Prosody And Syntax: Cross-linguistic Perspectives (Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics)

Prosody and Syntax Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics Volume 3 Prosody and Syntax: Cross-linguistic Perspectives E...

Author: Yuji Kawaguchi | Ivan Fonagy | Tsunekazu Moriguchi

152 downloads 2462 Views 3MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Prosody and Syntax

Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics

Volume 3 Prosody and Syntax: Cross-linguistic Perspectives Edited by Yuji Kawaguchi, Ivan Fonágy and Tsunekazu Moriguchi

Prosody and Syntax Cross-linguistic Perspectives

Edited by

Yuji Kawaguchi Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

Ivan Fonágy Hungarian Academy, C.N.R.S.

Tsunekazu Moriguchi Shizoka University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prosody and Syntax : Cross-linguistic Perspectives / edited by Yuji Kawaguchi, Ivan Fonágy and Tsunekazu Moriguchi. p. cm. (Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics, issn in appl. ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Prosodic analysis (Linguistics). 2. Grammar, Comparative and general. P224.P756 2006 414/.6--dc22 isbn 90 272 3315 2 (Hb; alk. paper)

2006042762

© 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microﬁlm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Contents Message from the President Setsuho IKEHATA (President, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) ............................ 1 Center of Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics (UBLI) Yuji KAWAGUCHI......................................................................................................... 3 Preface Yuji KAWAGUCHI........................................................................................................11 Functions of Intonation Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD ............................................................................... 19 Prosodic Constituents in French —A Data-Driven Approach— Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD ........................................................... 47 A Predictive Approach to the Analysis of Intonation in Discourse in French Piet MERTENS............................................................................................................ 65 English and German Prosody —A Contrastive Comparison— Manfred MARKUS .................................................................................................... 103 Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English —Transfer from Japanese— Hiroko SAITO............................................................................................................ 125 Mismatch of Stress and Accent in Spoken Spanish Takuya KIMURA ....................................................................................................... 141 Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb —How Morphology and Phonology Interact— Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO ............................................................................ 157 Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives —Phonetic Analyses and Phonological Interpretations— Yosuke IGARASHI ..................................................................................................... 175 Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation Fumio INOUE ........................................................................................................... 197 Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement in Japanese Family Names Hirokazu SATO.......................................................................................................... 223 The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances in the Japanese Dialogs —Analysis of the “TUFS Language Module”— Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA .................................................................... 239 The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA ............................................................................ 265 On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax —The Case of Makonde Tonology— Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND........................................................................ 285 An Acoustic Study on Intonation of Nominal Sentences in Indonesian Masashi FURIHATA.................................................................................................. 303 Acoustic and Structural Analysis of Enclitic Particles in Tagalog Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI........................................................................................... 327 Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ................................... 349 Index of Proper Nouns ........................................................................................................ 369 Index of Subjects ................................................................................................................ 375 Contributors ........................................................................................................................ 383

Message from the President Setsuho IKEHATA (President, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) The 21st Century COE (“Center of Excellence”) Program, launched by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology in 2002, grants subsidies to distinguished universities in our country for the establishment of a center of research and education in various fields with the highest academic standards in the world. It aims at raising the level of research in our country’s universities and fostering creative academic minds, expected to become leaders of the world. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) submitted applications for research projects in two of the selected programs—the Humanities and Interdisciplinary/Compound/New Sphere fields. We have obtained wonderful results; both projects were selected. We are extremely pleased and encouraged by this high evaluation of the unique research projects and educational potential of our Graduate School of Area and Culture Studies. To run the program, TUFS has accepted outstanding experts from all over the world—Europe, North and South America, Oceania, Asia, and Africa—who collaborate on education and research in a wide range of academic fields including linguistics, literature, history, philosophy, cultural anthropology, sociology, political science, and economics. Thus, we have attained an extremely consistent interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach for a single-faculty university. In an age that emphasizes the global community, it is certainly desirable for us to maximize and further develop this unique strength in both education and research. A strong foundation in foreign languages is vital to area and culture studies. TUFS engages in education and research in over 50 languages, cultures and societies in every part of the world, which contributes to cross-cultural understanding and the development of people capable of contributing to the actualization of a harmonious global community. In addition, a double-major system that requires students to specialize in both a language and a discipline-related course of study enables TUFS to produce graduates equipped with a high degree of language competence and a deep knowledge of world cultures and societies. Our new campus in Fuchu is proudly equipped with the state-of-the-art computing network. The most outstanding feature is the information literacy and the number of computers on campus, which ranks at the top level among

2

Setsuho IKEHATA

liberal arts universities in our country. With such priviledged information infrastructure, TUFS endeavors to make the best use of multimedia, the internet and other devices, in order to develop the most advanced language education. The University’s Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics project, selected by the 21st Century COE Program, is the concrete manifestation of our plans for the future, which I have just mentioned. The implementation team members are committed to this future vision and vigorously engaged in the project. It is my fervent desire that they will produce rewarding results. It is the intention of everyone at TUFS to combine our wisdom in a concerted effort to do our utmost to make a success of the 21st Century COE Program. With a view to providing full support to the program, TUFS has established the “21st Century COE Program Administration Office” which is directly responsible to myself, the President. This Office is an inter-sectional organization consisted of the President, the Vice-President, the deans of each division, the Program Leader, as well as the managers of the secretariat. Its important role is to enhance the cooperation between the various sections within TUFS and to administrate the use of the space and the budget allocated for research. Tokyo, December, 2005

Center of Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics (UBLI) Yuji KAWAGUCHI (COE Program Leader, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) 1. Linguistic Informatics It is widely believed that linguistic theories and computer sciences have greatly influenced foreign language education, however the collaboration of these three domains has not brought about new scientific results. The present program aims to meet such a scientific need. An overall integration of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics will be realized on the basis of Computer Sciences. We have named this synthetic field Linguistic Informatics. When we hear this name for the first time, we may take it for a branch of natural sciences. However, since our language represents a system of information, linguistics itself constitutes, in a broad sense, a part of informatics. In the following lines, due to the limitation of space, I will explain only the essence of this 21st Century COE (Center of Excellence) Program. COE Program Promoters Yuji KAWAGUCHI Susumu ZAIMA Nobuo TOMIMORI Toshihiro TAKAGAKI Yoichiro TSURUGA Ikuo KAMEYAMA Akira MIZUBAYASHI Hideki NOMA Kohji SHIBANO Makoto MINEGISHI Mayumi USAMI

French and Turkish Linguistics German Linguistics Romance Linguistics Spanish Linguistics French Linguistics Russian Literature French Literature, History Korean Linguistics Information Technology Theoretical Linguistics Social Psychology of Language

2. Organization and Research Projects The present COE program is directed by the following supervisors: Susumu ZAIMA, Toshihiro TAKAGAKI, Yoichiro TSURUGA, Kohji SHIBANO, Makoto MINEGISHI, Mayumi USAMI and Yuji KAWAGUCHI. In 2004-2005, the following research projects are undertaken in three scientific fields respectively.

4

Yuji KAWAGUCHI

Research Projects in 2004-2005 LINGUISTICS: Corpus-based analysis of sentence structures and cross-linguistic perspectives in phonetics Yoichiro TSURUGA Yuji KAWAGUCHI Naotoshi KUROSAWA Kiyoko SOHMIYA Kazuyuki URATA Susumu ZAIMA, Takashi NARITA Toshihiro TAKAGAKI Hidehiko NAKAZAWA Takayuki MIYAKE Keiko MOCHIZUKI Shinjiro KAZAMA Isamu SHOHO Satoko YOSHIE Shinji YAMAMOTO Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI, Nobuo TOMIMORI, Hiroko SAITO, Masashi FURIHATA, Yoshio SAITO

Impersonal constructions in French Diachronic research on negative constructions in French Word order of modifier and modified constituent in Latin and Portuguese Aspects of marked constructions as seen in corpora Diachronic research on the subjunctive in English Corpus-based research on verb construction in German Construction of a Spanish corpus and the development of relevant tools to advance Spanish language research Utilization of a corpus for research on Russian verbs Research on the syntactic characteristics of Chinese verbs based on corpus analysis Comparative study of compound verbs in Japanese and Chinese that express “causal phenomena” and “resultant phenomena” and their corresponding English sentence structures Descriptive study of grammar using spoken and literary corpora The causes and results of marked word order in the Malaysian language Construction of a Wakhi vocabulary corpus The Italian language in the 21st century Prosodic analysis of speech through the TUFS Dialogue Module

APPLIED LINGUISTICS： Discourse Analysis, Second Language Acquisition, Evaluation of TUFS Language Modules

Mayumi USAMI

Tae UMINO

Construction and analysis of a multilingual corpus of spoken language Basic research on methodology for natural conversation analysis Development of a basic transcription system for Japanese, Korean, Chinese and English. Construction and analysis of Japanese learner-language corpus Basic research aimed at the development of learner’s manual for ‘Japanese Dialogue Module’

Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics

Asako YOSHITOMI Masashi NEGISHI, Hideyuki TAKASHIMA, Masanori ICHIKAWA, Koyo YAMAMORI

5

Construction of an English learner language corpus Revision of the English Dialogue Module teacher's manual Development of a Language Proficiency Scale Assessment of TUFS Language Modules

COMPUTER SCIENCES: E-learning, Natural Language Processing Hiroshi SANO Chun Chen LIN

Construction of an educational material corpus for Japanese language education Construction of e-learning system

In principle, these projects are considered as fundamental research for the development of TUFS Language Modules, which are the very fruits of Linguistic Informatics and the significant scientific contribution of this COE. 3. TUFS Language Modules 3.1. Cohabitation of Natural Language and Machine Language Our main objective is to innovate foreign language education by developing superior educational materials and delivering them over the Internet. At present, the following 17 languages are covered in the TUFS Language Modules. Editors of Pronunciation, Dialogue and Grammar Modules Cross-Linguistic Makoto MINEGISHI Grammar Keizo NOMURA, Hiroko SAITO, Kazuyuki URATA, English Asako YOSHITOMI German Takashi NARITA, Akiko MASAKI French Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Akira MIZUBAYASHI Spanish Shigenobu KAWAKAMI, Toshihiro TAKAGAKI Portuguese Naotoshi KUROSAWA, Chika TAKEDA Russian Hidehiko NAKAZAWA Chinese Kazuyuki HIRAI, Takayuki MIYAKE Korean Eui-sung CHO, Koichi IKARASHI, Hideki NOMA Mongolian Yoshio SAITO, Renzo NUKUSHINA, Hideyuki OKADA Indonesian Masashi FURIHATA Filipino Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI, Michiko YAMASHITA Lao Reiko SUZUKI Cambodian Hiromi UEDA, Tomoko OKADA Vietnamese Yoshio UNE, Hiroki TAHARA Arabic Robert RATCLIFFE Turkish Mutsumi SUGAHARA Japanese Futoshi KAWAMURA, Yumiko SATO, Tae UMINO

6

Yuji KAWAGUCHI

This is a large-scale project that includes more than 100 researchers and graduate students. In the TUFS Language Modules, the multilingual language learning system is one of the main features. In fact, we teach more than 40 different languages at TUFS. But the novelty of the TUFS Language Modules lies in another fact. For example, 17 languages are described in unicode (UTF-8), and in our system, HTML, a basic language of the World Wide Web (WWW), is correlated with XML, which was first invented in 1998 and has recently begun to be applied on the WWW. This project also has educational ends for graduate students, who undertake the role of preparing the primary materials for the structuring of the modules. Through this research activity, they will gain the knowledge not only of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, but also of Computer Sciences. In this way, the graduate program will foster new types of linguistic researchers – those who have full knowledge of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and who can manipulate a computer-assisted language learning system. 3.2. Modularized View of Language With the advent of the Internet, we have become conscious of the omnipresence of information, that is, what we call ubiquity of information. On the other hand, the WWW gives us an oppurtunity to re-think over how and what that information should be. On the WWW, theoretically speaking, infinite ordering and a combination of information are possible through their mutual linkages. In the TUFS Language Modules, we set our way of thinking free from a traditional view of language and adopt a modularized view of language. Each language unit is composed of four relatively independent modules, namely, pronunciation, dialogue, grammar and vocabulary modules. The idea of module components allows learners and teachers to learn and teach the target language from whichever part of the modules and in whatever order. 3.3. Cross-Linguistic Syllabus These modules will promise more freedom than ever to learners and teachers; however, a common measure is indispensable for the evaluation of language learning and education. In this sense, the evaluation of modules is very important for this COE program. As each module is designed independently, one may evaluate it individually. But as far as educational contents and goals are concerned, a more or less loose unity has been realized by adopting a common syllabus design for 17 different languages, so that in addition to a traditional analysis of learners’ idiosyncratic characters, one can make an interesting contrastive analysis of individual or universal

Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics

7

characteristics of second language acquisition (SLA) through 17 different languages. Therefore, the Cross-linguistic syllabus is regarded as an innovation in this web-based language education system. 3.4. Linguistic Usage The process of developing the TUFS Language Modules is as follows: 1. Creation of language materials; 2. Implementation on the WWW; and 3. Web-based language education. The first step is to create language materials which are appropriate for the language modules. We must ask ourselves about the kind of language materials that should be provided. Our conclusion is that these language materials should be “usage-based”. The key concept here is linguistic usage. Next, we must consider what exactly does the term usage mean. The term is highly polysemous. Some researchers claim that linguistic usage becomes explicit only through quantitative analysis of an enormous corpus. Others argue that usage should be fixed on mutual speech acts between a speaker and a listener. Moreover, some may suppose that linguistic usage is related to our cognition, for our linguistic knowledge will be accumulated through the encounter with new linguistic usages. We also find researchers who inisist on the interaction between linguistic and extra-linguistic aspects of linguistic usage. In short, the definition of usage is not at all unanimous among linguists. The TUFS Language Modules provide us with an opportunity to reconsider the significance of usage for linguistic research and language education. The pronunciation and dialogue modules became available on the Internet at the beginning of 2004. At the end of Academic Year 2005, the grammar module also became available for 10 different languages. The development of vocabulary module is underway. 4. First International Conference on Linguistic Informatics Immediately after the selection of this COE program by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, we undertook the preparation of the first conference on Linguistic Informatics. At the end of 2002, the outline was fixed. On December 13 and 14, the first International Conference on Linguistic Informatics was scheduled at TUFS. The conference consisted of three sessions: 1. Computer-Assisted Linguistics; 2. Corpus Linguistics; and 3. Applied Linguistics. It was a great honour for me to organize this international conference, which was pariticpated by many guest speakers not only from other universities in Japan but also from all over the world. Many graduate students, mostly PhD candidates, also presented their papers in the conference. Unlike most conferences, proceedings were published before

8

Yuji KAWAGUCHI

the conference since the conference covered large scientific fields, ranging from Computer Linguistics, Philology, Dialectology, Corpus Linguistics, Discourse Pragmatics, Applied Linguistics to e-learning, and without the prepublished proceedings, the conference participants would not have been able to understand the essence of the contributions or to follow the discussions. Through this conference, we hope to have explained the concept of Linguistic Informatics, state of the art field, and presented the challenges this field must solve in the future. We hope that this synthesis of different scientific fields produces fruitful outcomes and help us to gain insights into the futurevision of this science. cf. TUFS Language Modules (Japanese version) : http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/modules/ TUFS Language Modules (Multilingual version) : http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/english/modules/ Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics: http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/ (in Japanese) http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/english/index.html (in English) In the spring of 2005, the John Benjamins Publishing Company of the Netherlands published a series of reports from The First International Conference on Linguistic Informatics as well as the results of corpus linguistic research as the first and second volumes of the series, Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics.

Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics

9

5. Second International Conference on Linguistic Informatics and Workshop on Spoken Language Corpora On December 9, 2005, a joint workshop entitled Spoken Language Corpus - Significance and Its Application - by C-ORAL-ROM and Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics (UBLI) was held at TUFS. C-ORAL-ROM is a joint project on the spoken language corpora of Romance languages collaboratively compiled by the University of Florence in Italy, the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain, the University of Aix-Marseille I in France, and the University of Lisbon in Portugal. On December 10, the following day, The Second International Conference on Linguistic Informatics—Contributions of Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, and Computer Science, was held at the TUFS Multimedia Hall. The rationale for linguistic informatics was identified and the academic position of this field was discussed in various lectures on linguistic analysis of spoken language, pragmatic analysis, second-language acquisition, and corpus linguistics.

Preface Yuji KAWAGUCHI This collection of papers is the product of the Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Research of the Center of Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics (UBLI), the 21st Century COE Program of the Graduate School of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). In October of 2004, the Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Research Group published in Japanese Cross-Linguistic Perspectives in Phonetics—Phonetic Description and Prosodic Analysis—, Working Papers in Linguistic Informatics 4. The first part of this report collection, “Phonetic Description,” provides detailed descriptions of usage regions, norm and dialects, orthography and pronunciation, phonological systems, accent and intonation, and phonetic variation in 11 languages. In the second part, “Prosodic Analysis,” three young researchers reported on case studies in Russian, French, and Korean based on the research theme for Year 2003, Cross-Linguistic Research on Syntactic Structures and Prosodic Features. As explained in the preceding section, the Center of UBLI is currently developing internet language materials called TUFS Language Modules. In 2004, conversational materials (hereafter called the dialogue module) for 17 languages were completed. At that time, the Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Research Group also began phonetic research using the dialogue module. As before, their research theme was “Cross-Linguistic Research on syntactic structures and prosodic features,” but in order to transcend the differences among languages and establish a common framework for the entire project, they decided to use the dialogue module as their language corpus. At present, “Intonation in interrogative sentences” is set as the common theme of a concurrent research project and phonetic analysis of multiple languages is being conducted. Several contributions have been made in this text on this theme as well. The outcomes of this research project are expected to be compiled into a report in Japanese next year. The text “Prosody and Syntax – Cross-Linguistic Perspectives” was planned by Yuji Kawaguchi and Tsunekazu Moriguchi, central members of the Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Research Group. Professor Ivan Fónagy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences expressed his interest in the project from the beginning. In December 2004, Kawaguchi published an appeal to foreign researchers successfully seeking support for the text, and planning began for

12

Yuji KAWAGUCHI

the publication of the text. The term “Prosody” in the main title of the text needs to be explained further. “Prosody,” as it is used here, does not refer to metrics, which analyzes vowel length in prose.1 According to traditional Prague phonology, prosody refers to the phonological description of word and syllabic structures as well as consonant and vowel hiatus. On the other hand, in Trubetzkoy’s Principles of Phonology, issues on the syllabic nucleus, syllable, and mora are discussed under “Prosodic Properties.” In addition, Trubetzkoy states that prosodic units are differentiated by intensity in syllable-timed language, and by pitch in mora-timed language.2 Furthermore, Trubetzkoy comments on accent arrangement in the section, “Prosodic Differentiation Properties,” and on sentence intonation and accent in “Prosodic Oppositions Differentiating Sentences.” 3 Thus, according to Trubetzkoy, “Prosodic properties do not belong to the vowels as such, but to the syllables,” 4 and are therefore phonetic phenomena appearing in units larger than segments, that is, they are “suprasegmental.” In American linguistics these are often called “suprasegmental phonemes.” It is often said that word accent and tone also have differential functions. However, strictly speaking, the function of these suprasegmental properties within the speech chain is not differential, but rather contrasting or demarcative. On the other hand, the melody curve of sentences that express basic linguistic acts, such as the constative, interrogative, and directive, is ocassionally said to have a syntactic, pragmatic function.5 In conclusion, “prosody,” as used in this text, appears in units larger than segments and generally refers to the field that studies various phonological properties connected to utterances involving pitch, intensity, and length. These phonetic features almost always appear within complex combinations such as word and sentence accents and intonation.6 Next, a synopsis of each paper will be given in the order appearing in the text. In “Functions of Intonation,” Ivan Fónagy and Eva Bérard examine in 1 2 3 4 5 6

Georges Mounin, Dictionnaire de la linguistique (1974) PUF, 274. N.S. Troubetzkoy, Principes de phonologie (1976) trad. par J. Cantineau, Editions Klincksieck, 213. Troubetzkoy, op.cit., 238-244. Troubetzkoy, op.cit., 196. Pierre Delattre takes this position in the case of French language. “Prosodic features may extend over varying domains: sometimes over relatively short stretches of utterances, like one syllable or one morpheme or one word (...); sometimes over relatively longer stretches of utterances, like one phrase, or one clause, or one sentence. Of course this distinction is not always as clear-cut as it first appears: a sentence, for example, may consist of one word.”, Alan Cruttenden, Intonation, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p.1.

