Tone inventories and tune-text alignmentsMary E. Beckman (Ohio State University)

Problem: How can we develop descriptions of prosodic systems of less well-studied languages, such as the Caribbean Creoles or regional Chinese languages such as Taiwanese or Shanghainese? 1. Adopt a common theoretical “language” so that researchers can communicate with each other: the autosegmental-metrical (AM) framework (Ladd, 1996), an “elegant means of expressing the relationships between tones and their tone-bearing units so far devised” (Frota, 2004 [ESF “Tone and Intonation in Europe”]).2. Build on typological work — both “macro-typological” studies comparing different languages and “micro-typological” studies of very closely related languages (Frota, 2004).

Outline:• Review macro-typological work that led to AM framework.• Suggest applications in micro-typological study of Chinese.

Theme:Older typology of pitch classified languages by two dichotomies:1. distinctive function of pitch: tone languages (e.g., Mandarin

Chinese) vs. intonation languages (e.g., English).2. phonetic content of culminative function: pitch accent (e.g.,

Swedish, Japanese) vs. stress accent (e.g., English). Sometimes cast as three points on a continuum (e.g., byMacCawley, 1978) rather than as two independent dimensions.

The Autosegmental-Metrical (AM, Ladd, 1996) framework allows

us to recast the classification in terms of inventory and alignment:1. inventory: What are the “notes” (tones) that make up the

“tune” of an utterance, and where do they come from? (A)2. alignment: How is the “tune” anchored to the “text”? (M)

Once recast in this way, ...all languages have tones; all languages are intonation languages; accent typology becomes much more multi-dimensional

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m a

H

0 0.2 0.4 0.6time (seconds)

'mother'

m a

L H

0 0.2 0.4 0.6time (seconds)

'hemp'

m a

L

0 0.2 0.4 0.6time (seconds)

'horse'

m a

H L

0 0.2 0.4 0.6time (seconds)

'scold'

/ma/ or /ma55/ /ma/ or /ma35/ /ma/ or /ma21(3)/ /ma/ or /ma51/syllable-level analysis after Chao (1930) ‘A system of tone letters.’

Function of pitch: In tone languages, differentiates morphemes, whereas in intonation languages, it differentiates utterances...

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m ¨ i does intonation.

L+H* L- H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

mary2

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m ¨ i does intonation?

L* H- H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

mary1

Kingdon (1939) ‘Tonetic stress markers..’: rise / vs. fall-rise \/

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hai2 zi men yao4 bu yao4 lai2

L H H L H (L)L H

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6time (seconds)

fig01arh1b

Word and higher-level effects (identified by Chao 1933, 1968, ...)• ‘neutral tone’: inherently on morphemes /dz/ and // of

/hai.dz./ ‘children’; alternating with ‘lexically specified’ tone on NEG morpheme in V-not-V question construction

• also, half-fall (tone 4 sandhi) on first /jao/ in this sequence: /jao/+/pu/+/jao/ /jao.pu.jao/

[child + PLURAL ][ will NEG will ][ come ]

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ta1 men bu2 mai4 yu3 san3 ma

H L (H)H L L H L H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

fig05aumbrella

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ta1 men bu2 mai4 yu3 san3 ma

H L (H)H L H L L%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

fig05bumbrella2

[ they ][ NEG sell ][ umbrella ][ QUEST ]

Word and higher-level effects (cont.)

• tone 3 sandhi: /ju/+/san/ /yu.san/

• ‘neutral tone’: also on sentence particles such as /ma/

• tone alternations: /pu/+/mai/ /pu.mai/ /jao/+/pu/+/jao/ /jao.pu.jao/

• ‘intonation’ proper

ta-men bu-mai yu-san ma. +

ta-men bu-mai yu-san ma. +

Global shapes (Chao, 1933)? or local BPM (Chao, 1968)?

[Lee’s (2000) results suggest both manipulations are involved.]

Who does intonation?

What does Mary do? Mary does intonation?

This analysis differs to Gussenhoven’s: L* L* H- H%

This analysis defers to Gussenhoven’s: %L L*H H%

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m ¨ i does intonation?

L* H- H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

mary1

Kingdon (1939) and others notate the first contrast, by moving the ‘tonetic stress marker’ from first word to last:

/Mary does intonation?Mary does /intonation?

Such conventions could be modified to notate the second contrast also, by letting marker be used as a diacritic within the word:

This analysis \differs to Gussenhoven’s. This analysis de\fers to Gussenhoven’s.

However, the conventions cannot account for the way in which a particular ‘tonetic’ pattern is realized on texts of different lengths.

