Towards an Articulatory Model of Tone: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation
Creators: name: Karlin, Robin
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2018

description: This thesis examines the role of timing information in phonological representation, fo<br> cusing on how tone aligns with segmental material. On the basis of three acoustic studies, I<br> present a novel gestural model of tone representation, where tone gestures are durationally<br> underspecified and receive their timing information from the constellation of segmental ges<br> tures they are coordinated with. I also argue that the distributional and temporal char<br> acteristics of tone are the direct result of gestural coordination: phonological association<br> can be analyzed as the existence of coordinative relationships between a tone gesture and a<br> constellation of segmental gestures, and the precise nature of that coordinative relationship<br> produces the cross-linguistically variable acoustics. Chapter 1 delineates two major approaches to tone representation: Autosegmental(<br> Metrical), which references point-like features and nominal time, and Articulatory Phonol<br> ogy, which uses gestures that unfold over time and space. I discuss the different ways in<br> which each theory arrives at phonetic realization from underlying representation, as well as<br> their differing notions of overlap. Chapter 2 presents the results of an acoustic study on contour tones in Thai (Tai-Kadai),<br> a tone language where the mora serves as a licensing unit for tone. Counter previous hy<br> potheses, tonal extrema do not map to moraic edges: both moraic edges and tone extrema<br> instead independently refer to the syllable as a unit of timing. Based on these results, I argue<br> that the apparent acoustic mismatches can be straightforwardly derived from the application<br> of different coordinative modes between tonal and segmental gestures, while maintaining the<br> phonological licensing relationship between moras and tones. The data also suggests that the<br> F0 targets of tone gestures play a role in tone timing, indicating that there is an interaction<br> between the tone gesture and segmental gestures when determining duration. Chapter 3 presents the results of an acoustic study focused on the realization of the<br> falling accent in the Belgrade and Valjevo dialects of Serbian (Indo-European—Slavic), a<br> tone language where one syllable per word is specified for tone. I compare the alignment<br> and duration of pitch excursions across varying phonetic and phonological properties of the<br> syllable onset of the tone-bearing syllable. I show that the duration of pitch excursions<br> increases with phonetically longer syllable onsets, which indicates that tone gestures are<br> durationally underspecified and receive their timing information from the constellation of<br> segmental gestures they are coordinated with. The two dialects also exhibit distinct patterns<br> of both the duration and the alignment of the pitch excursion, and I argue that this is due<br> to differences in the type of coordination used. Chapter 4 focuses on the rising accents of the same dialects of Serbian, crucially examining<br> the Valjevo dialect, which routinely retracts the pitch peak into the syllable preceding the<br> H-bearing syllable. Despite this phonetic retraction, the patterns of alignment parallel those<br> observed for the falling accent. This indicates that the tone gesture is still receiving timing<br> information from the H-bearing syllable, and as such is still coordinated to it. Based on these<br> results, I argue for the availability of gestural target coordination, in addition to gestural<br> onset coordination. In Chapter 5 I synthesize the findings from the experimental chapters to present a gestural<br> model of tone representation, and discuss its implications for Articulatory Phonology and<br> avenues for future research
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