Preface

13

detail the various linguistic and extralinguistic functions of intonations. The diversity of intonational functions alone is impressive: Function of actualization, function of demarcation, function of linking, culminative function, expressive function, predictive function, function of appeal, distinctive function, modal function, function of identification and aesthetic function. According to Fónagy and Bérard, development of various verbal genres depends on how deeply each of these functions relates to the utterances. In speech, the demarcative function is significant, but this disappears in impassioned speech. Fónagy and Bérard argue that various evolutive states of intonational function are actively reproduced in speech acts, and stress the importance of such evolutive approaches even in linguistic research. Fónagy’s unique view of language is revealed in the expression, “the successive stages of intonation’s functional history.” In “Prosodic Constituents in French —A Data-Driven Approach—,” Jacqueline Vaissière and Alexis Michaud aim to (i) summarise essential facts about the syntactic prosody of French as seen within the broader picture of French prosody, and (ii) provide a cross-linguistic perspective, by bringing out characteristics which sharply distinguish French from English, and drawing their implications for the difficult issue of cross-linguistic prosodic description, which arguably holds the key to substantial progress in our understanding of prosody. The essentials of a superpositional model of intonation for French are briefly set out. In “A Predictive Approach to the Analysis of Intonation in Discourse in French,” Piet Mertens presents an approach to the analysis of prosody in discourse in French, based on a prediction of the unmarked default intonation matching the lexical and syntactic properties of the analyzed utterances. By confronting this default intonation with the actual intonation used by the speaker, one identifies the marked intonation elements. The prediction of default intonation takes into account word stress, syllable count, syntactic dependency relations, and syntactic construction. In the process, criteria are proposed for the definition of discourse units based on both formal syntactic and prosodic criteria. Manfred Markus, in “English and German Prosody —A Contrastive Comparison—,” begins by clearly stating that prosody, as defined in this text, is an important feature of the British southern standard, and then examines prosodic parameters in English and German from the point of view of comparative linguistics. In line with Kaltenbacher (1997) he explains English word stress to be primarily based on intensity and syllable length, whereas German word stress is more based on pitch. Next, Markus discusses the differences between the two languages in view of the various prosodic parameters, including pitch, and in view of syllable reduction. While German

14

Yuji KAWAGUCHI

is identified as a syllable-timed language, the English language system has tendencies towards stress timing. There are also differences in the stress patterns within rhythmic groups, with German relying on both syllable length and intensity, and English on pitch. After providing a survey of these prosodic parameters, Markus compares and contrasts the prosodic structures of the two languages in a theme and rheme framework, and in constative, interrogative, and directive sentences. Hiroko Saito’s “Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English —Transfer from Japanese—” presents practical research filled with educational suggestions. This is because her motivation for the research stems from the relevence of English questions given by the National Center for University Entrance Examinations that ask to locate the intonational nuclei. This paper examines the cause of emphatic enunciation of function words, particularly auxiliary verbs, by Japanese learners. As a result, she discovers that there is a tendency among Japanese people to emphatically enunciate in English what is accented (i.e., has a high pitch) in Japanese. In other words, it is thought that Japanese people change Japanese into English and transfer prosodic properties of the parts of speech of Japanese into English. In “Mismatch of Stress and Accent in Spoken Spanish,” Takuya Kimura points out that in spoken Spanish, places of the lexical stress and those of the pitch accent do not coincide in many cases: there are accents without stresses, and stresses without accents. It is difficult to properly treat these phenomena within the current Sp-ToBI framework, represented by Beckman et al. (2002) and Sosa (2003) among others, and it would be necessary to solve this problem, either admitting to assign a starred tone to an unstressed syllable or admitting the existence of tritonal accents like HLH*. Furthermore, despite the fact that many of the Sp-ToBI investigators deny the existence of the pitch accent H*+L in Spanish, Kimura finds that it indeed exists. In “Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb —How Morphology and Phonology Interact—,” which deals with the morphology of the Portuguese verb, Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho argues, much in the line of the old structuralist postulate of ‘separation of levels’, that phonologically-based constraints are independent from morphologically-based ones, and that both types of constraints interact in such a way that phonology is actually exploited by morphology. As a result, all inflected forms of the verb can be ranked within a markedness scale according to violation of either constraint. This clashes with both SPE- and OT-based views. On the one hand, phonology cannot be said to be a mere interpretative component of grammar. On the other hand, morphological and phonological constraints cannot be

Preface

15

said to play symmetrical parts either. While phonology is blind with respect to morphology, the latter is fully sensitive to phonological primes, structures and markedness, and this is the reason why it can use them for its own purposes. In “Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives —Phonetic Analyses and Phonological Interpretations—,” Yosuke Igarashi criticizes existing research on intonation patterns in interrogatives (WH questions and yes-no questions) in Russian, and points out that the fundamental frequency curves (F0) of the two are quite similar. Igarashi also shows that the phonetic differences between the two patterns are found in (1) the temporal position of the peak frequency with respect to stressed syllables, (2) the height of the F0 peak, and (3) the existence of low inflection point near the onset of a stressed syllable. Finally, based on the results of his experiments, Igarashi presents phonological interpretations of two intonation patterns. In Fumio Inoue’s “Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation,” intonation is dealt with from a sociolinguistics viewpoint on the basis of the phenomena called “rise-fall intonation” (or bottom-up intonation, uptalk) and other related intonations. Social or sociopsychological characteristics of users of “rise-fall intonation” and the function of the intonation within discourse are examined. Furthermore, the “rise-fall intonation” is regarded as an example of on-going linguistic changes, and a universal issue of whether or not there are intermediate stages in the course of linguistic changes is studied. Lastly, the viewpoint presented in Inoue’s paper is extended to include examples of intonations in other languages. Hirokazu Sato’s “Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement in Japanese Family Names” examines the pronunciation and accent position of names containing the Chinese character (kanji) ta (Shibata, Takada, etc.). Generally, the sound of the preceding syllable decides the pronunciation of the character as -ta or -da, but Sato also points out other influences thought to result from the word-initial consonant. When pronounced as -ta, the accent is generally said to be at the front of the name, and when pronounced as -da, it is said that there is no accent. However, according to Sato’s analysis, not only the reading of -ta, but also the sound alignment and movement of the entire articulatory organ are related factors. In “The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances in the Japanese Dialogs —Analysis of the “TUFS Language Module”—,” Mieko Takada and Takako Ayusawa analyze the acoustic characteristics of the interrogative utterances used in “the Japanese Dialog Module”, with respect to the utterance-final intonation types and the amount of rise, in relation to the functions, the utterance-final forms, the speakers and the position of accent within a word. The utterance-final intonation types were classified into 3 types: rising,

16

Yuji KAWAGUCHI

falling and rising-falling intonations. Rising intonation is observed most frequently and falling and rising-falling intonations are observed with specific utterance-final forms. The amount of rise varies depending on the speaker and the position of accent in a word. It is also found that when the final mora is high, the amount of rise tends to be small, and when the penultimate mora is accented, the amount of rise tends to be large. Though based on limited materials, the results of the analysis reveals some of the interesting features of the acoustic characteristics of the Japanese interrogative intonation. Akira Utsugi and Hideki Noma, in “The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean,” study the prosody in auxiliaries in the Seoul dialect of Korean, with particular attention on the formation of accentual phrase (AP). They examine whether a main predicate and an auxiliary appear as one or two APs. Analyzing “the Korean Dialogue Module” as data, they find that the combination of main and auxiliary declinable words can result in 1AP or 2AP. As a result of further analysis, they discover the tendency for AP formation to differ according to the number of syllables in the main predicate, and for negative auxiliaries to always appear as 2AP. In “On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax – The Case of Makonde Tonology–,” Cédric Patin and Annie Rialland analyze four dialects of Makonde and argue in favor of an analogical origin of some tone rules which are usually considered as phonology-syntax rules. They propose that these tone rules in Makonde dialects are not phonological rules which occur in specific syntactic environments, and should in fact be treated in morphology and not as part of phonology-syntax interface. The paper presents how analogy could be used as a criterion in order to differentiate between rules in which phonology intervenes and morphological processes. The general issue concerns the nature of phonology-syntax interface as well as which rules are related and which are not related to this interface. Masashi Furihata, in “An Acoustic Study on Intonation of Nominal Sentences in Indonesian,” uses “the Indonesian Dialogue Module” as data, along with phonetic analysis software to extract the pitch from 34 nominal sentences in 514 utterances, and anaylzes them according to Halim’s (1981) theory of Indonesian. According to Furihata’s analysis, the subject pitch pattern in subject-predicate sentences generally correspond to Halim’s theory, but there are also findings that seem to depart from the theory, particularly in predicates with interrogatives. In predicate-subject sentences, no consistent pattern for pitch curves in declarative sentences is found. Despite the limited number of sentences analyzed, this study provides interesting results regarding intonation in Indonesian nominal sentences. In “Acoustic and Structural Analysis of Enclitic Particles in Tagalog,”

Preface

17

Tsunekazu Moriguchi examines the enclitics or enclitic particles in Tagalog from the acoustic point of view with reference to structure, and concludes that the clitic order observed in Tagalog and other aboriginal languages in the Philippines and Taiwan is defined by the structural and/or acoustic bases, which are both observed in the Tagalog language. However, the Tagalog clitic order is mainly determined by the latter. In “Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives,” Yuji Kawaguchi, Selim Yılmaz, and Arsun Uras Yılmaz note that there are almost no studies of intonation in Turkish based on natural conversation. In this paper, “the Turkish Dialogue Module” is regarded as partially natural conversation, and the interrogative sentences appearing therein are analyzed. The authors argue that there are two related prosodic positions in both WH questions and yes/no questions. In particular, they present a hypothesis that since utterance-final fundamental frequency curves are closely related to the pragmatic meaning of the entire interrogative sentence, by connecting the pragmatic meaning to the three basic speech acts (interrogative, assertive, and directive), each interrogative sentence brings a diverse possibility of interpretations. Having surveyed the topic of each paper, the subtitle of this text, Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, does not imply mere, cross-linguistic comparison and contrast of the prosodic phenomena. Rather, it implies that there are a variety of approaches which are unique to each language for prosodic analysis. In the end, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon Professor Ivan Fónagy (1920-2005) who was one of the featured authors of this volume and our great teacher. I received the news of Professor Fónagy’s passing from his daughter, Eva, on April 13, 2005. Professor Fónagy, who dedicated his life to the study of intonation and language change, not only expressed his interest in the idea of this project early on, but also kindly agreed to contribute a paper, and presented his final manuscript “Functions of Intonation” in December of 2004.7 No one ever imagined that this paper would be his posthumous work. 8 Since the passing of his wife, Judith Fónagy, who was also a phonetician, Professor Fónagy lived in Antony, a suburb of Paris. It saddens me that I will no longer be able to converse and share memories with him. This text is dedicated to the memory of these commited Hungarian linguists. December 2005 7

8

This paper was emended and revised into a new paper from its original publication as “Des fonctions de l’intonation: Essai de synthèse” in Flambeau 29, 2002, p.1-20, the journal of the Section of French Studies at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. His final work is Dynamique et changement, which will be published by Peeters Publishers.

Functions of Intonation Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD The authors of prosodic contributions typically assign three functions to intonation, rarely the same ones. The magic of number three seems to be effective even in the linguistic domain. The classical model of verbal communication advanced by Karl Bühler (1934) distinguishing three functions involved in verbal communication, expression (Ausdrucksfunktion), call (Appellfunktion) and representation (Representations-funktion), could lend a suitable frame-work to functional studies of intonation. Georges Faure (1962) maintains the three functions introduced by Bühler, presented in a different order: representative, appellative and expressive. Unlike Bühler, he assigns the expression of emotions to the appellative function. Milan Romportl (1973) distinguishes the demarcative (intonation +/- terminal), the modal (interrogative +/-) and the emotive functions. For Herbert Pilch (1972) intonation may play a morpho-syntactic role, it specifies the genre of discourse, and may reflect the speaker’s character traits or indicate his social milieu. Marie-Christine Hazaël-Massieux (1983) suggests the functions of integration, of segmentation and of signification. The salience of a syllable may be conceived in terms of culmination, of emphasis, of accentuation, focalization and of contrast. Differences are partly terminological. Mathesius (1937) considers the expression of emotion as a ‘secondary-modal function’ His ‘primary-modal function coincides with Artëmov’s (1969) predicative function. Lee’s (1960) recovers the emphatic function of other authors. The linking function, introduced by Kličnikova (1965) does not differ from the function of unification, cohesion and integration proposed by other authors (Karcevskij 1931, Hazaël-Massieux 1983). Faure’s appellative function covers the expression of emotions, generally attributed to the expressive function (Daneš 1960, Rigault 1964, Artëmov 1969, Martin 1973). 1. Function of enunciation and actualization Intonation plays a primary role in presenting the information content of the message in the form of a live (viva voce) speech act which creates immediate links between speaker and hearer(s). It situates the message in a concrete context and gives expression to its actual, individual significance (Karcevskij 1931). According to Michel Martins-Baltar (1977) the function

20

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

of intonation does not only consist in the actualization of a text-segment and of its syntactic structure. Its essential contribution consists in the enunciation of the text, in lending to its literal meaning a special significance (sens) in relation with the context and the present situation. Through enunciation the text is transformed in a live – illocutive, allocutive and perlocutive - speech act (oc. 20-27). 2. Function of segmentation and demarcation A.H. Gleason (1965: 179) considers the segmentation of sound-sequences into morphemes and the demarcation of discursive units as a primary function of intonation. P.M. Hargrove and N.S.McGarr (1994) devote a thorough-going study to the prosodic organization of discourse. Structuring of discourse constitutes the first function of intonation for František Daneš (1960: 14), followed by the indication of modality, as a second function. Dieter Wunderlich (1988, in: H.Altmann ed.1988) makes the same binary distinction. Intonation outlines the basic units of discourse, and reveals the statement’s informational structure (Perrot 1978), in dividing the utterance in two parts: topic and comment (thème et propos, Bally 1944: 61-109; Martins-Baltar 1977: 20). Dislocation or projection of topic or comment, or another part of the phrase, is a special, language dependent way of demarcation, which became frequent in French everyday speech during the first half of the nineteenth century (Bally 1941, Deulofeu 1984, Sabio 1991, Blasco 1995). Left projection brings into the limelight one element of the discourse. Knud Lambrecht (1987) labels left projection, topic, and right projection anti-topic. Left and right projections lend, at the same time, a segmented aspect to the speech process (Martins-Baltar 1977: 19-25). 3. Presentational function Anticipation, labeled Devise by the German musicologist H.Riemann, is a current form of introduction of a musical theme. Left projected phrase fragments might play a similar role in discourse. This is equally true for the category of presentational constructions introduced by Knud Lambrecht (1987), such as “Y’a mon frère qui vient en trois semaines [It’s my brother who will come in three weeks]. The function of the introductory phrase, pronounced on a level tone, is to present, to introduce a person. 4. Function of linking Linking is a complementary function of segmentation, another facet (the positive side) of demarcation. The link may be explicitly marked at the morpho-syntactic level. In French, in careful speech or in reading, the last virtual consonant of the preceding word may become physically present in

Functions of Intonation

21

joining the initial vowel of the next word: liaison (Martinon 1913: 57 ff.). Syntactic units are generally marked by a global melodic movement, followed by a virtual pause: a juncture. A floating final tone indicates that the syntactic unit is linked to a subsequent one, and that both are only parts of the utterance. The utterance final pitch pattern may then again indicate that the utterance is embedded in a larger discourse unit, labeled “rhetoric syntagm” (von Essen 1956: 29) or “macro-syntactic unit” (Blanche-Benveniste 1975, 1990; Deulofeu 1977; Berrendonner 1990). There are other means to suggest that the statement is part of a larger unit: the absence of the terminal pause, a melodic arch bending subsequent utterances, sometimes of contrasting modes. A rising – falling melodic pattern, a “melodic cliché” (Fónagy, I., Bérard, Eva and Fónagy, Judith 1983) fuses French ↗ Mais non! (By no means!) ↘ Pourquoi? (Why?); occasionally other statements are followed by an interrogation, such as ↗ C’est inquiétant (It is alarming) ↘ Où peut-il être? (Where might he be?) The melodic pattern of enumeration may grow out of the utterance, suggesting a larger discourse unit, with an extension of the concept of enumeration, reflecting lack of interest and a bored attitude (see: distinctive function). Sentences may be connected by means of melodic rhymes: specific intonation patterns, mostly melodic clichés, occurring in the last syllables of subsequent utterances (I. and Judith Fónagy 1983: 173). Anne Catherine Simon (2004) refers to cases of dual analysis of the same sentence: intonation may offer its own interpretation of the articulation of the sentence which departs from its syntactic structures. According to musical terminology: the two ways of articulation are contrapuntal. This may account for the surprising result of a punctuation test. Two groups of French informants were invited to write punctuation signs (. , : ! ? : …) in a current text without punctuation. Group A had to resolve the task on the basis of the sole text. Group B could listen at the same time to the original recording. Group A, the ‘readers’ performed much better than Group B, ‘readers and hearers’. There were significantly less contradictions between the proposed solutions by the members of Group A, than between those of Group B, distracted by the contradictions between syntactic and prosodic demarcation (I. and J.Fónagy 1983). 5. Culminative function: emphasis Emphasis consists in the speaker’s highlighting (“underlining”) a part of the message. The attention of the hearer is focalized on the element enhanced essentially by prosodic means: lengthening, intensity, raising. The

22

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

segmentation of the speech-product itself (by pause, juncture and parenthesis) allows for enhancing one or more segments (Martins-Baltar 1977: 20). Emphasis is generally contrastive and implies an unspoken comment (see: allusive function). Pronounced without emphasis, the French utterance C’est pas le jour qui me convient means ‘That’s not a convenient day for me’. If contrastive emphasis is lent to the word jour the utterance means that it’s not the day that matters, there are still other, more relevant, problems - hinted at but left unmentioned by the speaker. In the English utterances quoted by Anthony Hind (1978) the distinctive emphasis is accompanied by a fall-rise tone. Without emphasis I wouldn’t speak to any doctor means that the speaker prefers not to consult a doctor. The emphatic fall-rise tone lent to any implies a negative evaluation: ‘I wouldn’t speak to a common doctor, run of the mill’. Tonal emphasis, a final high rise, may lend a special emotive meaning to the sentence. Il m’a passé un de ses sa- ↗ vons (‘He gave me one of his soaps’) suggests ‘He gave me a tongue-lashing’. In Hungarian, as in many other languages, neutral utterance generally contrasts with the two marked realizations by either focusing on the subject, Kati futott (‘It was Kati who was running’), or on the predicate: Kati futott (see: allusive function; Fónagy 1989, in: Hirst and Di Cristo 328-343). In all these cases, emphasis plays a distinctive role. Beyond the sentence, in the macro-syntactic domain (Deulofeu 1977, Blanche-Benveniste 1990), essential parts of the message may be focalised through higher pitch level or through raising pitch, lengthening of vowels and consonants, slowing down the pace; other parts relegated into the background by opposite procedures: low intensity, mid pitch level, monotony, medium pace. Lack of emphasis, low intensity level, monotony characterize parenthetical pragmatic remarks in face of main phrases. “Mary knows many languages, you know” vs. “Mary knows many languages you know” ‘Mary and you have similar backgrounds and have both learned many languages’ (P.J.Price et al 1991: 2967). Lack of emphasis functions in that case as a distinctive prosodic marker (see below). 6. Expressive function I: Expression of emotions The term ex-pression contains the core of the theory of expressive functions. The “ex-pression”, the projection of the disturbing factors, creates a relieve. Due to its dynamic character, speech melody is particularly suited for the expressive role. We perceive intonation as a movement. In the Timaeus 988C-E) Plato connects external and internal movement. “The movement of the body…has rhythm, a feature shared with the movement of

Functions of Intonation

23

the voice”, he says (Laws II, 672e). “We would speak of rise and fall, of height and depth” wrote Aristoxenos (fourth century B.C.) in his Harmonics, and he adds: “the rise is a continuous movement of the voice from a deeper to a higher level, and the fall is a movement of a higher to a deeper one” (ed. Marquard 1868: 15). A dynamic theory of intonation is implicitly contained in the Hungarian term hanglejtés, lit. ‘vocal dance’. We must distinguish carefully between direct laryngeal gesturing at the glottal level – changes of the glottal configuration, tension and relaxation of intrinsic laryngeal muscles, emphatic glottal closure, etc. - , that is between primary vocal symbols, at the one hand, and indirect or projective tonal gesturing, by means of virtual spatial pitch movements, on the other; a second degree of symbolization. Anger, as manifested in violent quarrel, is characterized at the primary symbolic level by tension of the intrinsic glottal muscles and laryngeal constriction, which contrast with the relaxation of intrinsic laryngeal muscles and a more relaxed laryngeal configuration in tender speech. – At the second symbolic level, that of virtual pitch movements, violent quarrel induces a rigid melodic base line with sudden rises, corresponding to the interval of a fourth, fifth or sixth. - Tenderness, on the contrary, is reflected by legato phrasing because of the weak participation of the expiratory muscles, and an undulating melodic line at mid low pitch level, with gradual, smooth transitions. Charles Darwin (1872) and Herbert Spencer (1872) are responsible for the extension of the causal principle into the domain of basic emotions, which become meaningful and appropriate once they are placed back in their natural, original context. Symptoms of emotive behaviour are considered to be vestiges of a once purposive activity. Fear and anger are traced back to the ancestral activities of fight and flight. As formulated by G.W.Crile: Anger is a philogenetic product of fight; fear reproduces flight (1915: 76). 7. Expressive function II: Expression of attitudes. Social attitudes can be equally traced back to corporal actions. – Complaint: a stylized reproduction of the vocalization of a crying child. The changes of pitch level are induced in crying, as well as in complaint, by corresponding changes of subglottal pressure due to the contractions of the diaphragm at rhythmic intervals. We meet with this para-linguistic pattern even in the language of music. Rhythm and pitch movements of an 8 years old Hungarian girl: ↗ Pé-ter ↗ min-dig ↗ ha-zudik, ↗ úgy ↗ hazudik mint egy ↗ gép [Peter is always lying, he lies just as a machine] reappear in the lamento chorus of Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo (Fónagy 1981). Longing: the prosodic pattern of longing in our Hungarian, French,

24

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

German and English recordings regularly starts with an off-beat of two or more syllables. A slow, slight rise in pitch and intensity is followed by a gradual fall in both parameters. While the intensity decreases until the end of the utterance, the melody ends with a gentle rise. The speed is slow and the phrasing legato. A corresponding synthesized version of this pattern proved to be the most appropriate in suggesting longing. The biological model could be a deep sigh combined with tension and a striving towards an invisible aim. The phrasing is legato in musical language. We meat the theme of longing in Orfeo’s “Al mio languire…” (Monteverdi: Orfeo, act 5), in the prelude to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, in Melisande’s sigh in the second act of Pelléas et Mélisande of Claude Debussy (Fónagy and Magdics 1963, Magdics 1963, Fónagy 1981). Irony: The complexity and dramatic character of emotive vocal performance is still more conspicuous in the case of irony. The concept of irony comprises a wide and highly diversified set of attitudes (Muecke 1969). The types of vocal performance to be considered here correspond to an overt and somewhat simplified expression of irony. According to prosodic and cineradiological analysis (Fónagy, Hand and Simon 1983) and semantic tests of synthesized variants (Fónagy 1971), irony can be conceived in a first approach as a parodistic slowed down reproduction of a very resolute, self-conscious statement (see: imitative function). - Its vocal profile can be described in three distinct phases. (a) An initial phase in chest register, at a very low level, narrow pitch range, a creaky voice due strong laryngeal and pharyngeal constriction; (b) a second phase in head register with a sudden high rise; the tonal peak coincides with a depression of the intensity curve; (c) in a third phase pitch falls to the deepest level, phonation returns to the chest register and creaky voicing. At the level of primary symbolic pharyngeal and laryngeal constriction, “strangled voice”, contain a menace even if the speaker is throttling his own throat. Chest register, deep, growing, creaky voice call to mind a robust male or a beat of prey. The sudden change of vocal attitude in the second phase – high tone level, head register – seems to evoke the tender approach of a child or of a young woman. The persistence of laryngeal, pharyngeal and oral tension may, however, raise suspicion. The final return of the robust beast clearly shows that childish innocence or female seduction was but a lure. Constant high pitch level, excluding male aggression, lends itself for the vocal expression of politeness. Japanese women use a very high register of voice as a politeness formula (Isamu Abe in: Hirst and Di Cristo 1998: 373; Loveday 1981).