Mary does intonation? Abernathy?Mary does intonation? Jane?

By representing the rises and falls of contrasting intonation contours in “intonation languages” such as English as sequences of targets (like the contrasting lexical tone targets in “tone languages” such as Mandarin Chinese or Chichewa), intonational phonologists could invoke other devices of Autosegmental Phonology:

Mary does intonation? Abernathy? Jane?

analyzed as L H H sequence with second H spread or copied over interval between stressed syllable (where accent L* anchored) and phrase end (where second H% is anchored as a ‘boundary tone’).

Difference between Pierrehumbert’s and Gussenhoven’s analyses then is a matter of Metrical Phonology: structural affiliation of the middle tone...Pierrehumbert: H- phrase accent affiliated with phrase endGussenhoven: trailing tone of bitonal L*H pitch accent

For dual affiliation of phrase-level tones, see also:• Grice, Ladd, & Arvaniti (2000) for phrase accents in German,

Hungarian, Greek, and several other ‘stress accent languages’. • Bruce (1977) for phrase accent accounting for second peak in

Accent 2 type word accents in Swedish (original source) ...• and Gussenhoven (2000) for OT treatment of boundary tone

interleaved with word accents in ‘tonal’ dialects of Dutch.

Phonetic content of culminative function: pitch peak vs. stress peak. • Traditional dichotomy grouped Swedish together with Japanese in

contrast to English and (non-tonal dialects of) Dutch, but ...• “English as a pitch accent language” (Bolinger, 1965). • The AM framework decomposes intonation contours into tones

aligned to culminative syllables and tones aligned to edges, allows us to make a multi-dimensional typology in terms of (1) lexicon vs. pragmatics as source of culminative tonal contrasts, (2) deletion/interpolation vs. interleaving of higher level tones, ....

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ha'si o nuru

H*+L

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1time (seconds)

'Paints chopsticks.'

hasi' o nuru

%L H*+L

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1time (seconds)

'Paints a bridge.'

hasi o nuru

%L H-

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1time (seconds)

'Paints the end.'

Accent vs. アクセント in Japanese:• Lexical contrast in Japanese includes “no accent” as a possible

value, so disyllabic words have three possible patterns, trisyllabic words have four, etc.; so utterances with no culminative syllable.

• Kawakami (1967) analyzed initial rise as phrase-level pattern as opposed to ‘nuclear’ fall at lexical accent; Pierrehumbert & Beckman (1988) for AM treatment of Japanese %L H- sequence.

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sa'Nkaku-no ya'ne-no maNnaka-ni okima'su

H*L L% H*L L% H- L% H*L L%

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8time (seconds)

Sankaku

Phonetic content of prosodeme does not capture differences:• unlike word accents of Swedish (or pitch accents of English),

accents in Tokyo (and Osaka) Japanese do not anchor to stress • “accentuation” in sense of highlighting/making prominent is

accomplished instead by phrasing and pitch range manipulation

[ triangular ][roof-GEN ][ smackcenter-LOC] [put ]

• downstep on /jane/ (triggered by accent on /saNkaku/) vs. pitch range reset at intonational phrase boundary in /maNnaka/

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yu'u-kuN-to mine'yorikuN-no oni'isaN-ni aima'sita

H*+L H*+L H*+L H*+L L%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2time (seconds)

metONE

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yu'u-kuN-tomine'yorikuN-no oni'isaN-ni aima'sita

H*+L L% H*+L H*+L H*+L L%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2time (seconds)

metTWO

[Yuu-and ][Miniyori-GEN ][brother-DAT][met ]

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hoNtoo-ni na'ra-no na no

%L H- L% H*+L L% H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2time (seconds)

naraquest

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hoNtoo-ni na'ra-no na no

%L H- L% H*+L L% LH%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2time (seconds)

narainsist [ really ][ Nara-GEN ][COP][sent Prt ]

Recasting accent typology to refer to structure where anchored (1):• Standard Dutch pitch accents are a variety of shapes (H*+L vs.

L*+H vs. L*H+L, etc.) anchored to metrically strong syllables; potential location of accent lexically distinctive, but accent shape specified in the pragmatics (as are boundary tones)

• Swedish word accents are a HL shape anchored to a heavy syllable; location of accent and early vs. late peak alignment details (H*+L vs. H+L*) are lexically distinctive

• Tokyo Japanese accents are a fixed H*L shape anchored to any syllable nucleus in accentual phrase, long or short (or even ‘deleted’); presence of accent and location lexically distinctive

• French ‘word-final accents’ dock to final syllable in accentual phrase, different from alignment of early rise (Welby, 2003)

Question: Why is shape variable in English and Dutch, but fixed in Japanese and French?

