) morpheme structure that enhance the pitch differences. (L3) Phonologicalization, which conceptualizes the enhanced pitch differences to a phonological category, tone. Furthermore, this paper proposes two ecological preconditions behind the linguistic prerequisites: (N1) Humid climates, which tend to induce a breathy voice. (N2) Small body-size, which tends to induce falsetto and creaky voice. A flowchart is designed to show how these prerequisites lead to different types of the world’s languages and finally output contour tone.

Varieties of Khamti [ISO 639-3: kht] spoken in India and Burma (Myanmar) have largely been assumed to be the same, despite little comparative work between the two. This paper presents findings from 2014 fieldwork conducted in the Chindwin River valley, Khamti District, Burma. While uncontroversially classified as Southwestern Tai (SWTai), Khamti has been a point of disagreement. Chamberlain (1975) grouped Khamti with Shan, while Edmondson and Solnit  (1997) place Khamti and Shan in separate sub-branches. Luo (2001) suggests Khamti may be part of a new branch of Tai altogether.

A significantly different tonal system is found in Khamti of the Chindwin River valley, with just four lexical tonemes instead of the five described in India. Analysis following Gedney (1972) shows a different history of splits and mergers, and Morey’s (2005) reconstruction of mid-19th century Khamti tones shows a system in some ways more similar to Khamti of modern Burma than modern India. As previous SWTai subgroupings have been based on Indian data, this requires revisiting both the question of Khamti’s alignment within SWTai, but also the use of tonal evidence for language classification generally.

The mismatch between tonal and segmental evidence can be resolved using the logic of the comparative method, and Khamti is presented as a case study in the utility of tonal evidence for language classification. Comparison of the modern and historical varieties allows us to reconstruct a tonal system of their nearest common ancestor, and the apparent conflict between the tonal and segmental evidence becomes mutual corroboration.

Additional documentation in Burma is needed to draw more firm conclusions and tease out relationships between closely related SWTai varieties. However, improving our understanding of tonal evidence in historical linguistics is critical for resolving both the immediate and larger Tai subgrouping problems, as well as classification issues in tonal languages generally, and Khamti provides us one example of how we can do so.

Many languages within the northwestern region of Indo-Aryan display contrastive lexical tone. Most of these languages, and their tone systems, have not yet been extensively studied. I briefly survey these languages and propose an initial division into three groups, based (rather simple-mindedly) on the number of contrasting tones in a language (two vs. three vs. more than three). Geographically, the three groups correspond to three distinct areas on the map. I discuss each group and show how they are different from one another, not only with respect to tone itself, but also in the way tone interacts with word stress in those languages.

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual sign-action (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this asymmetric subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing un-interpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced.

Previous research has proposed a direct path from consonantal effects on F0 to the development of a rising tone value. However, findings from tone change studies in Asian languages suggest an additional pathway: a high tone (i.e., with a tonal target in the upper pitch range) may evolve into a rising tone, without consonantal conditioning. This study examines tone change pathways to rising in the Ngwi (Loloish) languages. Among the 11 Ngwi language clusters examined, a new rising tone value has unambiguously developed from an historically high tone in 9 of them. In several clusters, prevocalic consonants conditioned a tone split, but in other clusters, consonantal conditioning does not appear to have played a role. The findings suggest that a high tonal target is itself a condition favorable to the development of a rising tone value, as reaching a high tonal target in connected speech frequently entails a rising contour.

This paper reports on verb tone melodies in Bakweri, which has 6 inflectionally-governed stem tone patterns. Depending on tense, a verb may have no tones beyond those in the lexicon, or may add L, H, HL, or LH to the stem. These melodic tones are linked to the final vowel, and melody-initial H spreads leftward to the lexical tone of the root. In addition, the reflexive contributes a LH melody which partially replaces the inherent melody determined by a verb’s tense, and which undergoes a special leftward spreading rule.

Data were recorded from 5 native speakers of which two are female (AF and MF)) and three are male (SM, NM and DM). The speakers are in the age between 20 to 30 years of age. All the speakers can speak three languages, namely, Kokborok (Debbarma), Hindi and English.

This dissertation provides a description of aspects of the phonology, morphology, and morphosyntax of Bangime. Bangime is a language isolate spoken in the Dogon language speaking area of Central Eastern Mali. Although the Bangande, the speakers of Bangime, selfidentify with the Dogon, their language bears practically no resemblance to the surrounding Dogon languages. Bangime has limited productive morphological processes whereas Dogon languages are agglutinating, with productive morphemes to indicate inflectional and derivational verbal and nominal processes.