Functions of Intonation

25

8. Predictive function Each verbal unite, both in conversation and reading, sets the stage for the subsequent one. Progressive co-articulation is a basic feature of verbal strategy. It is particularly conspicuous at the prosodic level. The increasing tension of the topic prepares the concluding comment (Grammont 1964). A restrictive statement is generally preceded by the intonation pattern of concessive propositions. The hearer can guess whether the following proposition is introduced by and or by but (Fónagy 1981). The role of prediction can be best shown, even measured, by presenting to the hearers truncated utterances, asking them to restablish the lacking part. In 15-18 cases out of 19, Hungarian subjects correctly guessed whether the presented utterance precedes a co-ordinate clause introduced by the conjunction and, or whether it is followed by an adversative clause, introduced by but. For the opposition of the subsequent causal vs. concessive clause we got 16 – 19 correct answers out of 19 (Fónagy and Magdics 1967: 152-181). Similarly, if a French phrase such as C’est un gentil garçon ends with a rising tune, we expect further details or a positive comment. If, however, the last syllable of garçon is slightly depressed, we are prepared to hear some restriction (such as: “but he is not eager to helps”). Tests of perception of truncated French utterances show that in the great majority of cases the hearers correctly guess the subsequent coordinate vs. adversative clause (Fónagy 1979, Grosjean 1983). (a) (b)

C’est un gentil garçon … [et il est le premier de la classe] (It’s a nice boy…. [and he is the first of the class] C’est un gentil garçon…[mais il n’aime pas faire les commissions] (It’s a nice boy…[but he doesn’t like commissions]

87 subjects out of 100 identified correctly the lacking clause in the frame of a forced choice test on the basis of prosodic divergences between phrase (a) and (b). In the first phrase (a) garçon was pronounced with a gradually rising tone; in the second (b) an initial rise was followed by a hook-like descent. We generally meet this tonal configuration in utterances reflecting a negative, restrictive, ambivalent or hesitant attitude (Fónagy 1979: 116). In certain cases, the predictive function may become distinctive. This happened in the case of regressive vowel nasalization in Ancient French. The nasalized vowel predicted a subsequent nasal consonant. After the fall of the subsequent nasal consonants, the vowels nasality became a distinctive feature opposing nasal and oral vowels. In a similar way, predictive speech melody may become distinctive in elliptical sentences, where the melodic movement compensates for the truncation of the utterance. Et alors ‘And

26

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

then’ spoken with a rising tune invite the partner to tell the end of the story. The same elliptic utterance, pronounced with a gradual descent (in quarters) may suggest “it is no concern of mine”, “I have nothing to do with it” (Martins-Baltar 1970, 1977). 9. Function of appeal In Karl Bühler’s classical model (1934), the function of appeal enhances the hearer’s role in the act of communication. In its primary meaning, appeal refers to a speech act which may take diverse forms according the context and the social relation of the participants. Dafydd Gibbon (1976) distinguishes hailing (shouting “hallo!”, “Yoo-hoo!”), calling (“John-nee!”), greeting (“By-by”), formulaic shouting (“dinner is served”), talking to babes-in-arms, transactions (“Please!”, “Thank you”). Roman Jakobson’s functional model (SW 3: 18-51) allows for the distinction of “conative” acts (vocative, imperative) and “phatic” acts (Malinowski’s term), serving to establish, to prolong or to discontinue communications, “to check whether the channel works”. Intonation plays an important role in the distinction of conative vs. phatic acts. Three basic terminals - fall, level, and rise – allows in Japanese to express social attitudes ranging from demanding to appealing, soft or insistent (Isamu Abe, in Hirst & Di Cristo 1998: 368). – Japanese hái hái (Yes) with a first hái forming a higher peak would imply a ‘willing’ yes, with the second hái forming a higher peak would imply a ‘reluctant’ yes (Isamu Abe oc. p.372). Appeal is the basic function of echo-questions, and of questions in general. Romanian Ce? (What?). Cum? (How?) Cînd? (When?), ask the partner to repeat the same word; they may express surprise, protest and indignation at the partner’s words (Dascălu-Jinga, in Hirst & Di Cristo 1998: 249; see also: imitative function). 10. Allusive function Speech melodies may be vaguely distinctive, referring to a subject without naming it professedly. This function which could be labeled allusive plays an eminent role in everyday conversations, since it allows for suggesting opinions without assuming responsibility, or for suggesting ideas before finding the proper terms to express them exactly at the level of conceptual thinking. Intonation is always allusive as far as the hearer is free to assign some meaning to melodic movements which depart from an ideal neutral pattern. We could, however, assign a more restricted meaning to allusive function, reserving it to some recurrent conventional patterns with a well

Functions of Intonation

27

circumscribed conceptual domain, such as the stylized rising-falling ironic intonation pattern (Fónagy 1971), suggesting: “I don’t mean it really, in fact, I think rather the opposite”. Pierre Léon (1970: 68) postulates an implicative rising-falling pattern with a general ‘implicative’ meaning; its concrete content is different according to the context. Emphasis may be allusive, suggesting the hidden presence of second statement. This is the case in the elliptic “one legged sentences” referred to by Janet Mueller Bing (1985): “Bob didn’t solve some of the problems”, with a contrastive rise-fall emphasis suggesting that he solved, in fact, all the problems. Allusive emphasis conveys a malicious understatement: a specific ironic pitch-profile is lent to stressed syllable. Hungarian has a clear-cut, highly conventional pitch-pattern, marking allusive emphasis. Plain emphasis of the verb in Kati tudta ‘Kati knew [that]’ lends a special weight to the fact that Kati knew it. The emphasis of the subject, Kati tudta, means that ‘Kati was the one, who knew it’. In the case of allusive emphasis, a falling-rising tune of the depressed first syllable spoken with laryngeal and pharyngeal constriction, much like in irony, contains the malignant allusion to ‘certain other persons, and you know who are the persons meant, didn’t know anything’. Allusive emphasis plays a distinctive role in face of simple emphasis. 11. Imitative function Tonal movement may reproduce, re-present, both in the general and in the literal sense of the term, physical or mental movements. Our perception of speech melody is essentially dynamic. In the Timaeus (88c-e), Plato connects external and internal movements. “The movement of the body…has rhythm, a features shared with movement of the voice” he says (Laws II, 672e). Aristoxenus wrote, “We could speak of rise and fall, of height and depth,” in his Harmonics (ed. Marquard 1868: 15). A dynamist theory is implicitly contain in the Hungarian word for intonation: hanglejtés ‘vocal dance’. Imitation is an elementary, immediate form of representation, circumventing conceptual analysis, in contrast to morphemes and lexemes. “Tonal movement” observes Dwight Bolinger (1986: 212-214) “especially in artistic performances, spatial movement, upward and downward movements, in the physical or in the metaphorical dimension”. He unfolded the semantic potentials of the metaphor of Up and Down (1986: 202-204). Yves Montand’s chanson ‘La balançoire’ (See-saw) threw light on the prosodic features creating the illusions of a rocking movement (Bérard 1998).

28

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

12. Distinctive function According to Leonard Bloomfield, “in English and in the languages of Europe generally, pitch is the acoustic feature where gesture like variations, non-distinctive but socially effective, border most closely upon genuine linguistic distinctions” (1933: 114). Kenneth Pike refuses categorically to assign a grammatical function to intonation. “There is no grammatical basis to intonation” (1945: 10). “The suggestion that there is a purely grammatical function of intonation as opposed to attitudinal one is theoretically unsound”, declares David Crystal:1969: 254, see also p.288-290). Dwight Bolinger defines clearly his stance in the preface of his monograph on intonation: “ … a speaker who composes an intonation is more artist than computer. He faces a canvas on which he must draw freehand. There are rules but they respond to feelings more directly than does any other well systematized part of spoken language. Emotion is always present, and ‘ideas’ are communicated metaphorically through the feeling that express them” (1986: viii). He compares some years earlier the way grammar makes use of emotive pitch patterns to “a sort of catch-as-catch-can” (1957: 36). To go around this hardly productive general debate, it seems more appropriate to formulate more limited questions, such as the role of intonation in resolving syntactic ambiguity (Kooij 1971, Hirst 1975, Di Cristo 1976, Boulakia 1978). Boulakia set forth three sources of ambiguity: (a) polysemy of lexical units, (b) double-meaning of the underlying deep structure, (c) equivocation of the surface structure. Lexical polysemy cannot be treated at the prosodic level; neither can we resolve by prosodic means the ambiguity inherent in the underlying structure (Kooij 1971). On the other hand, ambiguous surface structures offer a large scope for prosodic disambiguation (Lieberman 1967, Lehiste 1973, R.Wales and H.Toner 1979. Gee and Grosjean 1983, Ladd 1986, Crystal and House 1990, Price and al. 1999). Gee and Grosjean (1983) describe an algorithm that provides a mechanism from a syntactic pars to prosodic pars. Edges of major syntactic constituants are associated with larger prosodic phrases. According to Prince and al. (1991), “parentheticals”, i.e. metalinguistic pragmatic comments, such as “Mary knows many languages, you know”, involve larger break than the corresponding (homonymous) subordinate clause: “Mary knows many languages you know”, suggesting that ‘Mary and you have both learned many languages’ (oc.2967). P.Lieberman (1967) found that speakers can use prosody to disambiguate syntactically ambiguous strings of words where the location of syntactic bracketing differs: “[I’ll move on] Saturday” vs. “[I’ll move] [on Saturday]. ” It appeared from Ilse Lehiste’s perceptual study of sentence

Functions of Intonation

29

pairs with different bracketing that of the 15 pairs 10 were successfully disambiguated (1973) syntactic boundary was marked by pause or laryngealization, or by lengthening the syllable preceding the boundary. Intonation reveals similarly in French speech the degree of connectedness (the syntactic distance, syntactic bracketing) between the constituents. In the French word sequence un acteur du cinéma muet the attribute muet could either (a) be directly connected with cinéma – cinéma muet ‘silent film’ - or (b) indirectly with acteur de cinéma muet ‘actor of silent films’. In the first case (a) acteur de cinéma is the “déterminé”, a compound subject to be ‘determined’, to be qualified, and muet figures as ‘déterminant’, as the qualifier. Intonation resolves the ambiguity: by means of a juncture following the qualified (‘déterminé’) and preceding the qualifier (‘déterminant’). The juncture may either follow actor, presented as the ‘déterminé’, as the subject to be qualified, and specified as film actor of mute films (acteur / de cinéma muet), or follow acteur de film presented as the ‘déterminé’, a compound subject qualified by the ‘déterminant’ muet as ‘mute, dumb’ (see Martins-Baltar 1977: 15 s.). Prosodic structure clearly reflects the syntactic grouping (bracketing) of the constituents. We owe to P.J. Price and collaborators a systematic analysis of the essential prosodic means of disambiguation. The phonetic analysis of 35 pairs of ambiguous pairs of sentences indicate that disambiguation relates primarily to boundary phenomena but also to prominence. They analysed seven types of syntactic ambiguity, also (a) far versus near (b) attachment sentences, similar to those analyzed by Martins-Baltar. Raoul murdered the man with a gun. (a) Near attachment: The murder weapon was not a knife but a gun’, (b) far attachment: Raoul’s bloodstained knife clinched the case for the murder. The location of a relatively large break index attached to a ‘far’ site appears to block the ‘near’ attachment (a). Similar prosodic solutions allow for marking the scope of negation, the presence or the absence of the “comma”, that is of the juncture, in expressions such as Il n’est pas venu (,) par ambition. If there is no juncture in the utterance, par ambition figures as an adverbial modifier of the predicate: Il n’est pas venu par ambition ‘He didn’t come for some ambitious purpose’. The preceding juncture transforms par ambition into a comment, a complementary statement, meaming, on the contrary, that he did come, for some ambitious purpose (Martins-Baltar o.c. p.120). Similarly, the deletion of the coma, i.e. of the juncture, preceding the subordinate close in Je ne suis pas venu, parce que j’étais malade ‘I didn’t come, because I was ill’ (Martins-Baltar o.c. 120) reduces the subordinate clause into a complement of the predicate, à cause de maladie ‘because of illness’. In both examples, the deletion of the juncture is accompanied by a change of intonation: a

30

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

melodic arch, a raising–falling pitch curve, joins the two parts of the utterance. An inverse procedure, the insertion of a juncture, may “liberate” an adverbial complement, transforming it into a pragmatic (meta-linguistic) comment. Il est mort naturellement ‘He died in a natural way’ > Il est mort, naturellement ‘He died, of course’. The complement separated by a juncture is conceived as an “external qualifier” circonstant externe, for Bernard Pottier (1967: 20). In these cases, the juncture changes the expression’s semiotic status. The prosodic expression of the meta-linguistic status is less easy if the comment is integrated into the sentence, and takes the same place like the adverb of the corresponding linguistic statement: (a)

Je suis bien à Paris ‘I enjoy to be in Paris’

(b)

Je suis bien à Paris ‘I am in Paris, isn’t it?’

(Martins-Baltar oc.16). Stress and pitch-accent highlights the adverb in the first sentence (a). - The absence of stress and pitch-accent mark the status of modal particle of bien in the second one (b). A slight divergence of the melodic course allows for the distinction of the Hungarian verbal prefix ki (out) and the homonymous interrogative pronoun ki (who). The prefix is characterized by a pitch falling from the outset, in contrast to the rising-falling pitch of the interroagative pronoun. The melodic line of the utterance introduced by ki is falling in both cases: ↘ Kiirta (He copied it out) and ↘ Ki irta? (Who wrote it?). – Stress and intonation may transform an adverbial complement into a para-linguistic comment. In the Hungarian utterance ↘ Biztosan ↘ futott (He run steadily) biztosan acts as an adverbial complement. Unstressed, pronounced on a level ton in Æbiztosan ↘ futott it functions as a para-linguistic comment, suggesting ‘Probably he was running’. In all these cases, intonation plays a distinctive role at the syntactic level. Stockwell (1972), Léon (1972), Cruttenden (1970) discern immediate and indirect distinctive function. In the last case, the distinctive role is derivative of the demarcative or the culminative function. For Cruttenden (oc.) the grammatical role of intonation is always secondary, and can be traced back to a primary function which is less complex from a semiotic (evolutionary) point of view. Let us consider some derivatives of a demarcative intonation form. Word sequences may be divided by means of junctures. Demarcation offers a ground for specific syntactic structures, depending on rhythmic and melodic

Functions of Intonation

31

configuration superimposed on the successive segments. Essentially identical prosodic configurations characterize enumeration. “Frédé- ↗ ’rique / mon vois-↗ ’sin …” (‘Frederic, my neighbor…’). Demarcation may give rise to a different syntactic structure, apposition, if the tonal level is depressed in the second rhythmic group, and tonal movement compressed: que i r Frédésin mon voi----------------------------------------

The similarity of movement suggests a semantico-syntactic parallel, the tonal depression of the second group expresses, however, its subordination. Both prosodic models, based on the demarcative function, are clearly distinct: suggesting either enumeration or apposition. The enumerative melodic rhythmic pattern may get a different meaning if applied to a non enumerative syntactic pattern. In a recorded conversation between two young women (then teaching assistants at the Institute of Phonetic of the University of Paris), one of the participants speaks with irony of a type of film critic: C’est un ↗ ↘ film ↗ ↘ extraordinaire, ↗ ↘ c’est un documentaire, ↗ ↘ puis on en fait ↗ ↘ une interprétation ↗ ↘ marxiste ou catholique ↗ ↘ et caetera et caetera…

The unstressed syllables constitute a straight line at mid-low level. The rises and falls in each phrase (marked ↗ ↘ before the phrase), succeed at regular intervals. We recognize the triangular French enumerative pattern. The pitch pattern evokes the attitude of the French critics and mimics their way of speaking. (It is a case of hidden reported speech.) The lack of internal pauses, the monotonous repetition of a melodic cliché show the condemnation of mechanical criticism based on preconceived ideas (cf. I. and J.Fónagy 1983). There are still other cases where the grammatical distinctive function of intonation cannot be deduced from emphasis or demarcation. The rising pitch of the principal clause followed by descent in the subsequent causal clause is a kind of musical translation of the logical structure of the sentence. A mental tension created by the first clause has to be resolved by the solution

32

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

provided by the causal clause. Intonation plays a concomitant role, according to the Prague phonological terminology (Projet de terminology 1971)1, since the relation of the subsequent phrases is clearly defined by the conjunction. In the absence of the conjunction (asyndeton) the logical relation between the two syntactically independent phrases is suggested by a rising–falling tonal pattern with a juncture in between: “↗ Nous ne sortirons pas / ↘ il gèle” (We won’t go out, it freezes) (cf. Bally [1941] 1965: 56 s., Martins-Baltar 1970, 1977). Intonation plays in that case a distinctive role though its meaning is less clearly defined than that of the conjunction ‘therefore’. In some cases it could be paraphrased by ‘nevertheless’: “↗ Il pleut / ↘ je vais sortir” (It rains, I’ll go out nevertheless). The causal meaning of the intonation pattern is quite frequent in French discourse, it can be considered as a “melodic cliché” (I.Fónagy, E.Bérard and J.Fónagy 1983: 18 s.). subsequente sentences. “↗ C’était un accident. ↘ C’était écrit dans les journaux” (This was an accident. The newspapers wrote about it.) pronounced by the waitress in Youri’s telefilm ‘Appelez-moi Rose (Call me [simply] Rose)’. ↗ “C’est un bélier ↘ Il a des cornes” (It’s a ram. [Since] It has horns) this critical comment has been pronounced by Georges Poujouli performing the role of the Little Prince in Saint-Exupéry’s “Le Petit Prince” (see also: function of linking).. 13. Modal function Does the interrogative intonation pattern represent the interrogative mode, opposing it to the declarative or to the imperative mode? Roman Jakobson rejected this assumption in his classical paper as early as 1939: “The interrogative sentence is not a reference but only an appeal for reference” ([1939] 1971 SW 1: 289). Only the words question and assertion do represent modality as an object at the level of conceptual thinking; intonation allows for the distinction of the phenomena such as assertion (Aussage), injunction (Aufforderung), question (Frage), exclamation (Aufruf). The modal status of exclamatives is still far from uncontroversial (see the papers of Altmann, of Oppenrieder and Batliner, in Altmann ed. 1988). According to the prevailing views the expression of basic emotions can be considered as modal; opinions differ, however, concerning the criteria which allow to distinguish basic emotions of other emotive attitudes. According to Hans Altmann (1988a, in Meibauer ed.) modality implies the

1

The term “variation extraphonologique concomitante” refers to variantes “escorting phonological oppositions”. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague vol.4: 318).

Functions of Intonation

33

presence of constant markers2. Modality is language dependent. Not the same emotions and attitudes are raised at the level of modality. In contrast to Indo-European languages, the Vogoul distinguishes probabilitative, necessitative, precative and pejorative mode. The prosodic expression of modality is more or less clearly defined, for different sentence types, in different languages. In a great number of languages binary (Yes or No) questions are clearly opposed at the prosodic level to statements3. The prosodic features of alternative questions and statements are less clearly defined, both in French and in Hungarian. A large margin is left for individual production of alternatives. The percentage of correct identification of French utterances varies between according the vocal performance of the speakers between 43 and 100% (see Fónagy and Bérard 1980). 14. Logical function? Alternative statements or questions – disjunctions from a logical point of view – may be either complete (inclusive) or exclusive. In exclusive disjunctions at most one of the terms of the disjunction is true. In complete (inclusive) disjunctions at least one of the terms is true, and both terms may be true at the same time. On the grounds of structural analogy between alternative statements and logical disjunction, some authors attribute a logical function to alternative statements (see Varga 1981). Semantic tests suggest, however, that speakers and hearers distinguish, in fact, two contrasting attitudes, a permissive (liberal) and a categorical (voluntary) attitude. At the prosodic level, exclusive statements induce tonal polarization: the melodic level is raised in the first term and lowered in the second term (Fónagy and Bérard 1980). 15. Function of identification The functions of identification were thrust into prominence by Pierre Léon ([1971] 1993: 21 ss.). In Léon’s phonostylistic model, prosodic signals and indexes (indices) serve as means of speaker identification. Semiotic indexes reveal the speaker’s emotive attitudes and his personality, linguistic indexes reflect his linguistic and social background (dialect, sociolect, 2

3

“…eine regelmässige Zuordnung eines Satztyps…mit angebbaren formalen Eigenschaften zu einer bestimmten Funktion im sprachlichen Handeln, die ich Funktionstyp nennen will” (Altmann oc.23). Martins-Baltar (1977: 62-63) uses the term of modality as a homonym of propositional attitude such as wish, judgment or feeling. In Hungarian, binary questions have three well established intonation variants in function stress position. The tonal movement which characterises the modality always occurs in the last stress group (see Varga 1983, Fónagy 1958) .