Fixed pitch accent shape in Tokyo Japanese, KS Korean, etc.Perhaps because syllable where pitch accent is anchored is neither fixed relative to a phrase edge nor metrically strong, pitch accent is fixed tone shape: always H*+L

Contrast:• Dutch H*; L*, H*+L, L*+H, L*H+L (ToDI system)• Swedish H*L, HL* (Bruce 1991)• Neapolitan Italian H*L, HL*, L*H, LH*, etc. (D’Imperio,

2002)• English H*, L*, L+H*, L*+H, H+!H* (ToBI system)

Note that many of these contrast in details of alignment and not just in choice of tone sequence, as in English L+H* vs. L*+H(compare two rising boundary tones in Tokyo Japanese).

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m ¨ i does intonation

L*+H L- H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

mary3

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m ¨ i does intonation.

L+H* L- H%

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mary2

Methods used to confirm alignment contrasts• Analyze corpus of serendipitously overheard examples — e.g.,

Ward & Hirschberg (1985) for English L+H* vs. L*+H• Ask listeners to choose between interpretations in canned

dialogues — e.g., Beckman (2000) for English L+H* vs. L*+H; Caspers (1999, 2000) for Dutch H*+L vs. L*H+L

• Ask listeners to choose between interpretations of synthetic stimuli along a continuum — e.g., D’Imperio (2000) for Neapolitan Italian L+H* vs. L*+H

• Ask speakers to imitate stimuli along a continuum — e.g., Pierrehumbert & Steele (1989) for English L+H* vs. L*+H; Dilley [Redi] (2003) for English H+L* (ToBI H+!H*) vs. H* L-

Question of methodology:• When tone target is an inflection point rather than a clear peak or

clear valley, how can we reliably measure produced alignment?

Where exactly is the first H tone in English L* H H%?

Answer: Analyze productions using intersections of fitted slopes• Arvaniti, Ladd, & Mennen (1998) for Greek L*+H vs. L+H*, etc.• D’Imperio (2000) for Neapolitan Italian L+H* vs. L*+H• Dilley (2003) for English H+L* vs. H* L-• Willis (2003) for focused vs. neutral prenuclear accents in

Dominican Spanish• Welby (2003) for Hexagonal French early vs. late rise

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m ¨ i does intonation?

L* H- H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

mary1

Recasting accent typology to refer to structure where anchored (2):• Standard Dutch pitch accents are a variety of shapes (H*+L vs.

L*+H vs. L*H+L, etc.) anchored to metrically strong syllables; potential location of accent lexically distinctive, but accent shape specified in the pragmatics (as are boundary tones)

• Swedish word accents are a HL shape anchored to a heavy syllable; location of accent and early vs. late peak alignment details (H*+L vs. H+L*) are lexically distinctive

• Mandarin Chinese neutral tone syllables often are reduced (e.g., neutral tone on 2nd V /jaojao/ [jao.bjao] in Rugao-accented Putonghua); tones specified only for stressed syllables

Summary: The metrical anchoring to stressed syllables and not just to phrase edges is independent of the specification of contrasting tone shapes and whether these shapes are specified in the lexicon or in the pragmatics.

Question: (micro-typology) What about other varieties of Chinese?

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hai2 zi men yao4 bu yao lai3

L H H L L

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6time (seconds)

th1b

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hai2 zi men yao4 bu yao lai2

L H H L H (L)L H

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6time (seconds)

fig01arh1b

half-fall pattern reinterpreted as downstep (Shih, 1987)

neutral tone on 2nd V [jao.bjao]

interpolation to L% vs. tone spread

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<SIL> 335223223 55 3 221H% <SIL> 223 55 223 33 L%

<SIL> 1 0 1 1 0 2 <SIL> 1 0 1 2

lE55+3a33 kO3jIN221 <SIL> * ty55jau223

<SIL>ji lei jau saam gok jing <SIL> ngo dou jau wo

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 2.6time (seconds)

Contrast Cantonese, where every syllable has a lexical tone, and a boundary tone (e.g., H%) is added after the last lexical tone in intonation phrase (Wong, Chan, & Beckman, 2004)

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<SIL> 22 33 55 3%

<SIL> 0 1- 0 2

hai22am33 nO55A2

<SIL> hai gam do laak

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5

Syllable fusion (Wong, 2004):Segmental lenition and deletion marks a lower level of grouping in Cantonese, and vowel deletion can occur without tone loss

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<SIL>223 221 221 22 33 HL%

<SIL> 1 1 0 1 2

laa221+22

<SIL>o jyun loi hai wai

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<SIL>223 221 221 22 33 HL%

<SIL> 1 1 0 1 2

laa221+22

<SIL>o jyun loi hai wai

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Segmental allophony and loss of tone specification (“tone sandhi”) marks an intermediate level of grouping in Shanghainese (Jin, 1986)

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i ma le jang dO

TSG IP

he/she bought starfruit

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i ma le jang dO kUq

TSG IP IP

he/she bought sheep dried peach

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ta1 men bu2 mai4 yu3 san3 ma

H L (H)H L L H L H%

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4time (seconds)

fig05aumbrella[ they ][ NEG sell ][ umbrella ][ QUEST ]

n.b. Shanghai different from Mandarin in that tone sandhi involves loss of tone specification on all but one syllable within metrical domain (‘tone sandhi group’ or ‘accentual phrase’), and spreading of sole remaining tone, whereas Mandarin tone 3 sandhi involves replacement of one tone specification by another (tone 3 tone 2) in a given tonal context within the domain (Peng, 1996; Shih, 1997; etc.)

Inventory of lexical tones and tonal alternations

open syllables checked syllables

tones sandhi changes tones sandhi changes

High 55 24 High 53q 53q

Mid 33 Low 21q

Low 21 33 21q

Rising 24 55 21

Falling 51 51

Compare “Min tone cycle” of Taiwanese, where every tone replaced when not domain final in tone sandhi group.

nls107

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h u n a~ s i g s a~ g a G h i N e~ /hun51 24 51 21ã55 21 24/ [hun55 a33 sik21 # ã33 53 24 pink triangle PRT

‘It’s a pink triangle.’

Taiwanese tone sandhi group (Chen, 1987; Peng, 2003)

• distribution of base tone versus sandhi tone for syllables with tone specification — e.g., /ã55/ ‘3’ vs. [ã335324]

jts57

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t21 t51 t33 t33 PP

jtr57

t21 t55 t33 t33 PP/ũã33 51 3351/ [ũã21 51 3333] switch I ask you PragPrt

‘Now, it’s MY turn to ask you.’

/ũã33 51 3351/ [ũã21 55 3333] switch I ask you PP

‘Now it’s my turn to ask you.’

• sandhi tones not just word-medially — e.g., (in both utterances)/ũã33/ ‘switch’ [ũã21], (in jtr5) /51/ ‘switch’ [55]

• emergence of sandhi tone in later case marks edge of focus domain (i.e., “accentuation” device, cf. Shanghai and Japanese)

The Shapes Game (design by Y. J. Fon) spontaneous speech:

• Two participants communicate over headphones and mic and are recorded onto separate tracks of a DAT recorder.

• Dialogues transcribed and participants asked to read list of transcripts of randomized selected sentences.

yws19

a b u n t e s i g oa b o h e l e n e~ /a bun33 te24 33 ũã512421/[ a . b u n . t e . s i . ũã . b o . h e . l e . n PP problem is I not that one PragPrt

‘Well, the problem is that I don’t have that one.’

Taiwanese ‘neutral tone’ at lower level, with resyllabification:

/l/=“/d/” /[]

yws17

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t51 t0 PP t33 t21q t0 PP

Other (phonetic) correlates of Tone Sandhi Grouping:• Peng (1997) shows a small amount of final lengthening and • a somewhat expanded pitch range on the final (base tone)

less than at intonational phrase edge, marked by boundary tone

/tan5124||552121/[tan5124||332121 wait PP % green PRT PP ‘Wait! You said a green one?’

cwr91

t33 PP

cws91

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t33 PP /u3333/ /u3321 / [u3333] [u3321] have PP have PP

‘You have it, right?’

Once specification of (Autosegmental) tone sequence separated from specification of (Metrical) structure where tones anchored:

1. Is the lowest level of structure that defines tone anchoring something like the “accentual phrase” (e.g., Kumamoto, Seoul Korean, French?, Shanghai?), or is it a smaller unit such as the syllable (e.g., Tokyo Japanese, Dutch, Mandarin Chinese)

2. Is melody anchored to AP edges variable (e.g., Shanghai, Osaka Japanese) or fixed (e.g., Chonnam Korean, French?)

3. if melody is variable, is it specified in the lexicon (e.g., Osaka) or in the pragmatics (e.g., Seoul Korean?)

4. For tones anchored to syllables, does melody vary (e.g., Swedish, Dutch) or just anchoring site (e.g., Japanese)?

5. and if melody contrasts, are tones specified in the lexicon (e.g., Swedish) or in the pragmatics (e.g., English)

6. Also, is anchoring site constrained by syllable weight/strength?