34

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

idiolect). The hearer dissociates the speaker’s recurrent, idiosyncratic emotive deviations from specific attitudes and he assigns the features directly to the speaker, just like other personal characteristics. They constitute his personal vocal style, a potential basis of vocal characterology. Pierre Léon studied in detail and in depth the vocal and prosodic characteristics of Charles De Gaulle (1971: 130-158). Two groups of hearers were invited - after having listened to some short passages of Jean Cocteau’s “La voix humaine” played by two French actresses, Gaby Morlay and Simone Signoret -, to fill in a biographical questionnaire with questions quite unrelated with Cocteau’s drama, such as ‘profession of the father’, ‘school achievement’, ‘her vestmental style’. The answers were surprisingly congruent. Gaby Morlay’s voice suggested a still very attractive young woman about 26 years old; with excellent school result without much learning, her father was well-to-do lawyer, she was always the one who left her partner, and for the overwhelming majority she was her father’s favorite (“fille à papa”). Simone Signoret’s vocal performance suggested a faded woman in her forties, at school she was ambitious, hardworking with mediocre results, they lived in a small way, she was the one who was left by her partner, and for the great majority she was mother’s favorite, “fille à maman” (for the details and acoustic data, see Fónagy 1983: 161-169). Prosodic stereotypes play a major part in the constitution of professional styles (I. and J.Fónagy 1976; P.Léon 1993: 164-183). The stylistic characteristics (phonostyle, stylèmes according to Léon oc. 157-183) are demotivated, banalized remainders of emotive vocal and prosodic features. T.L. Face (2003) found significant prosodic divergences between declaratives spontaneous and in laboratory speech. The function of identification could be extended to the distinctive prosodic features of verbal genres such as: poetry, literary, prose, fairy tales, news bulletin, political speeches, lectures and conversation. The laryngograph (Fabre 1957, Fourcin and Abberton 1972) seems to be the most appropriate tool to isolate prosodic features and show their contribution to the identification of verbal genres. The laryngograph derives prosodic information directly from the vocal fold in motion. In the resulting product, only the prosodic features, essentially changes in fundamental frequency and speed of utterance are preserved. Laryngographic recordings of different type of communication – a lyrical poem (Verlaine), a tragedy (Corneille), a fairy tale (Perrault), a news bulletin, a piece of conversation – were presented to French students in the frame of a free and a forced choice test (Fónagy 1978). The results revealed

Functions of Intonation

35

a striking consistency and accuracy of the subjects both in the open-ended and in the forced choice task. The hypothesis that the prosodic pattern of verbal genre is sufficiently characteristic to be correctly identified on the basis of laryngographic recordings was borne out for several types of communication. An interesting confusion occurred in the identification classical tragedy frequently taken for a political discussion. The lack of any sort of confusion in the case of conversation renders the uniqueness of conversational style quite conspicuous. Recordings of French and Hungarian samples show that the speakers follow the same prosodic strategy in both languages to comply with the demands of the different verbal genres (Fónagy and Magdics 1967, Lucci and Boë 1977, Lucci 1979, 1983). The same speakers regularly raise the frequency level of spontaneous conversation if lecturing. The melodic movement is more lively, i.e. the tonal changes less predictable in conversation than in “free” (improvised) lectures though still less predictable than in lectures read. By chance, we could record an involuntary change of pitch level in the vocal performance of Mrs F.R. During her lecture, the microphone produces a noise by auto-excitation. “Ça y est, ça commence à faire du bruit (That’s all I need, it makes a noise now)”, and her voice drops with a major third during her pragmatic comment. Then she goes on, raising her voice to the level of lecturing. The diverse varieties of lecturing - university lectures, reading fairy tales, reading of news bulletins -, are characterized at the prosodic level by the recurrence of a small number of rhythmic and melodic patterns. Melodic arches, consisting in a gradual descent followed by a gradual tonal raise, are frequent in reading, especially in that of fairy tales, lending them a wavy complexion, in contrast to the angular pitch curve (sudden changes of tonal movement) of news bulletins. Pitch movements are more redundant in lectures read than in free (improvised) lecturing, and both are redundant as compared to pitch movements in conversation (Fónagy 1982). The speaker, asked to read aloud the text of her recorded free lecture, rises the melodic level and simplifies the melodic configurations (see oc.). - ‘Liveliness’ of live speech is partly due to the frequent contrast (contradiction) between prosodic and syntactic structure. 16. Exploratory function The prosodic events could be conceived as attempts to realize certain acts transposed to the vocal level. The expression of anger incorporates the vocal substitutes of physical aggression: laryngeal constriction could be regarded as a symbolic attempt of strangling the enemy; the sudden rises in pitch could correspond to successive outburst of aggression, substituting for

36

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

sudden blows. The radical reduction of melodic intervals in anguish could be a melodic pantomime of a man paralyzed with fear (see: expressive function II). 17. Aesthetic function The reiteration and variation of melodic structures in narration is comparable to the role of repetition and variation in musical compositions. Melodic clichés are in between speaking and singing. The high degree of redundancy characterizing singing and musical performance is present in melodic clichés both at the level of the vibration of the vocal folds and in the quasi musical tonal intervals between the subsequent syllables. Descent in quarter tones in clichés such as Oh qu’il est mignon. The third dimension, the degree of musicality (stylization) may become distinctive, Hopi Indians distinguish between tawi ‘singing’, tengawa ‘solemn declaration, and lawyi ‘everyday speech’. Stylized intonation is an expression of irony in Turkish: şeker çocuk ‘sweet child’ (Haimann 1990). 18. Ludic function We could see in melodic clichés, in this sort of flirting with music, an essential manifestation of playing with language. In conversation and lecturing the last syllables of the utterance may shift into musical language: the last rhythmical group of the utterance shows a high degree of inter- and intra-syllabic redundancy. The utterance, more or less solemnly, closes with a highly stylized and conventionally regulated rhythmic and musical pattern. Such closure formulas were largely used in Classical languages (Lausberg 1960, 1:479-506). Closures, as well as other melodic clichés, are reproduced with great precision in ‘echoing’-tests (I. and J.Fónagy and J.Sap 1979). The sudden switch of question melody into imperative sentence or declarative patterns taking the place of question patterns or imperatives turning into questions, questions into statements - may recall exchange of positions and partners in dancing parties. The utterance more or less solemnly closes with a highly stylized and conventionally regulated rhythmic and musical pattern. Dynamic melodic performances of high complexity, such as the intonation patterns of irony or coquetry could be seen as dramatic performances: vocal pantomimes. The gradual rise in sermons or other more or less solemn verbal performances followed by a gradual or short fall, is also, independently of content conveyed, a tension / resolution game. In the same playful perspective we could think of the superposition (integration) of different melodic patterns to the innocent misbehavior of

Functions of Intonation

37

children imposing a new graphic creation on one or more preceding ones. It would be more justified to compare the superposition of two (or three) melodic pattern in artistic vocal creation to polyphony in vocal or instrumental music, where in interference of diverse patterns successfully expresses complex attitudes or differentiated mental contents. 19. Function of condensation Sven Oehman (1968) proposed a model accounting for the superposition of stress, tone (accent) and intonation. Utterances produced by vocal artists are often felt as particularly ‘dense’. Semantic and ‘echoing tests’ reveal that such utterences condense indeed two or more superimposed simple melodic patterns. The sentence Az én hibám volt “It was, resp. was it my fault” spoken by the Hungarian artist József Timár, in the role of Willy in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman elicited in a shadowing tests sharply falling categorical statements as well as rising falling interrogative utterances. The echoed utterance was in fact prosodically ambivalent: a successful crossing of a deep self reproach and an indignant protest. Hamlet’s soliloquy “By sleep to say” pronounced by the Hungarian artist Miklós Gábor was interpreted and reproduced by 20 Hungarian informants consequently in four different ways. The superposition of the four simple melodic patterns produced a pitch curve quite similar to that of the artist’s complex intonation pattern (I. and J.Fónagy 1986). 20. The hierarchy of functions The functions, individually considered above, are intimately joined in speech. The verbal genres differ according the degree of participation of the individual functions. The demarcative function is omnipresent. It takes a particularly important part in narration and in scientific communication. Whereas boundary signals often vanish in the heat of the debate. Emphasis is inherently allusive. It is prevalent in pedagogical or political discourse. In fact, they are omnipresent in all speech acts, and from an evolutive point of view, they constantly reproduce in live speech the successive stages of intonation’s functional history. The diverse forms of dislocation play simultaneously different roles: demarcation, focusing, presentation. At the same time, at a preconscious or unconscious level, they fulfill the exploratory function in form of a vocal pretend action, an aggression directed against language itself: the sentence is torn into pieces. This could satisfy the ludic function as verbal form of childish mischief. Pretend actions (symbolic action, Symbolhandlungen) come to the fore in emotive speech, when the speaker is “throttling his own throat” (laryngeal

38

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

constriction, strangled voice). At the same time, aggressive acting out appears at a much later phase of evolution, at the level of fictitious spatial movements, mimicking a struggle underlying angry arguments: rigid corporal position interrupted by repeated sudden blows. The undulatory melodic curve of tender speech contains a tonal allusion to caressing movements. If two F0 curves differ only in their angularity, the utterances with a more angular F0 function are rated as being significantly more aggressive than their smoother counterparts (I.Fónagy, J.Fónagy and J.Sap 1979). The domesticated form of aggression is also present in the metrical structure of speech melody: we beat the time. The focalization of expressive bodily behavior at the glottal level is the result of a gradual evolution in prosodic history. Basic emotions such as anger, joy cannot be reliably distinguished on the basis of mere changes in fundamental frequency; in contradistinction to more complex social attitudes (oc.) Vocal expression of social attitudes can easily dispense with oral mimetics. They are at the same time more language dependent than emotional vocal displays. The high degree of tonal precision corresponds to a higher degree of semantic organization. Modal intonation patterns represent the highest level of melodic and semantic organization that can be reached by prosodic means. Attitudinal intonation patterns are always felt stylistically marked. Modal intonation patterns may be neutral. Even if we could draw a demarcation line between moods and attitudes, this would not prevent melodic configurations switching unperceived from one category to the other. Steep rise and sudden fall characterize in English, German or Hungarian control-questions expressing mistrust or irony in connection with a previous statement (↗ Rea-↘ ly). This stylistically marked intonation pattern of Russian echo-questions became during the first half of the eighteenth century the dominant, unmarked Russian intonation pattern of binary (Y/N) questions. An ascensional force seems to elevate primary functions towards functions of a higher, more complex functional level. Demarcative or culminative pitch patterns may become distinctive. The emotive contrast underlying hesitant utterances yields alternative statements which anticipate logical opposition: inclusive vs. exclusive disjunctions. Playful melodic metaphors may fill in the gap of a lacking syntactic category. The question pattern lent to injunctive. Hungarian utterances brought about the category of polite invitation in Czech, in Hungarian as well as in Australian English (Fónagy 1966, 1967, 1969, 1979). Even demotivation (banalization) of expressive melodic patterns may become expressive in characterising professional prosodic styles, such as the prosodic clichés of newscasters

Functions of Intonation

39

(Léon 1993: 157-212). References Abe, Isamu 1998. Intonation in Japanese. In: D.Hirst and A. Di Cristo ed. Intonation Systems. 360-375 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Altmann, Hans 1987. Zur Problematik der Konstitution der Satzmodi als Formtypen. In: J.Meibauer ed.22-56. Altmann, Hans ed. 1988. Intonationsforschungen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Aristoxenos 1868. Harmonische Fragmente, ed. P.Marquand. Berlin: Weidmann. Arnold, Magda 1960. Emotion and personality, vol.1. Psychological aspects. New York: Columbia University Press. Artëmov, V.A. 1962. Tone and intonation. In: Proceeding of the Fourty International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Helsinki 1961, 403-406. The Hague: Mouton Auchlin, Antoine et Ferrari, A. 1994. Structure prosodique, syntaxe, discours: évidences et problèmes. Cahiers de Linguistique 15: 187-217. Bally, Charles 1941. Intonation et syntaxe. Cahiers de Ferdinand de Saussure 1: 33-42. Bally, Charles 1965. Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Berne: Francke. Battliner, Anton 1988. Der Exklamativ: mehr als Aussage oder doch nur mehr oder weniger Aussage? Experimente zur Rolle von Höhe und Position des F0-Gipfels. In: Altmann ed.243-272. Beckman, M. and Pierrehumbert, J. 1986. Intonational structure in Japanese and English. Phonological Yearbook 3: 255-309. Bérard, Eva 1996. L'expressivité vocale dans la parole chantée. Semiotica 111: 295-317. Berkowitz, L. 1962. Aggression: A social psychological analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill. Berrendonner, A. 1990. Pour une macro-syntaxe. Travaux de Linguistique 21: 25-36. Bing, Janet 1980. Aspects of English prosody. Bloomington: Indiana Press. Bing, Janet 1984. A discourse domain identified by intonation, in: Intonation, accent and rhythm: Studies in discourse phonology. New York: De Gruyter. Blanche-Benveniste, Claire 1975. Recherches en vue d’une théorie de la grammaire française : essai d’application à la syntaxe des pronoms. Paris : Champion. Blanche-Benveniste, Claire 1990. Le français parlé. Etudes grammaticales. Paris: éditions du CNRS.

40

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

Blanche-Benveniste, Claire 1997. Approches de la langue parlée en français. Paris: Ophrys. Bloomfield. Leonard 1933. Language. New York: Holt & co. London: Allen & Unwin. Bolinger, Dwight 1957. Intonation and grammar. Language Learning 8: 31-37. Bolinger, Dwight 1986. Intonation and its parts. Melody in spoken English. Stanford (CA). Stanford University Press. Boulakia, Georges 1978. Phonosyntaxe. Thèse de doctorat. Université de Paris VII. Brazil. D. 1995. A grammar of speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bühler, Karl 1934. Sprachtheorie. Jena: Fischer. Cooper, W. and Sorensen, J. 1977. Fundamental frequency contours in syntactic boudaries, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 62: 683-692. Cruttenden, Alan 1970. On the so-called grammatical function of intonation. Phonetica 21: 182-192. Cruttenden, Alan 1981. Falls and rises: meanings and universals. Journal of Linguistics 17: 77-92. Crystal, David 1969. Prosodic systems and intonation in English. Cambridge: University Press. Crystall, T.H. and House, A.S. 1990. Articulation rate and the duration of syllables and stress groups in connected speech. J.Acoustic Soc.Am. 83: 101-112. Daneš, František 1960. Sentence intonation from a functional point of view. Word 16: 34-35. Darwin, Charles 1872. The expression of emotions in man and animals. London: Murray Dascălu-Jinga, L. 1971. Some remarks on enumerative intonation in Romanian. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 16: 401-410. Deulofeu, José 1977. La syntaxe et les constructions binaires. Recherches sur le Français Parlé 1: 30-61. Di Cristo, Albert 1976. Indices prosodiques et structures constituante. Cahiers de Linguistique d’Orientalisme et de Slavistique 7: 27-40. Duez, Danielle 1985. Perception of salient pauses in continuous speech. Language and Speech 28: 377-389. Essen, Otto von 1956. Grundzüge der Hochdeutschen Satzintonation. Rattingen: Henn. Essen, Otto von 1957. Allgemeine und angewandte Phonetik [1953]. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Faure, Georges 1962. Recherches sur les caractères et le rôle des éléments musicaux dans la prononciation anglaise. Paris: Didier. Fónagy, I. 1958. Elektrophysiologische Beiträge zur Akzentrage. Phonetica

Functions of Intonation

41

2: 12-58. Fónagy, I. 1966. “Api, figyelje ide [Daddy, listen]!” Dallammetafora és dallamváltozás [Intonation metaphor and change of intonation].” Magyar Nyelvőr 90: 121-138. Fónagy, I. 1969. Métaphore d’intonation et changement d’intonation. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 64: 22-42. Fónagy, I. 1971. Synthèse de l’ironie. Phonetica 23: 42-51. Fónagy, Ivan 1978. A new method of investigating the perception of prosodic features. Language and Speech 21: 34-49. Fónagy, Ivan 1980. La métaphore en phonétique. Ottawa: Didier Fónagy, Ivan 1981. Emotions, voice and music. In: J.Sundberg ed. Research aspects on singing, 137-152. Stockholm: The Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Fónagy, I. 1981. Fonction prédictive de l’intonation. Studia Phonetica 18: 113-122. Fónagy Ivan 1982. Variation et normes prosodiques. Folia Linguistica 16: 17-38. Fónagy Ivan 1989. On status and functions of intonation. Acta Linguistica Hungarica39: 53-92. Fónagy Ivan 1991. La vive voix. Essais de psycho-phonétique [1983]. Paris: Payot. Fónagy Ivan 2001. Languages within Language: An evolutive approach. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: Benjamins. Fónagy, Ivan et Bérard, Eva 1980. Bleu ou vert? Analyse et synthèse des énoncés disjonctifs. In" L.R.Waugh et C.H.van Schoeneveld eds. The melody of language, 81-114. Fónagy, Ivan et Bérard, Eva 1996. Statut dynamique des énoncés exclamatifs: substances et fonctions. L’analisi linguistica e letteraria 4: 307-338. Fónagy, Ivan, Bérard, Eva et Fónagy, Judith 1983. Clichés mélodiques. Folia linguisctica 17: 153-185 Fónagy, Ivan et Judith 1976. Prosodie professionnelle et changements prosodiques. Le Français Moderne 44: 193-228. Fónagy, I. and Judith 1983. L’intonation et l’organisation du discours. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 78: 161-209. Fónagy, I., Fónagy, Judith and J.Sap 1979. A la recherche des traits prosodiques dans le français parisien. Phonetica 1: 1 –20. Fónagy, I.; Hand, M.H. and Simon, Pela 1983 Oral gesturing in two unrelated languages. In: Investigations of the speech process. Quantitative Linguistics 19. Ed.: P.Winkler, 103-122. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Fónagy, Ivan, Lucci, Vincent et Boë, L-J. 1977, Traits prosodiques distinctifs

42

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

de certaines attitudes intellectuelles et émotives. In: Textes des Huitièmes Journées d’Études Fónagy, Ivan et Magdics, Klara 1967. A magyar beszéd dallama [Mélodies du discours hongrois]. Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó. Fónagy I. and P. 1979. Structure et aspects sociaux des changements prosodiques. In: Proceedings of the 9th international congress of phonetic sciences 204-211. Copenhagen: Institute of Phonetics Fourcin, A.J. et Abberton, E. 1971. First application of a new laryngograph. Volta Review 74: 161-167. Freud, Sigmund 1926. Hemmung, Symptom und Angst [Inhibtion, symptôme et angoisse]. in: GW 14: 113-205; SE 20: 87-171. Gee, J.P. and Grosjean, F. 1983. Performance structure; a psycholinguistic and linguistic appraisal. Cognitive Psychology 15: 411-454. Geerrs, A. 1978. Intonation contour and syntactic structure as predictors of apparent segmentation. J.Exp.Psychology: Human Perceptual Performance 4: 273-283. Gibbon, Dafydd 1976. Perspectives of intonation analysis. Frankfurt München: Lang. Gleason, H.A. 1965. Linguistics and English grammar. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Grammont, Maurice 1964. Le vers français, ses moyens d’expression, son harmonie. Paris: Delagrave. Grosjean, François. 1983. How long is the sentence. Prediction and prosody in the on-line processing of language. Linguistics 21: 501-529. Haiman, John 1990. Sarcasm as theatre. Cognitive Linquistics 1: 181-205. Hargreaves, W.A. et Starkweather, J.A. 1963. Recognition of speaker identity. Language and Speech 6: 63-67. Harsgrove, P.M. et McGarr, N.S. 1994. Prosody management of communication disorders. San Diego: Singular Publishing Hazaël-Massieux, Marie-Christine 1983. Le rôle de l’intonation dans la définition et la structuration de l’unité de discours. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 78: 99-160. Hind, Anthony 1977. Place et fonction de l’intonation dans une grammaire. Thèse de doctorat d’état. Université de Paris VII. Hirsch-Pasek,K. et al. 1987. Clauses are perceptual units for young infants. Cognition 26: 269-286. Hirst, J.Daniel 1975. Syntactic ambiguity and intonative features. VIII.Congrès International de Sciences Phonétiques (Leeds), publié aussi dans les Travaux de Phonétiques d’Aix (1976) Hollien, Harry 2002. Forensic voice identification. San Diego: Academic Press.

Functions of Intonation

43

Jakobson, Roman 1962-1988. Selected Writings tomes 1-8, ed. Rudy, Stephen. Berlin, Jakobson, Roman 1971 a. Zur Struktur des Phonems [1939]. Selected writings 1: 280-310. Karcevskij, Serge 1931. Sur le phonologie de la phrase. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4: 188-227. Klatt, D.H. 1975. Vowel lengthening in syntactically determined in a connected discourse. J. of Phonetics3: 129-140. Kličnikova, Z.I. 1965. Intonatsia kak sredstvo svjazi castei složnogo predloženija [Intonation as a means of connection between the parts of compound sentences]. In: Artëmov V.A. ed. Intonatsia i zvukovoj sostav. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskogo Universitatea 151-149. Kooij, J.G. 1971. Ambiguity in natural language. Amsterdam: North Holland, chap.3. Ladd, Daniel R. 1980. The structure of intonational meaning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ladd, Daniel R. 1986. Intonational phrasing: the case of prosodic structure. Phonologic Yearbook 3: 311-340. Lambrecht, Knud 1987. On the status of SVO sentences in French discourse. In: Tomkin, R. S. Coherence and grounding in discourse: 217-261. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. Lausberg, Heinrich 1960. Handbuch der literarische Rhetorik, vols 1-2. München: Huebner. Lee, W.R. 1956. English intonation: a new approach. Lingua 5: 345-371 Lee, W.R 1960. An English intonation reader. London. MacMillan. Lehiste, Ilse 1973. Phonetic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity. Glossa 7: 107-121. Léon, Pierre 1970. Systématique des fonctions expressives de l’intonation. Studia Phonetica 3: 56-71. Léon, Pierre R. 1971. Essais de phonostylistique. Ottawa: Didier. Léon, Pierre R. 1972. Où en sont les études sur l’intonation? In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Montréal 1971), 113-154. Basel: Karger. Léon, Pierre R. 1993. Précis de phonostylistique. Ottawa: Didier Lieberman, P. 1967. Intonation, perception and language. MIT. Research monographs no.38. Cambridge MA: MIT. Press Loveday, L. 1981. Pitch, politeness and sexual role; an exploratory investigation into the pitch correlates of English and Japanese politeness formulae. Language and Speech 24, 1: 71-89. Lucci, Vincent 1979. L’accent didactique. In: I.Fónagy et P.R.Léon éds. L’accent en français contemporain, Studia Phonetica 15: 107-122

44

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

Lucci, Vincent 1983. Etude phonétique du français contemporain à travers la variation. Grenoble: Publications de l’Université des Langues et Lettres de Grenoble. Mahl, Georg F. et Schulze, Gene 1964. Psychological research in the extralinguistic area. In: T.A.Sebeok et al. eds. Martin, Philippe 1973. Les problèmes de l'intonation: recherches et applications. Langue Française 19: 4-32. Martin, Philippe 1977. Syntax and intonation: an integrated theory. Victoria University Monographs. Working Papers 2. Martinon, Ph. 1913. Comment on prononce le français. Paris: Larousse. Martins-Baltar, Michel 1970. La structure si + imparfait. Paris: École Normale Supérieure de St.Cloud. Martins-Baltar, Michel 1977. De l’énoncé à l’énonciation: une approche des fonctions énonciatives. Paris: Credif. Didier Mathesius V. 1937. K teorii vétné intonace [On the theory of sentence intonation]. Slovo a Slovesnost 3: 248-249 Meibauer, J. ed. 1987. Satzmodus zwischen Grammatik und Pragmatik. Referate anlässlich der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft [Heidelberg 1986]. Moses, Paul 1954. The voice of neurosis. New York: Grune & Stratton. Moses, Paul 1957. Vocal elements of disturbed communication. Practica Oto-Rhino- Laryngologica 19: 252-257. Muller Bing, Janet 1985. Aspects of English Prosody. Garland Press, New York (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics). Näf, Anton 1987. Gibt es Exklamativsätze? In: Meibauer.J. ed. 140-160. Nicaise, Alain 1987. Phénomènes intonatifs en français: de la perception à l’interprétation. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris 7. Oehman, Sven 1968. A model of word and sentence intonation. Report of the Sixth International Congress of Acoustics [Tokyo] 2: 163-166. Oppenrieder, Wilhelm 1988. Intonation und Identifikation. Kategorisierungstets zur Kontext- freien Identifikation von Satzmodi. In: Altmann ed.153-168 Ostendorf, M. et al. 1990. The use of relative duration in syntactic disambiguation. In: Proc. of the 3rd DAROA workshop on speech and natural language, ed. Morgan Kaufman. San Mateo (CA). Ostwald, Peter F. 1973. The semiotics of human sound. The Hague: Mouton. Perrot, Jean 1978. Fonctions syntactiques, énonciation, information. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 73: 85-101. Péter, Mihály 1934. Érzelemkifejezés, stílusérték és expresszivitás a nyelvben [Expression of emotins, style value and expressivity in language]. Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok15: 219-235. Pierrehumbert, J. 1981 Synthesizing intonation. J.Acoust. Soc.Am.70: 985-

Functions of Intonation

45

995. Pike, Kenneth 1945. The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Publications. Pilch, Herbert 1972. La théorie de la phonologie. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Montréal 1971), 105-119. Basel: Karger. Pilch, Herbert 1977. Intonation in discourse analysis. Phonetica 34: 81-92. Pilch, Herbert 1980. English intonation as phonological structure. Word 32: 55-37 Plutchik, Robert 1962. The emotions: facts, theories: a new model. New York: Random House. Plutchik, Robert 1980. Emotions: a psychoevolutionary theory. New York: Harper. Pottier, Bernard 1967. Présentation de la linguistique. Paris: Klincksieck Projet de terminologie phonologique standardisée 1941. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 4: 318-326. Riemann, K.W.J. Hugo 1882. Musik-Lexicon. Leibzig: Brockhaus. Rigault, André 1964. Réflexions sur le statut phonologique de l'intonation. Proc. 9th Int. Congr. Ling. Cambridge (Mass): 849-858. Romportl, Milan 1973. Studies in phonetics. Prague: Academia Sabio, Frédéric 1991. Micro-syntaxe et macro-syntaxe. Recherches sur le Français Parlénº13: 111-155. Saussure, Ferdinand de 1976. Cours de linguistique générale [1916], ed.T.de Mauro. Paris: Payot Scherer, Klaus R, 1981. Speech and emotional states. In: J.Darby et J.Q. Simons eds. Speech evaluation in psychiatry, 189-220. New York: Grune & Stratton Scherer, Klaus R. 1982. Methods of research in vocal communication: Paradigms and parameters. In: K.Scherer et P.Ekman 136-198. Scherer, Klaus R. 1984. On the nature and function of emotion. In: K.Scherer et P.Ekman 293-318. Scherer, Klaus R. et Ekman, Paul eds. 1982. Handbook and and methods in nonverbal behavior research. Cambridge: University Press. Scherer, Klaus R. et Ekman, Paul eds. 1984. Approaches to emotion. Hillsdale N.J.: Erlbaum. Scholes, R. 1971. On the spoken disambiguation of superficially ambiguous sentences. Language and Speech 14: 1-11. Scot, D. 1982. Duration as a cue to the perception of a phase boundary. J.Acoust.Soc.Am.71: 996-1007. Simon, Anne Catherine 2004. La structuration prosodique du discours en français. Une approche multidimensionnelle et expérentielle. Bern,

46

Ivan FÓNAGY and Eva BÉRARD

Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang. Stockwell R.P. 1972. The role of intonation; reconsiderations and other considerations [1971]. In: D.Bolinger ed. Intonation, 87-109. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Streeter, L.A. 1978. Acoustic determinants of phrase boundary perception. J. Acoust. Soc.Am.64: 1582-1592. Tench, P. 1996. The intonation system of English. London: Cassel. Tomkins, Silvan S. 1962. Affects, imagery, consciousness, vol.1: Positive emotions, Tübingen: Niemeyer. vol.2: Negative emotions. New York: Springer. Torsueva, I.G. 1979. Intonacia i smysle vysazyvania [Intonation and the meaning of the utterance]. Moskva: Nauk. Varga, László 1981. A magyar intonáció - funkcionális szempontból [Hungarian intonation - from a functional point of view]. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 83: 313-319. Varga, László 1983. Hungarian sentence prosody: an outline. Folia Linguistica 17: 117-151. Varga, Lászlo 1995. Stylization of the falling tone in Hungarian intonation. In: Windsor,L.J.ed. Studies in general and English phonetics. Essays in honour of Professor J.D.O‘Connor. 278-287. London: Routledge. Wales, R. and Toner, H. 1979. Intonation and ambiguity. In: Sentence processing, ed. Cooper, W.C. and Walker, E.C.T. Hillsdale: NJ.: Erlbaum. Wunderlich, Dieter 1988. Der Ton macht die Melodie - Zur Phonologie der Intonation des Deutschen. In: Altmann ed.1-40.

Prosodic Constituents in French — A Data-Driven Approach — Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to provide a cross-linguistic perspective on prosody and syntax, starting out from French data. The present account of the relations between prosody and syntax in French builds on research that deals specifically with this language; it is however written with a view to contributing to cross-linguistic investigation: prosodic typology arguably holds the key to major progress in this field. Despite common underlying principles (Bolinger 1978, Vaissière 1995), there are major cross-language differences. The discussion brings out characteristics that sharply distinguish French from languages that possess lexically distinctive stress, addressing the thorny issue of cross-linguistic prosodic description. 1.1. Use of terms How terms are defined is especially crucial in prosodic studies. Prosody as defined here consists of accentuation, intonation and several performance factors (including rhythm). Accentuation includes all nonphonemic lexically distinctive properties, i.e. (depending on the language) stress, as in English, tone, as in Mandarin, pitch accent, as in Japanese and Swedish, voice quality register, as in Southeast Asian languages such as Mon. Intonation, which is often (and perhaps somewhat abusively) identified with the parameters whereby it manifests itself—and especially with fundamental frequency—, is a complex, abstract structure, that can usefully be divided into (i) two sub-systems of structuration: syntactic intonation, which essentially reflects syntax in the broader sense (the relationship between syntax and syntactic prosody will be elaborated on below), and pragmatic intonation, which reflects information structure; (ii) attitudinal and emotional dimensions, that convey speaker attitudes and emotions1. These definitions elaborate on proposals by Coustenoble and Armstrong 1937, Delattre 1965, 1966, and closely resemble those put forward by Rossi 1967, 1999 (see also the terminological discussion in Di Cristo 1998, and the 1

The interesting topic of how speaker-specific habits come to pattern into a personal style, and beyond, into dialect-specific characteristics, will not be addressed here.

48

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

introduction to the volume [Hirst and Di Cristo 1998]). The phrase “syntactic intonation” may appear as somewhat of a misnomer, insofar as syntax and intonational phrasing do not stand in a strict, one-to-one relationship with syntactic units, as was already noted in the early classics of phonetics (Grammont 1933; see also, more recently, Selkirk 1972, 2000:231, Martin 1981). The phrase “syntactic intonation” is nonetheless retained in view of the fact that knowledge of a sentence’s syntax offers a sufficient basis for the synthesis of an acceptable fundamental frequency contour (Vaissière 1971). The acoustic correlates of prosody are many. They include the variations in fundamental frequency, duration and intensity, voice quality (mode of vibation of the vocal folds), and also the allophonic variations in the realisation of the segments (intrinsic and cointrinsic characteristics, which are uncontrolled, should be factored out of prosodic analysis). Said differently, prosody has correlates at the respiratory level, at the glottis, and at the supra-glottic level. All parameters take part in prosody simultaneously, to a greater or lesser extent. 1.2. Empirical basis for the present proposal: A data-driven approach based on read speech The adequacy of data-driven prosodic models is assessed on the basis of whether they attain their immediate goal and account for the body of data chosen as corpus. Our own research into intonation originally hinged on syntax, for the sake of synthesis (Vaissière 1971), language comparison (Vaissière 1983), language recognition (Vaissière 1988), and more recently for teaching French prosody to students of French, and using prosody in speech therapy. To a certain extent, all data-driven models depend on the corpus they are based on. Studies of read speech quite predictably focus on syntactic intonation. The reader has access to the structure of the sentence as a whole, and can evaluate the length of its parts and their semantic relations, and organise his production in consequence. The preplanning which this allows is reflected in the structuring of the sentences; prosodic structures emerge (the plural structures will be discussed below). In the 1970s, text-to-speech synthesis (together with the advent of generative grammar) fuelled interest in the relationship between syntactic and intonational constituents in read speech; the two are similar but not equivalent. (The development of automatic recognition of continuous speech also directed the researchers’ attention to these same issues.) The use of read speech was a useful abstraction: the congruence between syntactic and prosodic units is stronger in read than in spontaneous speech, in sentences outside context than in continuous texts.

Prosodic Constituents in French

49

2. An overview of syntactic intonation in French A representation of syntactic prosody should be detailed enough to specify all the contrasts that lead to a difference in the syntactic interpretation of the sentence (and hence provide a basis for a synthesis-byrule program which aims to maximally enhance the intelligibility of the output signal). 2.1. The salience of intonational phenomena in French, due to the absence of lexically distinctive stress French lends itself especially well to a study of postlexical prosodic structuration, because the constraints imposed by the lexical level (i.e. accentuation; see our definition above) are minimal. The sense-group is the basic unit. Since the earliest accounts of French prosody, researchers have noted the predominance of groupe de sens, i.e. sense-group boundaries, over word boundaries in French (Grammont 1933, Coustenoble et al. 1937, Delattre 1966). The words may lose—partly or completely—their acoustical identity to a higher-level constituent (i.e. word boundaries may go unmarked). French is generally considered as a ‘rising’ language with final lengthening. An insightful account of French prosodic phrasing was proposed by Delattre 1966 (usefully complemented by Fónagy 1980). The French ear is trained to perceive continuation at the end of a prosodic phrase. In this sense, French is a ‘rising’ language: each prosodic phrase inside a sentence tend to end with a sharp rise (Delattre’s continuation majeure), or a smaller rise, or a high F0 value (Delattre’s continuation mineure). In the babbling of French infants, rising F0 contours and final-syllable lengthening are most frequent (whereas falling F0 contours and an absence of final lengthening are most frequent for Japanese children: see Hallé, de Boysson-Bardies et al. 1991). To an adult French listener, the quasi-regular recurrence of strongly stressed syllables in English is striking, because the closest phonetic equivalent in French is emphatic stress, hence an impression of unceasing emphasis. To the untrained French ear, Japanese rhythm is somewhat puzzling, because the duration of a vowel primarily depends on its phonemic identity, not on the presence or absence of a boundary, and vowel lengthening may therefore occur in any position, whereas in French it is a cue to an intonational boundary. 2.2. The units defined by F0 fluctuations The units that are here proposed for the syntactic prosody of French and other languages are the prosodic paragraph, the sentence, the breath group, the melodic phrase, the prosodic phrase or phonological syntagm (variously

50

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

called minor group, accent group, sense group, syntagma in Russian, buntetsu in Japanese, or simply phonological phrase), the prosodic word, the foot (for a language like English), the syllable and the rhyme. We propose below a definition for each of them, based on observations concerning carefully read long sentences embedded in paragraphs, a speaking style which brings out different degrees of boundaries and prominences especially well. There are major discrepancies across researchers in the use of these terms; however appreciative we are of the research of others, we hold fast to our own definitions in this paper, for the sake of coherence and simplicity (hence the high number of self-references). We do not systematically attempt to provide cross-references to the terms used by other authors. 1) The paragraph is the largest unit. The highest F0 value in each sentence tends to decline from the first to the last sentence in a paragraph, in French and in other languages (Lehiste 1975). The end of the paragraph typically ends on an extra-low F0 (often leading to a change in voice quality) and intensity. 2) The sentence level is the next unit. The neutral, affirmative statement is taken as the basic, archetypal pattern (according to sentence mode, significant departures from this basic pattern are observed: Thorsen 1980). The F0 curve for the sentence rises to a peak typically located within the first lexical word, i.e. on one of the sentence’s first syllables. Falls and rises in F0 then alternate, within a gradually narrowed range. A final lowering marks the end of the sentence. (This corresponds to Tune 1 as described for English by Armstrong and Ward 1926.) The realisation of the final fall constrains the two final content words: the rise starts at the end of the penultimate word, and the contour over the last word is falling.

Figure 1. General outline of the F0 curve of an affirmative statement (after Vaissière 1983)

Prosodic Constituents in French

51

The sentence is further divided into breath groups and melodic phrases by returns to the baseline. A long sentence may be divided into two or more breath groups by inspiratory pauses; the structure of a breath group recalls that of the sentence as a whole. A breath group, whether sentence-final or not, is acoustically characterised at its beginning by a resetting of the baseline, an initial rise, generally ending at the beginning or end of the first content word, and by the return to the baseline (further characterised below). A melodic phrase is similar to a breath group except that inspiration does not actually take place as at the end of the breath group; inspiration is simulated—much as a large excursion in F0 can function as a signal of effort, even though it only simulates vocal effort: physiological necessity and linguistic structure interact closely (see Gussenhoven 2002 and references; Gendrot 2005). The melodic phrase is essentially equivalent to the group ending either in Delattre’s continuation majeure (realised as an F0 rise during the final syllable before a major boundary), or in Delattre’s finalité (a falling F0 movement spread over the word-final syllables).

Figure 2. Division of the sentence into two melodic phrases. General outline (left), and example with a randomly chosen sequence of syllables that ‘ride’ over the general shape (right). Triangles indicate word-initial syllables, empty circles indicate word-medial syllables, full circles word-final syllables, stars indicate grammatical words.

What is common to both types of melodic phrases (at least under our description) is a return to the baseline. F0 reaches and even goes under the baseline at the very end of the sentence-final melodic phrase. Nonfinal melodic phrases end in a continuation (see 2.1 above; this corresponds to Tune 2 of Armstrong et al. 1926). The return to the baseline before the final major continuation rise takes place (i) over the last syllable, or (ii) at the end of the penultimate (thereby suppressing the initial rise of the last disyllabic word), or again (iii) at the end of the preceding function word or of the penultimate word (the falling contour over the penultimate content word thus contrasting with the rising contour on the final word, a fact highlighted by Martin 1981). No hard-and-fast phonological evidence can be adduced to support this division into levels. There is no single, well-defined domain of application for rules such as liaison (i.e. whether a word-final consonant is pronounced

52

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

or not when the following word begins with a vowel): sometimes they apply across prosodic phrases, sometimes they do not. “Les soldats anglais” generally forms a single prosodic phrase (but two prosodic words) and the liaison is optional (sometimes replaced by a glottal stop). The baseline is a major notion in our description. Our way of modelling the observed data relies strongly on the baseline (also called declination line). F0 values tend to decline slightly during the course of a sentence, partly due to the decrease in sub-glottal pressure (Lieberman 1967) and to the tracheal pull (Maeda 1976). The baseline is speaker-dependent. Using what is commonly referred to as ‘Maeda’s method’ (Maeda 1976), the baseline is calculated visually by superposing the F0 contour of a number of isolated, declarative sentences of similar length and determining the upper line (plateau) and lower line (baseline). Our description gives a central role to the baseline for two reasons: it is relative stable as compared to the topline (or ‘plateau’) in the production data (for English, see, again, Maeda 1976); French listeners seem to be very sensitive to the fact that a syllable does or does not actually hit the baseline (Vaissière 1976). The declining baseline seems to serve a perceptual role as a reference line for the listeners (Pierrehumbert 1979). In a sentence-final melodic phrase, the baseline is reached at the very end of the melodic phrase. In a nonfinal melodic phrase, some variation is observed in the return to the baseline before the final rise: it takes place at the beginning or middle of the last syllable, or on the penultimate syllable (anticipatory lowering often takes place on the penultimate syllable of a content word before a major continuation rise), on the function word preceding the final word, or at the end of the penultimate content word.

Figure 3. Variation in the timing of the return to the baseline in French. Left: at beginning of last syllable; top right: on function word; bottom right: on end of penultimate content word (after Vaissière 2002)

Prosodic Constituents in French

4)

5)

Figure 4.

53

Melodic phrases can be further divided into two or more prosodic phrases. The prosodic phrase corresponds to the sense-group (and to Delattre’s minor continuation). It is composed of a single word, or of two or more semantically related words. The main acoustic difference between a melodic phrase and a prosodic phrase is the absence of a return to the baseline within the latter. Minor continuation is typically realised by a rise or a peak that is not preceded by a return to the baseline. The overall shape of a prosodic phrase strongly recalls that of a breath group, though the final rise is less salient. Final lengthening is generally (though not always) found at the end of a prosodic phrase. In turn, prosodic phrases are divided into prosodic words. The prosodic word corresponds, roughly speaking, to a content word. The alternation of lexical words with grammatical words (the latter realised less strongly, with lower F0) plays a role in French prosody that is to some extent comparable with the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in English. The division of a prosodic phrase into two prosodic words is realised phonetically either by final lengthening at the end of the first word, a strengthening of the beginning of the following word (glottal onset in the case of an initial vowel), or again by an F0 fluctuation aligned with the edge of one of the words. The feature “+ Strong” was borrowed from Straka with a view to covering the following manifestations: an F0 jump, a longer syllable onset, glottalisation, lesser nasalisation, less voicing, a stronger contact of the articulators (Vaissière 1986; for more recent results on French, Fougeron 2001).

Typical subdivision of a prosodic phrase into two prosodic words by F0 fluctuations. Left: Noun + Adjective sequence, right: Adjective + Noun (with indication of possible variants; see figure 6 for details).

Word-final lengthening can thus be the only marker of the division into prosodic phrases, without an F0 excursion: experiments in synthetic speech show that longer duration of the first syllable is a sufficient cue to the distinction between bordures (“rims”), ZaNQcx99Q\+and bords durs (“hard

54

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

edges”) ZaN9Qcx99Q\, between Jean-Pierre et Jacques (two names) and Jean, Pierre et Jacques (three names). (More precisely: if the first syllable is short, the phrase is ambiguous; beyond a certain length threshold, two prosodic phrases are heard; see Bacri and Banel 1993.) There are English equivalents, such as coffee-cake and honey vs. coffee, cake and honey (Lehiste, op. cit.). 2.3. The role of duration Like F0 fluctuations, the different degrees of final lengthening reflect prosodic structure; the two are not strictly equivalent, however. The use of prosodic parameters in automatic speech recognition has shown that informations on F0 and on duration are both essential in French to distinguish between a left- or right-boundary. The consonant-to-vowel length ratio also has to be taken into account. The three ‘classical’ intonational parameters, F0, duration and intensity, must all be adduced (Vaissière 1988, Nasri 1992, Langlais 1995); indeed, they can be usefully supplemented by other information, such as positional allophonic variation. (Even so, in the end, automatic separation cannot be achieved in all cases.) An important structural dimension of the sentence is encapsulated in pauses alone—what Monnin and Grosjean 1993 call ‘performance structure’. The degree of word-final lengthening distinguishes among at least three degrees of boundaries: sentence-internal prepausal lenghtening (the longest :::), phrase-final lengthening (::), and word-final lengthening (:). Six levels of syllable rhyme length can usefully be distinguished: (1) lengthening at the end of a non-sentence-final breath group; (2) sentence-final lengthening; (3) phrase-final lengthening; (4) word-final lengthening; (5) default length, on initial syllables of lexical words; (6) shortened duration for grammatical words (and word-internal syllables). As for syllable onset, it is longer in the initial syllable of a lexical word (Duez and Nishinuma 1985). Figure 5 presents a caricatural but revealing example, that of three sentences that are quasi-homophonous at the phonemic level: the sequence ZrDsNlDsdmNqldl@}aDs\ can correspond, depending on the intonation, to Cet homme est énormément bête (“This man is immensely stupid”), Cet homme est énorme et m’embête (“This man is huge and annoys me”), or to a highly implausible Cet homme et Ténor m’aiment en bête (“This man and Tenor love me as a beast”). The figure presents a dot for each syllable: an asterisk “*” for grammatical words (which show a strong tendency to be shorter, with lower F0 and intensity), and, for lexical words, a triangle for the initial syllable and empty circles for the next syllables, up to the final syllable (filled circle). The F0 curve (measured from one sentence) is stylised by retaining only one point per syllable, except for the parts of the curve which correspond to a right boundary, if the syllable concerned is lengthened and

Prosodic Constituents in French

55

therefore has the potential to carry an audible pitch movement within its rhyme: these are highlighted by a thicker line. Such examples allow for a direct comparison of observations on fundamental frequency and duration: they bring out clearly the fact that the syllable (more precisely the syllable rhyme) with the strongest rising slope corresponds to a major boundary (Delattre), and is accompanied by lengthening. This should be taken as an illustration of the potential of prosody as a cue to syntactic structure, rather than an indication of its actual role in communication, where there is hardly ever a threat of confusion between such pairs of sentences. The lengthened syllables are indicated.

Figure 5. F0 contour for sentences “Cet homme est énormément bête”, “Cet homme est énorme et m’embête” and “Cet homme et Ténor m’aiment en bête”, stylised using a star for grammatical words, a triangle for word-initial syllables (which can optionally host intonational intensification), an empty circle for lexical syllables that are neither initial nor final, and filled circles for word-final syllables. Each sentence is divided into two prosodic phrases (there is a full return to the baseline).

Within a sentence, the longer the final syllable of a word, the more rising its F0 curve, and the stronger the perceived boundary.2 Conversely, a falling contour indicates continuity, connectedness with what follows. Figure 6 illustrates how, in conjunction with the division into phrases, intonational variants convey semantic nuances, the syntactic dimension of intonation interacting with its pragmatic dimension.

2

There exists, however, a variant of the same intonational morpheme, written as X↓ by Rossi 1999:73-75.

56

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

Figure 6. Left: a high-rising tune (‘late peak’) at the end of the first contour (le petit gamin) indicates a degree of semantic independence between the two words. Middle : a high-falling tune (‘early peak’) at the end of the first word indicates a degree of dependency. Right: a falling pattern indicates semantic dependency of the first word relative to the second. An initial jump may or may not be realised on the second word. If it is realised (as is here the case on craintif), it increases the perceptual distance between the two words; an adjective that comes after the noun it determines tends to be realised with an initial jump. (After Vaissière 2002.)

It seems, however, that the syntactic and pragmatic components of intonation as actualised by F0 and durational variations do not always combine into a single, well-groomed ‘phonological’ structure. 2.4. The interplay of syntax, rhythm, and speaking style The eurhythmic tendencies may in some cases prevail over syntax. The statement made in the previous section, that division into intonational components can be predicted from the syntax, is somewhat of an oversimplification. In early synthesis experiments at IBM France, two types of information were actually used: the syntactic bracketing of the sentence was supplemented by an indication of the number of syllables corresponding to each node in the structure. The need for the latter information clearly indicates the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between prosody and syntax: it originates in part in the rhythmic tendency to build prosodic units of roughly equivalent length (Gee and Grosjean 1983), and with a repetition of the same F0 contour, stretched over words of different lengths. For instance, the major prosodic boundary (to use Delattre’s term) tends to occur in-between the subject Noun Phrase and the Verb Phrase (at least in isolated sentences), but may be deferred until after the verb if the subject NP is short. Some choices differ across speakers. Besides, given one syntactic phrasing and eurhythmic tendencies, intonational phrasing is to some extent left to the speaker’s appreciation: a sentence may be realised at a go, without a clear division into melodic phrases by a continuation rise 3 , only 3

The continuation rise is an intonational morpheme (to use Rossi’s phrase: see Rossi 1999) that marks a boundary.

Prosodic Constituents in French

57

subdividing the sequence of words into a series of equivalent prosodic phrases (the so-called parallel structure, Vaissière 1975). The more familiar a speaker is with a phrase, the lower the probability that (s)he will place an intonational boundary mid-way through the phrase: recordings of the phrase “l’Institut de Technologie du Massachusetts” reveal that readers who have some familiarity with the notion at issue hardly place any boundary within the group, whereas others divide it into up to three prosodic words. A speaker may freely choose among several rhythmic strategies: smoothing entire breath groups (which often goes hand in hand with a high speaking rate), separating individual prosodic phrases, or even bringing out sharply the division into individual prosodic words (in hyper-articulated, slow-rate elocution). Style plays an important role. In public addresses (typically by journalists, politicians and teachers), initial accentuation is extremely frequent (…le PREsident de la REpublique…): it appears to be no other than the generalisation of emphatic stress, with the effect of conveying speaker involvement. Though originally a stylistic and not a syntactic intonational phenomenon, this emphatic stress, as it becomes almost systematic at the beginning of an intonational group, takes on some of the functional load of intonational phrasing, a striking instance of the interplay between syntactic and pragmatic intonation (see Lucci 1979). This also results in exceptions to the general principle according to which grammatical words are prosodically weak: the above example can just as well be realised as LE président DE la république, which is, if anything, still more emphatic. Emphatic stress may in fact be aligned with either the first or last syllable of disyllabic words (“Je vais a PAris, pas à Londres”, just as well as “Je vais à PaRIS, pas à Londres”). Lastly, speaking rate also influences phrasing: the faster the rate, the more likely it is that the speaker will overlook the fine detail and bunch up several units together, resulting in groupings of 7 or 8 syllables, whereas in careful, deliberate speech, prosodic word boundaries are found every 3rd or 4th syllable (Vaissière 1971). As the rate of speech increases, a unit at one level may be progressively merged with a neighbouring (following) similar unit, the two being united by the melody into one larger unit. Figure 7 shows three realisations of the phrase “Le président directeur général” (“the CEO”).

58

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

Fo

fast

End of lexical word Beginning of lexical word Middle of lexical word Grammatical word

mid slow

time

Le pré si dent di rec teur gé né ral

(“the C.E.O.”)

Figure 7. A schematic illustration of the influence of speaking rate on the division of the breath group into prosodic words (after Vaissière 1997)

Note that the term ‘major’ (as well as ‘minor’) is best adapted for the use of prosody in automatic speech recognition, when the rate of speech varies: the major rise, although sometimes reduced to a single peak on a word-final syllable, can still be detected as the major boundary, by comparison with what happens on the final syllables of the other words. Note that in very rapid and excited speech, the physiological constraints take over: the speaker only breathes in when actually out of breath. 3. The debate over the transcription of intonation 3.1. French and English: a different perspective on prosodic parameters Approximating a sentence’s prosody by means of its fundamental frequency alone yields reasonably acceptable results in English because, in this particular language, duration and intensity tend to be strongly correlated with F0: all three (F0 excursions, lengthening and increase in intensity) tend to cluster on one and the same syllable—the most prominent syllable within an accentual phrase (Palmer 1922). By contrast, in French, there are (at least) two positions within a polysyllabic word that have a potential for hosting an intonational morpheme: the beginning of the word may receive emphatic stress (a morpheme of intonational intensification), which typically manifests itself phonetically by an articulatory strengthening of the consonant (resulting in an increase in the consonant-to-vowel length ratio) and an increase in subglottal pressure, among other correlates (Carton, Hirst et al. 1976, Fónagy 2001); the last syllable is where an intonational morpheme that marks continuation may be realised; it typically manifests itself by lengthening, an F0 excursion, and a decrease in intensity, or at least no increase (Delattre 1938). To sum up, the complexity of the phenomena at issue is a formidable challenge.

Prosodic Constituents in French

59

3.2. A model of intonation as superposition Experiments in speech engineering tend to support models of intonation as superposition. These models (which go back at least to Öhman 1967 and Fujisaki and Nagashima 1969) are referred to as “Contour Interaction models” by Ladd 1992, a somewhat restrictive term, since the emphasis of superpositional models is in fact not so much on the primitives of intonational description (contours vs. level tones) as on the recognition of the interplay of several levels of structure and the use of global and semi-global components, superimposed onto local ones. In using prosodic information for speech recognition, the degree of juncture between successive syllables is computed relative to the sum of junctures observed over the whole sentence; there is no fixed number of levels from the point of view of production—a standpoint which makes sense from a perceptual point of view, since it is known that listeners can go by fine details in their perception of boundaries (see Lehiste 1979). The effects of prosodic groupings are not simply local. Sentence-finality affects (at least) the last two phonological words. The closeness of the link between successive words is to be estimated relatively to the realisation of broader constituents and to the speaker’s habits. 4. Conclusion The research community has now been made aware of the many functions of intonation (Fónagy, this volume). As Rossi 1999:9 points out, the issues of the relation of intonation and syntax, on the one hand, and intonation and pragmatics, on the other, have often been addressed, whereas interactions between syntax and pragmatics have received little attention. At present, most studies (including the present one) tackle only two or three factors, such as phrasing and sentence mode, or phrasing and contrastive accent and describe a limited number of observed regularites. An increasing number of distinctive prosodic patterns (at the pragmatic level, and the expressive level) come to light, for French as well as for other languages (witness the abundance of papers about prosody in Phonetica and Journal of Phonetics, at the International Congresses of Phonetic Sciences and at the biannual Speech Prosody conferences); how they cohere together, and to what extent they make up a system, is not yet fully known. Towards a typological overview: In view of the prominent role of intonational-syntactic boundaries in French, it is tempting to place this language in a typological category of boundary languages, as opposed to stress languages such as English (a suggestion put forward by Vaissière 2002). French is by no means exceptional in this respect: numerous languages (though admittedly less studied, e.g. Newar, a language of Nepal)

60

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

are likewise non-tone, non-stress languages. However, the name ‘boundary language’ is misleading, in that all known languages (as far as we know), whatever their accentual system, have demarcative intonation, and are thus entitled to being called “boundary languages”; much as the opposition between “tone languages” and “intonation languages” is flawed, in that all languages, including tone languages, possess intonation (as is known since Chao Yuen-ren 1933 for Chinese, for instance). It therefore seems advisable to provide a negative typological characterisation of French, as a non-tone, non-stress language. It has been speculated that French is currently undergoing a major change in its prosodic system (Fónagy 1980); in the present state of the language, due to its flexibility, it lends itself to a host of complex, to some extent speaker-specific strategies (Fónagy 1982). In the 1970s, the project to achieve speaker-independent, rate-independent recognition of prosody in French ran up against the evidence of the variety of individual strategies: some speakers favour syntactic phrasing, others go mainly by pragmatic intonation, others tend to build units that have a roughly equal number of syllables, yet others favour a small set of contours which they tend to reproduce, sometimes as an alternation of rises and falls. This, however, does not detract from the regularity of syntactic intonation when considered in isolation. As synthesis by concatenation reaches its limits in terms of naturalness, specialists are again facing fundamental issues, and wish to feed more phonetic/linguistic knowledge into synthesis systems; this state of affairs may foster a growing interest in superpositional accounts of prosody. References Armstrong, L. and I.C. Ward. 1926. Handbook of English Intonation. Cambridge: Heffner. Bacri, N. and M.-H. Banel. 1993. “Rhythmic patterns and lexical parsing in French.” Proceedings of ESCA Workshop on Prosody, Prosody-1993, 120-123. Bolinger, D.L.M. 1978. “Intonation across languages.” Universals of Human Language, vol. 2: Phonology, ed. by J.H. Greenberg, 471-524. Stanford: Standford University Press. Carton, F., D. Hirst, A. Marchal and A. Séguinot, eds. 1976. L’accent d’insistance. Studia Phonetica 12. Montréal: Didier. Chao Yuen-ren. 1933. “Tone and intonation in Chinese.” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 4:3.121-134. Coustenoble, H. and L. Armstrong. 1937. Studies in French intonation. Cambridge: Heffer. Delattre, P. 1938. “L’accent final en français: accent d’intensité, accent de

Prosodic Constituents in French

61

hauteur, accent de durée.” The French Review 12:2.141-145. Delattre, P. 1965. Comparing the phonetic features of English, French, German and Spanish: An interim report. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag. Delattre, P. 1966. Studies in French and Comparative Phonetics. The Hague/London: Mouton and co. Di Cristo, A. 1998. “Intonation in French.” Intonation systems: a survey of twenty languages, ed. by D. Hirst and A. Di Cristo, 195-218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duez, D. and Y. Nishinuma. 1985. “Le rythme en français: alternance des durées syllabiques.” Travaux de l’Institut de Phonétique d’Aix-en-Provence, vol. 10, 151-169. Fónagy, I. 1980. “L’accent français, accent probabilitaire: dynamique d’un changement prosodique.” L’accent en français contemporain, ed. by I. Fónagy and P. Léon: Studia Phonetica 15. Fónagy, I. 1982. “Variation et normes prosodiques.” Folia Linguistica XVI:1-4.19-39. Fónagy, I. 2001. Languages within language. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: Benjamins. Fougeron, C. 2001. “Articulatory properties of initial segments in several prosodic constituents in French.” Journal of Phonetics 29:2.109-135. Fujisaki, H. and S. Nagashima. 1969. “A model for the synthesis of pitch contours.” Annual Report of the Engineering Research Institute, University of Tokyo 28.53-60. Gee, J.P. and F. Grosjean. 1983. “Performance structures: A psycholinguistic and linguistic appraisal.” Cognitive Psychology 15.411-458. Gendrot, C. 2005. Aspects hiérarchiques, physiologiques et acoustiques de syllabes accentuées en français: le cas des mots monosyllabiques et de syllabes initiales et finales de mots lexicaux, Ph.D., Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. Grammont, M. 1933. Traité de phonétique. Paris: Delagrave. Gussenhoven, C. 2002. Intonation and Interpretation: Phonetics and Phonology. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2002, ed. by B. Bel and I. Marlien, Aix en Provence, 47-58. Hallé, P., D. de Boysson-Bardies and M.M. Vihman. 1991. “Beginnings of prosodic organization: intonation and duration patterns of disyllables produced by Japanese and French infants.” Language and Speech 34:4.299-318. Hirst, D. and A. Di Cristo. 1998. Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ladd, R. 1992. “An introduction to intonational phonology.” Papers in

62

Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE and Alexis MICHAUD

laboratory phonology II: Gesture, segment, prosody, ed. by G. J. Docherty and R. Ladd, Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Langlais, P. 1995. Traitement de la prosodie en reconnaissance automatique de la parole. Ph. D., Université d’Avignon. Lehiste, I. 1975. “The phonetic structure of paragraphs.” Structure and Process in Speech Perception, ed. by A. Cohen and S. G. Noteboom, 195-206. Berlin: Springer. Lehiste, I. 1979. “Perception of sentence and paragraph boundaries.” Frontiers of Speech Communication Research, ed. by B. Lindblom and S. Öhman, 191-201. London: Academic Press. Lieberman, P. 1967. Intonation, Perception and Language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Lucci, V. 1979. “L’accent didactique.” Studia Phonetica 15.107-121. Maeda, S. 1976. A Characterization of American English Intonation. Ph. D. dissertation, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA. Martin, Ph. 1981. “Pour une théorie de l’intonation.” L’intonation, de l’acoustique à la sémantique, ed. by M. Rossi, A. Di Cristo, D. Hirst, P. Martin and Y. Yishinuma, 234-271. Paris: Klincksieck. Monnin, P. and F. Grosjean. 1993. “Les structures de performance en français: caractérisation et prédiction.” L’Année Psychologique 93.9-30. Nasri, M.K. 1992. L’architecture du système de reconnaissance automatique de la parole DIRA. Thèse de Docteur ingénieur, Université de Grenoble. Öhman, S. 1967. Word and sentence intonation: a quantitative model. Stockholm: Speech Transmission Laboratory Quarterly Progress and Status Report, KTH, 2-3. 20-54. Palmer, H.E. 1922. English Intonation, with Systematic Exercises. Cambridge: Heffer. Pierrehumbert, J. 1979. “The perception of fundamental frequency declination.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 66.363-369. Rossi, M. 1967. “L’accent, le mot et ses limites.” Nouvelles perspectives en phonétique, ed. by B. Malmberg, D. B. Fry and R. Lancia, 81-85. Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles. Rossi, M. 1999. L’intonation, le système du français: description et modélisation. Gap/Paris: Ophrys. Selkirk, E. 1972. The phrase phonology of English and French. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT. Selkirk, E. 2000. “The interaction of constraints on prosodic phrasing.” Prosody: Theory and Experiment, ed. by M. Horne, 231-261. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Thorsen, N. 1980. “A study of the perception of sentence intonation: Evidence from Danish.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Prosodic Constituents in French

63

67.1014-1030. Vaissière, J. 1971. Contribution à la synthèse par règles du français. Ph. D., Université de Grenoble. Vaissière, J. 1975. “Further note on French prosody.” Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Quarterly Progress Report 115.251-262. Vaissière, J. 1976. Quelques analyses perceptives en français. Proceedings of VIIIe Journées d’Etudes sur la Parole, Aix-en-Provence, 193-208. Vaissière, J. 1983. “Language-independent prosodic features.” Prosody: Models and Measurements, ed. by A. Cutler and R. Ladd, 53-66. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Vaissière, J. 1986. “Variance and Invariance at the Word Level.” Invariance and Variability in Speech Process, ed. by J. S. Perkell and D. Klatt, 534-539. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Vaissière, J. 1988. “The use of prosodic parameters in automatic speech recognition.” Recent advances in speech understanding and dialog systems, Berlin: Springer. Vaissière, J. 1995. “Phonetic explanations for cross-linguistic similarities.” Phonetica 52.123-130. Vaissière, J. 1997. “Langues, prosodie et syntaxe.” Traitement Automatique des Langues 38:1. Vaissière, J. 2002. “Cross-linguistic prosodic transcription: French vs. English.” Problems and methods of experimental phonetics. In honour of the 70th anniversary of Pr. L.V. Bondarko, ed. by N. B. Volskaya, N. D. Svetozarova and P. A. Skrelin, Moscow.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis of Intonation in Discourse in French Piet MERTENS 1. Introduction We propose an approach for analysing the role of intonation in discourse. It aims to make explicit the contribution of intonation to the structuring of information and to the expression of the speaker’s attitude towards both the information content and the communication context. The role of intonation in discourse is of interest to many linguistic domains, including the study of prosody (e.g. Rossi 1999, Di Cristo et al. 2004), discourse analysis (e.g. Roulet et al. 1985, Simon 2003), and the study of information structure (Lambrecht 1994, 2001). Analysis is frequently based upon an interpretation of the meaning of the interaction. Certain discourse analysis models for French start by segmenting the speech chain into minimal discourse units, then establish a hierarchical organisation of these units based on the semantic, logical or pragmatic relations between them. Only then are the ways examined in which intonation contributes to this segmentation and structuring of discourse. Information structure analysis, based on K. Lambrecht’s approach, goes a long way in making semantic and pragmatic information explicit. Such analysis makes use of notions including presupposition, assertion, aboutness, « mémoire discursive », topic, and focus. These refer to facts which cannot be observed directly, and assume the presence and activation of information and knowledge in the mental representation of the speakers. The interpretative nature of such an analysis raises some methodological questions. As the meaning of an utterance is based simultaneously on several aspects, which include lexical information, morphological elements, syntactic construction and pragmatic context, how the semantics of prosodic forms is interpreted is critical, especially with regard to establishing objectivity. The analysis proposed here aims at reducing the amount of interpretation by the linguist and at making verifiable and reproducible statements about the contributions of prosody to syntactic structure and to the organisation of information in discourse. This procedure exploits empirical properties of spoken language, either syntactic or prosodic, as well as the relationship between both aspects and their synchronisation.

66

Piet MERTENS

At the syntactic level the speech chain is organised into local dependency networks (defined below). The very nature of dependency relations assigns to each dependent a particular type, acting either as a valency argument, a peripheral complement or an adjunct. In turn, these autonomous dependency networks may be embedded in larger syntactic or prosodic constructions, as with dislocation, cleft, pseudo-cleft, by a general mechanism of prosodic grouping, by register changes, and so forth. It is possible to calculate the unmarked prosodic properties of such networks and constructions. This procedure identifies syllables with word stress, delimits prosodic units and assigns them prosodic boundaries of relative strength. This results in a prediction of unmarked prosody, which will be read alongside the actual, pronounced prosody. Each element by which the actual prosody differs from the predicted form acquires a marked status and as such introduces prosodic meaning. Some prosodic forms make the informational status of an utterance part explicit, while others may fulfil a pragmatic, emotional or additional function. The structure of this article follows the analysis stages. First (§2) the descriptive framework used in syntactic analysis is briefly presented. Then (§3) the representation of prosodic forms and their semantics is discussed. The next section (§4) examines the relations between the prosodic and syntactic levels. Finally (§5) these elements are combined in a procedure for discourse analysis based on the prediction of default intonation from syntactic information. 2. The descriptive framework for syntactic analysis For syntactic analysis, we adopt the framework of dependency grammar proposed by L. Tesnière (1959), refined with concepts from valency grammar, in particular from the pronominal approach (Eynde et al. 1978, Blanche-Benveniste et al. 1984, Blanche-Benveniste et al. 1990, Eynde & Mertens 2003). The choice of this framework is no coincidence, as the combination of dependency relations and valency allows for a simple and concise formulation of rules on the interfacing of syntax and prosody, whereas a conventional approach based upon constituency would require more complex rules and in some cases would be inadequate. In dependency grammar, syntactic structure is seen as a network of dependency relations between words. This network results from elementary relations between word pairs, called connections. A connection (Tesnière’s connexion) is an asymmetrical relation between two elements: a head and a dependent. The linguistic debate about the notion of the head is not engaged, as dependency relations may be defined without it. Whereas a head may have several dependents, each dependent has only one head. A dependent

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

67

that is governed by a head may in turn govern other elements. This results in a network in which all elements are either directly or indirectly connected. Each network contains a root; it is the single element in the network that does not depend upon another element. rencontre

collègue

Christine

un

bon

italien

très

The structural order of an utterance corresponds to the network of hierarchical relations between its elements, and the linear order to the sequence of these elements in the speech chain or in writing. The representation above (Tesnière’s stemma) indicates the structural order of an utterance: each edge indicates a connection and the vertical position of the connected elements designates their hierarchical relation, the head being placed above its dependents. In the stemma, linear order is not necessarily respected. As intonation is inseparable from linear order, an alternative but equivalent representation is used in which connections and their orientation are indicated by arrows.

Christine rencontre un très bon collègue italien

A dependency cluster (Tesnière’s nœud) corresponds to the network formed by a head along with all (directly or indirectly) dependent elements. A cluster may contain embedded clusters. Clusters may be classified into verbal, nominal, adjectival and adverbial clusters according to the part of speech of their head. Dependency relations cannot be freely exchanged. The relation between a verb and a pronominal dependent differs from that between a noun and its adjectival determiner: it is impossible to swap both dependents. Moreover, verb dependents are non-interchangeable in most cases: « Peter observes the movement », but « * The movement observes Peter ». As a result the type

68

Piet MERTENS

and nature of dependency relations should be specified. Tesnière distinguishes two major classes of verbal dependents: actants (valency complements) and circonstants (peripheral complements), as well as three subtypes for the former. However his classification is based on semantic rather than syntactic considerations. Below a more detailed classification of verbal complements is given. Obviously, the dependency relation does not cover the full range of syntactic relations. Tesnière provides a general syntactic mechanism of type casting which he calls translation, which enables a form (word), called the translative (translatif), to combine with a cluster of a given type in order to form a cluster of another type. For instance in « le maire de Paris », the preposition « de » allows the noun « Paris » to form a cluster « de Paris » that behaves like an adjective, similar to « le maire parisien ». livre le de Pierre

Tesnière treats the following categories as translatives: prepositions, auxiliaries, relative pronouns and certain conjunctions. This casting mechanism is also applied to certain derivational morphemes, such as the infinitive marker. a

I donnés

Jean

les

donne

Jean

le

O à Pierre

regardais

regardais je

personne

lui la

A qui dansait

je

O vals- -er danseurs

les

The description of the relation bewteen syntax and prosody requires further extensions to the apparatus for syntactic analysis. We will firstly consider the typology of complements, then the nature of valency complements, followed by the notion of syntactic construction. Among the dependency relations headed by a full verb, and the corresponding complements, several types may be distinguished, namely, valency arguments, peripheral complements and adjuncts. Valency arguments (compléments essentiels, Tesnière’s actants) are largely mandatory and vary from one verb to the next (« il observe le mouvement », « *il observe au mouvement »), and even from one verb sense

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

69

to the next (« il affecte une grande détresse », « on affectera cette somme au ravalement », « son départ l’a beaucoup affecté »). Together, the arguments specific to a given verb use constitute the subcategorisation frame. A verb is saturated when all its valency arguments are present in the linear form (i.e. in the cluster dependent on that verb). Peripheral complements may be used with all full verbs and are always optional (« le matin, dans son atelier, il travaille méticuleusement »). The pronominal approach proposes a typology of verbal dependents in French, based on the proportionality relation between a lexicalized constituent and a pronoun. For an introduction, cf. Eynde et al. 2002, Eynde & Mertens 2003. The term adjunct (adjonction, adjoint) will be used to designate a verbal complement lacking a relation with a proportional pronoun. décidément, en voilà un bel exemple je ne le pense pas je suis d’un autre avis, comme tu sais avec ça, je me demande comment on va faire puisque tu insistes, il prendra le train suivant

The term verb kernel will be used to indicate a sequence in which the syntactic structure corresponds to a saturated verb cluster consisting of the verbal head and all required valency arguments, possibly one or more optional ones, peripheral complements, but no adjuncts. When the root is a finite verb form, the cluster will be called a finite verb kernel. The term (verb) construction will be used here to designate a sequence of elements, with saturated valency, in which each part can be identified on the basis of its syntactic or prosodic properties, or on the basis of its lexical identity (e.g. « ce » in « c’est lui qui y a pensé »). Main examples of syntactic properties of the construction parts include the root status of the verb, the syntactic function of the dependents (i.e. the nature of the dependency relation between the head and the dependent), a coreference relation. The following table enumerates some constructions in which the prosodic properties will be analyzed in detail below. Terms used in the pronominal approach1 and widely used terminology will both be employed. The abovementioned constructions can be found for almost all full verbs. The list of construction is not intended to be exhaustive. The unmarked construction (dispositif direct) consists of a verb kernel with unmarked word order, i.e. where word order is predictable on the basis 1

Blanche-Benveniste et al. (1984 : 37, 144ss), Blanche-Benveniste et al. (1990 : 55-66)

70

Piet MERTENS

of the clitic or lexical nature of the forms, cf. Blanche-Benveniste et al. 1984: 145. Dispositif direct Double marquage à gauche Double marquage à droite Dispositif d’extraction

Il jette les livres Les livres, il les jette. Elle lui profite, cette attitude. C’est les livres qu’il jette. C’est à lui que cette attitude profite Pseudo-clivée Pseudo-cleft Ce qu’il jette, ce sont les livres Dispositif de binarisation Dislocation A lui cette attitude profite Presentational construction Il y a Pierre qui jette les livres. Restrictive construction Il n’y a qu’à lui que cette attitude profite. Combinations of constructions Les livres, c’est lui qui les jette. Left Dislocation Right Dislocation Cleft

3. The descriptive framework for prosody This section enumerates prosodic concepts required to present the approach. These concepts are simply outlined here. For a full introduction to the model used, the reader is referred to Mertens et al 2001a : §3. Additional references to publications are provided in the footnotes. 3.1. The intonation unit Most intonation models for French adopt a prosodic unit consisting of a sequence of syllables with a caracteristic pitch contour. Terminology varies substantially. The term intonation group2 (groupe intonatif, GI or IG) used here designates a sequence of one or more syllables in which the last full syllable carries final stress (defined below). In the example below, pronounced by a female speaker, the underlined syllables are stressed and the resulting segmentation into intonation units is indicated by brackets. The illustration below shows the prosodic parameters of intensity and fundamental frequency for the utterance, as well as the simulated perceived pitch (thick line), as obtained in a prosogram, cf. Mertens 2004b.

2

For a detailed definition of the « groupe intonatif », see e.g. Mertens 1987, Mertens et al 2001a :§3.3.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

71

(comme dans les pages jaunes) (de l’annuaire) (en France) (catégories) (professionnelles) 65

66

67 G=0.32/T2 vnuclei

100

90

150 Hz

80

_ k m d



l e p a

dansles pages 70 c_omme



o n d l a nε

jaunes

Groult

 

de l' annuaire en

f

  France

s

œ k a t e g   i p f e s j  n ε l _ euh catégories professionnelles _ Prosogram v1.4.3

Once the intonation group is defined and can be located consistently in the speech chain, an inventory of the pitch contours accompanying such units can be made, in order to examine the relation between such units and the entities of the syntactic layer, to facilitate the interpretation of the semantics of these contours, and to observe their use and function in speech communication. The speech chain can then be analyzed as a sequence of intonation units involving a linguistic code. 3.2. Two stress types Our definition of the GI is based upon prosodic stress. However, locating the stressed syllables is not without difficulty. Stress remains an inevitable ingredient for almost all phonological models of prosody. Indeed, the communicative status of a pitch form, e.g. a pitch rise or a high level tone, varies according to whether or not that form appears on a stressed syllable. Stress is an essential concept, because it constitutes the anchor point for the alignment between the syllabic chain and pitch contours. If intonation were reduced to a sequence of pitch movements, it would still be necessary to position such movements on the linear chain, which can only be done on the basis of stress. In the case of French, the issue of stress is complicated further by the fact that there are two types of stress in the language: final stress (accent final, AF) and initial stress (accent initial, AI). They need to be distinguished because only final stress entails a right hand boundary of the intonation unit. Both types of stress are distinguished by their articulatory and distributional properties3. 3.3. Pitch levels and tones There are many ways to characterize pitch variations in speech, depending on the nature of the representation. The illustration given above 3

cf. Mertens 1987, 2002.

72

Piet MERTENS

shows both the acoustic and simulated perceptual representations. In linguistic description, symbolic (either phonological or morphological) representations are used; here pitch variation is characterized rather coarsely by a sequence of discrete elements, viewed as pitch targets. In such symbolic representations, the pitch continuum is reduced to a small set of pitch levels, such that each target is on one level. Common notation systems show a large diversity as to the number of pitch levels and the location of the targets. The most widely used system has just two pitch levels, which is clearly insufficient for the description of pitch variations commonly found in spontaneous speech. In our work on French, we have adopted the system proposed by Dooren & Eynde (1982), in which pitch levels are established progressively from left to right on the basis of both local pitch intervals and the speaker’s pitch range. The low (L) and high (H) pitch levels are separated by a major melodic interval. The extra low (L-) and extra high (H+) levels correspond to the floor and the ceiling of the pitch range, respectively. The levels L and H may be raised or lowered due to the presence of a minor interval, resulting in the levels /L, /H, \L and \H. The size of the major interval is defined in a relative manner, on the basis of the pitch range in the utterance, which typically corresponds to an interval of ≥ 5 ST (semitones). The term tone is used here to indicate the pitch level associated with a syllable, or the set of pitch levels, in case of an intrasyllabic pitch glide. 3.4. Internal structure of the tone unit Speech corpora provide numerous samples of pitch contours found on intonation units. These contours mainly differ through features such as the number of syllables in the unit, the phonetic nature of the sounds in these syllables, and the presence of an initial accent. The systematic analysis if such contours reveals an underlying internal structure, in which the syllable carrying final stress (AF) occupies a central position, given its obligatory character in the intonation group. Some intonation groups contain only this final stressed syllable (« oui ! », « où ? », « là ! »). In others it is preceeded by an unstressed syllable (« ici », « elle vient ») or by several (« il arrive », « on en reprend »). This results in two parts: the stressed syllable and the preceeding sequence of unstressed syllables. In intonation groups also containing an initial stress (« c’est inacceptable »), the internal structure consists of up to four parts: leading unstressed series (unstr), initial stress (AI), unstressed series, final stress (AF). The structural representation below resumes all forms into a single structural pattern, with optional parts indicated between parentheses. GI = ((unstr) (AI)) (unstr) AF

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

73

The internal organisation of the intonation group is suggested not only by the presence of the stresses, but also by the observation that pitch contours found for complete groups can be viewed as concatenations of pitch forms found in each of their component parts. In the illustration below, contours 1A to 1D are identical to the exception of the pitch movement of the final stressed syllable. In contrast, contours 1A, 2A and 3A share the contour for their final stress, but differ elsewhere in the intonation unit.

Given the internal structure of the GI and the notion of tone, a contour can be analysed componentially, as a sequence of tones. 3.5. The appendix In the following utterances, the final part of the utterance (« en quelque sorte », « les autres ») will be pronounced with a flat pitch contour on an extra-low pitch level, without stress, and with decreased intensity. This contour will be referred to as the appendix contour. Note that the appendix is found only after certain final tones. et c’est comme ça que l’histoire marche en quelque sorte (R. Barthes) j’aime bien comprendre comment ça marche les autres (F. Giroud)

The lack of a stressed syllable in such sequences makes segmentation into GI units problematic. This can be solved if the appendix is either considered to be a special type of intonation group (GI), or as an optional part of the GI, following the final stress (AF). Both analyses present certain advantages, but as the appendix never appears alone, without a preceeding

74

Piet MERTENS

GI, we have opted for the second analysis. As a result, the structural pattern of the GI is modified as follows: GI = ((unstr) (AI)) (unstr) AF (appendix)

Table 1 shows the tone inventory for all positions in the intonation group. unstr l h

l h

AI H L

unstr l h

l h

AF L-LH+H+ HLH/H /HH \HH HL LH HH /LL LL \LL

appendix l-...l-

h...h

Table 1. Distribution of tones in the maximal intonation group (i.e. containing the maximum number of positions). AF = accent final, AI = accent initial, unstr = unstressed sequence. Horizontal lines indicate constraints on the combination of elements in the paradigms crossed by the line. For instance: l- tones only combine with tones L-L-, HL- and H+H+ of part AF.

3.6. Interpreting the intonation contours To describe the meaning of intonation contours, we start from the pitch form associated with the parts of the intonation group. For each of these forms, all occurrences can be collected in a speech corpus and the meaning associated with a particular form can largely be grasped by examining the meaning in the particular uses and attributing a common denominator. Considering the tones in final stress position, each final tone in French implies a boundary of a given strength. The largest boundary corresponds to a final tone ending in pitch level L- (i.e. tones L-L-, HL-, and LL-4). The presence of an L- tone results in the completion of a maximal prosodic unit, and hence in a completed information object. The tones \LL, LL, /LL, HH, 4

LL- is a variant of L-L-.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

75

H/H indicate increasing boundary levels. For these tones, the boundary level increases with pitch level. Certain final tones go beyond this demarcative and organising function, informing the listener about how the speaker conceives the information in the intonation group carrying these tones. The table below provides a short description of the meaning of such tones. The suggested characterisation of intonational meaning is not discussed here, as the precise meaning attributed to these tones is irrelevant for the behaviour of the model. Initial stress is a means to mark the start of an information objet in the linear chain. This allows for a delimitation of strings of lexical elements within the domain of an intonation group, from the AI to the first following AF, or alternatively, to delimit a string exceeding the limits of a single intonation group, from the AI to the AF with a major boundary. Initial stress is particularly useful to highlight lexical elements that do not carry lexical stress and do not allow final stress. In spontaneous speech the unstressed penultimate syllable of the GI plays an important role. As it is followed by a stressed syllable, which itself carries a tone, it is not always clear to what extent the semantics of the contour should be attributed to one or the other. The table indicates the two most common combinations: « …h L-L- » and « …h \HH ». The appendix has a particular distribution; its role will be discussed below. Still other prosodic phenomena play a role, such as register changes (marking parenthesis), declinations and inclinations, used as organisational or expressive means. However, analysis of these phenomena is beyond the scope of this study.

76

Piet MERTENS tone

general meaning

connotation in context

L-

finality

assertiveness, peremptory

H/H

major continuation

HH

intermediate continuation

/LL, LL, \LL

minor continuation

HL, HL-

center of attention, focus

important or new information, involvement of speaker

LH

major continuation

invitation to listener to respond

H+H+

involvement of speaker in message

conviction, important information

AI

start of object

stress on object

...h L-L-

evident to speaker

assertiveness, peremptory

...h \HH

evident to listeners

common wisdom

appendix

background information

accessory information

Table 2. Characterisation of the general meaning of individual tones and their connotations in context.

To sum up, intonation contours convey various types of information, of a demarcative, organising, pragmatic, and communicative nature, which is expressed by the tones at specific locations in the contour. The resulting meaning is obtained compositionnally by combining the contributions of the contour parts, i.e. of the tones of the syllables. 3.7. Prosodic grouping Intonation can disambiguate strings which would otherwise be ambiguous. In some cases this is related to alternative segmentations into intonation groups (a, b), in others to the constitution of larger blocks due to the relative strength of prosodic boundaries (c, d). This in fact results from a general mechanism of prosodic grouping.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis (a) (b) (c) (d)

77

(soixante dix-sept) (quatre-vingt) (treize) (zéro zéro) (dix-huit) (soixante) (dix-sept) (quatre-vingt treize) (zéro zéro) (dix-huit) (le bébéHH) (il dortL-L-) (avec sa mèreHH) (ça va très bienL-L-) (le bébéHH) (il dort/LL) (avec sa mèreL-L-) (ça va très bienL-L-)

Each contour of an intonation group implies a prosodic boundary, given by the final tone. With the exception of the maximal boundary, associated with the L- tone, boundaries are proportional to the pitch level at the pitch peak within the final stressed syllable: the higher the pitch, the stronger the boundary. The sequence of intonation groups with their respective boundaries gives rise to both their hierarchical organisation, and their articulation in prosodic constituents. The principle of prosodic grouping is very simple. When a boundary is followed by a stronger one, their intonation groups merge into a larger unit, while preserving the internal hierarchy, resulting in a prosodic package (paquet intonatif). For a sequence of two boundaries of equal strength or when the first is the stronger, no package is formed; both units simply remain independent. To obtain the organisation of prosodic packages for a given sequence of intonation groups, the basic principle is applied to each pair of successive groups, starting with the first and shifting to the next group after each application.

The example5 above contains four intonations groups, indicated between brackets. The boundary of the first group is weaker than that of the next, hence both groups form a package, as indicated by the parentheses. Next, we compare the boundaries of groups 2 and 3, which illustrates the opposite situation: strong boundary followed by weak boundary, hence juxtaposition. Groups 3 and 4 show another case of inclusion. Moreover, since tone L-Lcorresponds to the maximal boundary, a second order package is obtained, incorporating the two packages already found: « l’institut de phonétique » and « de l’université de Bruxelles ». It is significant to consider in how far this kind of grouping is based on the final tones or on other information, such as syntactic structure or meaning. To answer this question, a small experiment is undertaken in which the tones of groups 1 and 2 are exchanged: the first receives tone HH, the second tone /LL. When pronounced, this results in an utterance that is illformed, in spite of the fact that the syntactic structure and semantics remain 5

In this example, the low (L) pitch level is noted as B, and L- is noted as B-.

78

Piet MERTENS

unchanged.

Prosodic grouping is evidently a crucial phenomenon: it allows the analysis of relations between prosodic and syntactic structure. Until this point our research was limited to the analysis and classification of observed intonations. In what follows the focus shifts to the possible intonations for a given linear sequence, and to the question whether or not they are well formed in the language. 3.8. The stress group A word sequence may be pronounced in several ways, by varying the number of final stresses and hence the number of intonation groups. In the example below, utterance (b) has more groups than (a), as indicated by the brackets. In order to account for the observed variants, we postulate an intermediate level of representation between the GI and the words, consisting of stress groups (SG, or groupes accentuels, GA), which are predictable. In forms (a, b), each intonation groups includes one or more stress groups. (a) (b)

[nous avons visité] [son nouvel appartement] [nous avons][visité] [son nouvel][appartement]

The rule for stress group formation refers to the presence or absence of lexical stress. Clitics are words without lexical stress, whereas non-clitics carry lexical stress on a given syllable. The list of parts of speech for both word classes will be given below. Stress group formation rule6. Each non-clitic element constitutes the centre of a stress group. Clitic elements are incorporated in the stress group of the non-clitic element they syntactically depend upon. However, when a clitic is separated from its head by a non-clitic, that clitic is incorporated in the stress group it precedes: in “ce magnifique bateau”, clitic “ce” forms a stress group with “magnifique”. The prosodic skeleton of an utterance represents the relations between the segmental and prosodic layers. For each syllable it indicates whether it can carry a final tone. On the tier labelled AL (for “accent lexical”, word stress) a small circle represents the final full syllable of a non-clitic. On the tier labelled GA, each syllable is indicated by a dash, when it can carry stress, 6

For furher detail, see Mertens 1993: 30-40, 1997: 34-5.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

79

or otherwise by a dot. The parentheses indicate the boundaries of the resulting stress groups. (nous) (on y cherchait) (un nouvel) (appartement) AL ( o (. . . o (. . o ( . . . o GA ( - ) (. . . - ) (. . - ) ( . . . - )

Clitic elements (such as clitic pronouns and determiners) merge with the stress group to the side of their head, which is either to the right, or to the left: (lui avait-elle) (envoyé) (cette lettre) AL ( . . o . (. . o ( . o GA ( . . . ) (. . -) ( . )

The final stress falls on the last full syllable of the intonation group. When this last syllable belongs to a clitic element (for instance a clitic pronoun, as in “avait-elle”), then it is this clitic that carries the stress7. Stressed syllables are indicated by a plus sign in the tier labelled GI.

AL GA GI GI

(lui ( . ( . ( . ( .

avait-elle) . o . . . ) . . + ) . . -

(envoyé) (cette lettre ) (. . o ( . o (. . -) ( . ) (. . +) ( . + ) . . +) ( . + )

An intonation group (GI) consists of one or more stress groups (GA), but the way in which the latter are grouped depends upon several factors. For instance, adjacent final stresses (or stress clash) are avoided8. The possible groupings also depend on the syntactic relations between the stress groups (cf. infra). Sometimes a speaker forms a rather long intonation group to present the sequence as a single information object9. Other factors, that have little to do with information, play a role as well such as speech rate or speech type (read vs spontaneous speech). 3.9. Word stress and part of speech categories The clitic nature of an element depends both on its position in the 7 8 9

There is an exception: clitic “je” never carries final stress, even when following its verbal head. cf. Mertens 1992 cf. Mertens 1987: 111, 1993: 49-50.

80

Piet MERTENS

syntactic construction and its part of speech: « nous » is non-clitic in « nous, on le leur demandera » and clitic in « nous le leur demanderons ». Except for syntactically marked positions that require non-clitic forms, as described below, the following rules can be applied. The following categories are non-clitic elements in French: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs (except for the particle “ne”), numerals and “mots-phrases” 10 . Pronouns behave differently according to their minor category. Some personal pronouns are always clitic: “je, tu, il, ils, on, le, la, les, me, te, se...”; whereas others, like “moi, toi, eux...”, are non-clitic. A small number of personal pronouns, “nous, vous, elle, elles, lui, leur”, are clitically ambiguous: in fact they are homonymous pairs, one belonging to a clitic paradigm, the other to a non-clitic paradigm. All other pronouns are non-clitic: indefinites, interrogatives and relative pronouns (except “que”), and demonstratives (“ceux-ci, celles-là...”, except “ce, c’”). Determiners are clitic, except indefinites (“certains enfants”) and predeterminers (“tous mes livres”). Prepositions and conjunctions function as clitics in most cases. Compound prepositions (“à la suite de”) and compound conjunctions (“à condition que”) function as sequences of elements each of which is potentially clitic depending upon its part of speech11. 4. Intonation and syntax 4.1. Agreement between intonation and syntax Two elements in a dependency relation are connected. In « cet étudiant nous étonne beaucoup », the pairs of connected elements are « cet + étudiant », « nous + étonne », « étudiant + étonne » and « étonne + beaucoup ». In intonation analysis, significant dependency relations are those between adjacent stress groups, as found in the prosodic skeleton of the linear form. In French, prosodic organisation relies on the strength of the boundaries carried by the tones in final stress position, and stress groups are the smallest units that can carry final stress and as such can participate in prosodic structuring. Two stress groups are connected if their respective heads connect. In the following example, the pairs of adjacent connected stress groups are « cet étudiant + nous étonne » and « nous étonne + beaucoup ». In general, as with stress groups, two objects are connected if their local heads are connected. 10

11

A term used by Tesnière 1959: 94-96. These are elements that do not depend on others and that form an independent utterance, e.g. “non, bonjour, salut, parbleu, soit, allez, voyons...”. In “à condition que tu partes”, stress falls on the syllable “tion” rather than on the syllable “que”. In contrast with clitic pronouns, final prepositions and conjunctions that are part of a prepositional or conjunction compound are not integrated in the GA they precede.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

Cet étudiant

nous étonne

81

beaucoup

A verb kernel may be pronounced in several ways, by varying intonation. However these intonations are well formed only if they respect certain constraints made explicit in the prosodic skeleton. Stress position is constrained: only syllables in final position of a stress group can carry a final stress (AF) and only the start (initial or second syllable) of lexical element can carry initial stress (AI). The utterance « ce livre médiocre se vend rarement » contains four stress groups. It can be pronounced in four, three, or two intonation groups. So, certain prosodic variants of the same string differ by the number of final stresses. This type of variation can be described as the merger of two or more stress groups into a single intonation group. In (a), each stress group is realized as an independent intonation group; in (b), the first two stress groups are merged into a single intonation group. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

(ce livre) (médiocre) (se vend) (rarement) (ce livre médiocre) (se vend) (rarement) (ce livre) (médiocre) (se vend rarement) (ce livre médiocre) (se vend rarement) *(ce livre) (médiocre se vend) (rarement) ?(ce livre médiocre se vend rarement)

However (e), with groups 2 and 3 merged, is not well-formed. The explanation lies in the presence or absence of a dependency relation. Whereas in examples (a) to (d), the parts that are grouped together, are also connected, this is not the case for (e).

(ce livre) (médiocre) (se vend) (rarement)

This is captured by the rule below. (MCSG) Merger of connected stress groups: Only stress groups that are connected may be merged into one intonation group. Variant (f) is unnatural, although the MCSG constraint is respected. This is explained by the length of the linear chain: an intonation group of six syllables is exceptional, although not impossible. The following examples all consist of two stress groups. The common pronunciation as two intonation groups, exemplified in the first two items,

82

Piet MERTENS

would be strange for the third, because it would result in two adjacent syllables carrying a stress of type AF. (a) (b) (c) (d)

(il habitait) (dans un appartement) (il habitait) (ailleurs) (il habitait là) ? (il habitait) (là)

We formulated the following rule. (SMSG) Spontaneous merger of stress groups: If the second of two connected stress groups is monosyllabic, they are normally merged into one intonation group. The above constraints involve the possibility for a stress group to become stressed. The following paragraph examines constraints on the selection of tones used in stressed position. Prosodic grouping results from the tones in final stress position and more particularly from the boundary levels of these tones. Example (a) below has a well-formed intonation; the sequence of the final tones /LL and HH results in the grouping of the first two GIs into one single package; then, the sequence HH L-L- creates a second package that includes the first one. In contrast, example (b) results in a prosodic grouping that sounds wrong. (a) (b)

{((on enverra/LL) (le messageHH)) (aux abonnésL-L-)} *{(on enverraHH) ((le message/LL) (aux abonnésL-L-))}

on enverra le message aux abonnés

Let’s examine the dependency relations between the intonation groups in this utterance, i.e. between the basic units of prosodic organisation. The second and third groups correspond respectively to the direct and indirect object; hence they are dependents of the verb, i.e. of the first group. In (a) prosodic grouping links connected elements: verb and object, in the first package, and verb and indirect object in the larger package. In (b), however, the same mechanism results in the grouping of two unconnected dependents (direct object and indirect object). A systematic analysis of combinations of intonation group contours, the dependency relations at play and the grammaticality of the resulting utterances, leads to the following generalization: (PGCE) Prosodic grouping of connected elements: Within a dependency cluster, only connected parts may be grouped by intonation.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

83

This rule predicts for instance that in « j’ai divisé en catégories ces comportements étranges », the prosodic boundary after « en catégories » should be stronger than that following « j’ai divisé ». Similarly, in « il publie souvent des livres », the adverb will be grouped with the verb, rather than with the object. Given two prosodic boundaries A and B, the notation « A < B » will indicate that the boundary level of A should be lower than that of B; the interpretation of « > », « ≤ » and « ≥ » is analoguous. GA [ (j'ai) (divisé) (en catégories) (ces comportements) (étranges)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) /LL < HH > /LL < L-LGA [ (il publie ) (souvent ) (des livres)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) /LL < HH ≤ L-LGA [ (il publie ) (souvent) (des auteurs ) (américains)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) /LL < HH > /LL < L-L-

It should be stressed that this constraint only applies to intonation groups that belong to the same dependency cluster. Below, examples are provided in which two unconnected intonation units are grouped in one intonation package, but their clusters are independent. 4.2. Default intonation The few constraints above enable us to calculate the default intonation of simple syntactic constructions, consisting of a verbal, nominal or adverbial cluster. By default intonation we mean unmarked intonation. Unmarked intonation follows from the syntactic relations between the elements in the linear chain and merely reproduces these relations. It should be kept in mind that determining unmarked intonation aims at identifying objectively and explicitly marked prosodic forms in actual utterances. Therefore, this unmarked intonation is not an obligatory form, nor a “normal” one, that would be the only one possible for the syntactic structure under analysis, but rather a virtual intonation that will serve as a reference form for the analysis of the intonation used by the speaker. The default intonation only specifies final stress, as the use of initial stress constitutes a marked form by itself. First the computation of default intonation in simple constructions consisting of a single cluster is presented. Afterwhich, it will be extended to

84

Piet MERTENS

complex syntactic constructions involving several adjacent clusters, or in prosodically marked constructions such as clefts. In an utterance consisting of a single (verbal, nominal, adverbial) cluster, the entire cluster receives a final stress which will be placed on the last element of the corresponding linear form, i.e. at the right boundary of the cluster (examples a, b). When the cluster contains two or more stress groups, of course it is possible to have several stresses, provided the constraints given above are met (examples c to f). (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) .

(attention) (il en apportera) (il viendra) (ce soir) (il viendra ce soir) (on enverra) (le message) (aux abonnés) (on enverra le message) (aux abonnés)

nominal cluster with 1 SG verbal cluster with 1 SG verbal cluster with 2 SG id. verbal cluster with 3 SG id

A cluster of several stress groups is usually pronounced in several intonation groups when the length of the linear form exceeds four syllables. Multiple intonation groups are obtained, the internal organisation of which will follow the constraints described above. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

un enfant qui joue // oublie le monde extérieur \\ un enfant / qui joue // oublie le monde extérieur \\ *un enfant // qui joue oublie // le monde extérieur \\ *un enfant // qui joue / oublie // le monde extérieur \\ un enfant // qui joue / avec ses jouets // oublie le monde extérieur \\

In the above examples, the symbols /, // and \\ indicate relative intonation boundaries of minor, major or terminal strength, respectively. The major boundary is introduced by tones HH, H/H or LH, the minor boundary by /LL, \LL or LL and the terminal boundary by L-L-, LL- or HL-. Example (a) illustrates the pronunciation as two intonation groups; the first IG corresponds to a nominal cluster that depends on the head of the following IG. In (b) the subject cluster appears as two IGs. Form (c) goes against constraint MCSG, since « qui joue » and « oublie » are unconnected, although they belong to the same cluster. Similarly, form (d) breaks constraint PGCE. In spite of the similarity between the intonations of (d) and (e), intonation (e) is well-formed, since constraints MCSG and PGCE are met. In such cases, where a nominal phrase is followed by a relative clause, the question of whether the intervening boundary should be marked

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

85

prosodically by a stress on the nominal phrase arises. This appears to be impossible to answer on the basis of constituent type alone, as the dependency network, the number of syllables and the relative strength of boundaries need to be taken into account. However, these factors apply to other types of constituents as well. In other words, constituent type is not required to predict prosodic structure. Besides lexical elements and dependency relations, syntactic structures usually include translative elements, such as prepositions, relative pronouns, auxiliairy verbs and subordinating conjunctions. Their prosodic status needs to be defined. As for clitic translatives, their prosodic behaviour is analogous to that of other clitics (clitic pronouns, articles, possessive determiners…). In the example « (la personne) (que tu vois) (était) (mon voisin) », the translative (clitic relative pronoun) « que » is integrated in the stress group of the verb « vois ». The translative’s behaviour is like that of the pronoun « tu », which also depends upon the verb. Auxiliaries are non-clitic translatives. The following examples contain the auxiliary « avait », which, as a verb, generates its own stress group. (a) (b) (c)

(la paniqueHH) (qui avait saisiHH)<(la sociétéL-L-) (la paniqueHH)>((qui avait/LL)<(saisiHH))<(la société L-L-) *(la paniqueHH) (qui avaitHH) ((saisi/LL) (la société L-L-))

Intonations (a) and (b) are well-formed. In (a) the auxiliary is integrated in the IG of the main verb. In (b) it gives rise to an independent IG, but its boundary should be weaker than that of the main verb, such that together they form a package. As a matter of fact, when this is not the case, an ungrammatical utterance is obtained, in which prosodic grouping results in a package « saisi la société » (c), whereas the well-formed utterances contain the package « avait saisi ». This behaviour is predicted directly by the rules given thus far, provided that the auxiliary is considered to be a dependent of the main verb. This leads to the following hypothesis: prosodically, a non-clitic translative (such as the auxiliary) behaves like a dependent of the syntactic head of its argument. This observation is significant for syntactic analysis. If the translative’s prosodic behaviour is analogous to that of a dependent, it would be strange to consider it to be the syntactic head of the verb cluster. Indeed, this would mean that one and the same element is syntactic governor and at the same time prosodic dependent. 4.3. Intonation and syntactic construction So far we have explored simple syntactic constructions consisting of a

86

Piet MERTENS

single cluster. Consideration is now given to the prosodic properties of syntactically marked constructions. 4.3.1. Obligatory prosodic boundary Before starting the systematic analysis of the intonation of such constructions, a clear understanding of the notion of obligatory prosodic boundary is required. (a) (b) (c) (d)

(l’année/LL) (universitaireHH) (commence/ LL) (demainL-L-) (l’année universitaireHH) (commence/ LL) (demain L-L-) (l’annéeHH) || (elle commence/ LL) (demain L-L-) *(l’année elle commence/ LL) (demain L-L-)

In « l’année universitaire commence demain » (a, b), the stress on « année » is optional: the stress group may be stressed (a), or it may be merged with the following SG into one IG (b). However, in « l’année, elle commence demain » (c, d), not only is the stress on « année » obligatory, but the construction also requires a major boundary after that IG. This obligatory prosodic boundary (OPB) will be noted by a double vertical line ‘||’. As shown below, several constructions contain such a boundary at a particular point of their internal structure. The prosodic phenomenon of the OPB results from an underlying boundary in the syntactic construction. Therefore, syntactic constructions are not neutral with respect to intonation. On the contrary, they possess prosodic properties that are lost in written language. 4.3.2. Left dislocation In the dislocation construction (double marquage) a referent governed by the verb appears twice, once as a clitic and then or again in a non-clitic, usually lexical, form. Two distinct types of dislocation can be discerned, left and right, according to the position of the non-clitic element before or after the verbal cluster: « Les livres, il les jette. Elle lui profite, cette attitude ». Both types also differ by the marking of syntactic case, obligatory in the case of right dislocation. (a) (b)

ces livres || il y tient il y tient || à ces livres

(dislocation of referent) (dislocation of syntagm)

A left dislocation construction consists of at least two parts. The central part consists of a verb kernel headed by a finite verb and containing one or more direct or indirect dependents, one of which takes a clitic form. This central part is preceeded by a front (anteposed) part, consisting of a saturated

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

87

dependency cluster that is coreferent with one of the clitic dependents of the central part (note that coreference does not require agreement of syntactic function). (2) (b)

ce disque || on le demande partout Jean-Christophe || je lui ai dit de revenir demain

At the prosodic level, the front and central parts are separated by an OPB, leading to a tone with a major boundary on the front part. The end of the central part carries a major or terminal boundary tone. These properties are made explicit in the scheme below, in which a full arrow indicates a dependency relation, a dotted arrow a coreference relation, and the vertical line the OPB.

X

D..

V

D..

TOPIC

As for information structure, the front part is interpreted as the topic of the assertion expressed by the finite verbal cluster, i.e. as the referent the assertion is about and for which it expresses relevant information (cf. Lambrecht’s definition). In left dislocation with multiple anteposed elements (autonomous clusters), the OPB appears after the last element before the central part. The boundaries between the anteposed elements will have a strength lower or equal to that of the OPB. Their relative strength can result in their prosodic grouping as in (c). (a) (b) (c)

Jean-Christophe, ≤ la voiture || je lui ai dit de la nettoyer demain Le vélo, || le guidon || ils sont cassés Le vélo, < le guidon || il est cassé

4.3.3. Right dislocation Right dislocation also involves a central part in the form of a saturated finite verb cluster, followed by an autonomous cluster coreferent with one of the immediate clitic dependents of the verb. At the prosodic level, an OPB separates the central part from the following peripheral part. The latter carries a low appendix contour when preceeded by a terminal tone. At the level of information structure, the right part is interpreted as background information, adding little to the information provided by the

88

Piet MERTENS

central part. (a) (b)

D..

On les voit partout \\ ces graffitti Ca devrait être objectif \\ la science

V

D..

X

BACK

In the case of a non-terminal tone on the central part, a high appendix contour is found. (c)

D..

Tu l’a déjà vu // ce graffitti

V

D..

X

BACK

4.3.4. Cleft construction The cleft construction follows the scheme « c’est X qu.. + verb cluster ». Two parts may be identified12: the first construction part is introduced by « c’est », the second is introduced by a relative pronoun and contains a saturated or unsaturated verb cluster. The X element in the left part functions as a (valency or peripheral) dependent of the verb cluster in the right part. The relation between both parts is syntactically marked by the relative element. Both parts are separated by an OPB. Two prosodic configurations occur. In the first configuration, the left part is accompanied by a terminal boundary (tones HL- or L-L) and the right part carries an appendix contour. The left part is interpreted as a prominent information element and the right part as background information. (a) (b) (c) 12

c’est les livresHL- \\ qu’il jette l-lc’est luiL-L- \\ qui jette les livres l-lc’est à lui L-L- \\ que cette attitude profite l-l-

For a similar analysis, see Lambrecht (2001). Instead of Lambrecht’s terms « phrase relative » et « phrase matrice » we use the term « construction parts ».

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

c'est X

FOCUS

qu D..

V

89

D..

BACK

In the second prosodic configuration, the left part receives a major boundary, and the right part receives a terminal boundary. In this case both parts have equal informational importance; in the absence of an appendix, no part is marked as background information. (d) (e)

c’est précisément làHH || que des problèmes d’emploi/LL surgissentL-L-\\ c’est luiHH // qui jette les livres L-L-\\

The existence of two prosodic configurations points to a syntactic contrast. The first intonation, which entails focus on the cleft element, answers a partial question, about a single referent: « qui jette ces livres ? ⎯ c’est lui L-L- \\ qui jette les livres l-l- ». The second intonation type does not: example (d) does not answer the question « où surgissent les problèmes d’emploi ? ». 4.3.5. Combinations of constructions The combination of left and right dislocation results in three parts: front, central, and back parts. Their syntactic, prosodic and informational properties match those of the corresponding parts of simple constructions. Jean-Christophe || je lui ai dit de la nettoyer demain \\ la voiture

Cleft construction and left or right dislocation may also combine. These complex constructions once again maintain the syntactic, prosodic and informational properties of the corresponding parts in basic constructions. Anne CatherineHH || c’est làHH || qu’elle les a achetés L-L- \\ ces disques l-lAnne CatherineHH || c’est làHL- \\ qu’elle les a achetés l-l- ces disques l-l-

4.3.6. The binarisation dispositive The pronominal approach uses the term dispositif de binarisation for utterances like « Du gâteau HL- on a mangé l-l- » or « À lui L-L- cette attitude profite l-l- », in which a dependent of a saturated verb cluster is anteposed before the verb cluster. In constrast with dislocation, binarisation does not involve a clitic pronoun coreferent with the anteposed element. The latter

90

Piet MERTENS

takes a terminal tone, and is followed by both an OPB and an appendix. Given these prosodic markers, the anteposed element appears as the only relevant information element in the utterance; the governing verb cluster, on the other hand, takes a background position and its role is limited to indicating the syntactic function of the focalized referent in the proposition. X

FOCUS

D..

V

D..

BACK

4.3.7. Cluster-internal prosodic break In the following examples from broadcast interviews, a terminal tone HL- appears in utterance-internal position and whatever follows that tone is pronounced with an appendix contour. In such a configuration, the semantics of the HL- tone affects the element carrying the tone, or more precisely its denotation. The words in question are highlighted and interpreted as being essential to understand the message. Ça a changé de forme aujourd’hui. Tout le monde saitHL- l-que la culture est misogynel(Speaker: B. Groult) Il a contribué puissamment à la destruction du mytheHL- l-littérairel(Speaker: R. Barthes)

The information « la culture est misogyne » was already activated before the utterance started and the listener understands that the speaker insists not on the information itself, but on the fact that it is known to everyone. The intonation contour « HL- + appendix » also appears in right dislocation, where the postposed part carries an appendix. However, both cases differ as to the alignment between syntactic structure and intonation: whereas in right dislocation the terminal tone appears in cluster-final position, here it appears inside the cluster. Default intonation does not allow a terminal tone in a position internal to the cluster. The use of a terminal tone inside the verb kernel is a highly marked prosodic form since it causes the decomposition of the cluster by the insertion of a major prosodic boundary. The boundary is inserted at an internal syntactic boundary13. In the first exemple, the object « que la culture 13

cf. Mertens 1997 : §4.4.2

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

91

est misogyne » is separated form the governing verb; in the second, the adjective « littéraire » is separated from its nominal head.

D..

V

D..

X

FOCUS

X'

BACK

In these examples, prosody and syntax are out of phase, so to speak. Sometimes this kind of phase shift is the only way to focus a particular lexical element. Word order plays a role in explaining these phenomena. In the noun phrase « mythe littéraire », the adjective necessarily follows the noun, but the unmarked position for the terminal tone is at the end of the cluster; this combination of constraints prevents the noun from being the sole focus, without a simultaneous focus on the adjective. However, when the HL- tone is placed on the noun, the nominal cluster is broken, and the appendix forces the adjective into the background. 4.3.8. Adjuncts Certain adjuncts preceeding or following the verb kernel behave like the dislocated elements in dislocations: an obligatory prosodic boundary follows the fronted adjunct, whereas in postposition the adjunct carries an appendix contour. This is the case for so-called sentence adverbs: décidément || il faudra trouver quelqu’un d’autre pour le faire je ne sais plus comment faire \\ franchement je suis d’un autre avis \\ comme tu sais avec ça || je me demande comment on va faire puisque tu insistes || il prendra le train

4.3.9. Appositions and parentheticals Appositions are delimited by OPBs. This also holds true for parentheticals, which are usually accompanied by a register change. Babar || le jeu roi des éléphants || et sa femme || la reine Céleste || viennent de partir en ballon pour faire leur voyage de noces. mais je crois que c'est à ces problèmes essentiels que nous devons consacrer || si monsieur Fabius naturellement en est d'accord || notre entretien de ce soir (Speaker: J. Chirac)

92

Piet MERTENS

4.3.10. Other constructions The dispositif restrictif, as found in « Il n’y a qu’à lui que cette attitude profite. », shares the syntactic, prosodic and informational properties of the cleft construction. The presentational construction matches the scheme « il y a X qu.. + verb cluster », which is similar to that of the cleft. However, whereas the utterance « Il y a Pierre qui demande la clé » is proportional to « il y a ça » but not to « il/qui demande la clé », the utterance « c’est Pierre \\ qui demande la clé » is proportional to « il/qui demande la clé » but not to « c’est qui/lui ». The second part of the presentational construction does not call for an appendix contour. 5. A predictive approach to the analysis of intonation in discourse A framework for syntactic analysis, based on dependency, « translatifs », valency and constructions, was described above. Principles for the behaviour of intonation in French were formulated, including the formation of stress groups, their possible developments given the syllabic material and the dependency relations, prosodic grouping and its relation with the dependency network, and prosodic properties of syntactic constructions. These principles may be used in a procedure for discourse analysis, aiming at making explicit the role of intonation in spoken language. This analysis procedure consists of two major steps. First, default intonation is determined on the basis of the syntactic properties of the sequence. This virtual form is then confronted with the actual pronounced intonation. Differences between both default and actual forms enable marked prosodic forms to be pinpointed. This provides an objective basis for interpreting the contribution of intonation to meaning. As stated above, in certain syntactic constructions in French, the role played by intonation largely coincides with that of syntactic structure, both aspects being closely related. As the approach is based on the comparison of two intonation forms, namely default intonation, as predicted by syntax, and actual intonation, it qualifies as a predictive approach. To illustrate this approach, the procedure is applied to a corpus fragment. This is part of an interview by Benoîte Groult on Swiss radio. j’ai divisé en catégories ce ce cette “mâle assurance” cet annuaire de la misogynie comme dans les pages jaunes de l’annuaire en France catégories professionnelles parce qu’on voit qu’aucune n’est épargnée ni les poètes ni surtout les savants alors que ça devrait être objectif la science. (B. Groult, 58.9s)

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

60

61

93

62

63 G=0.32/T2 vnuclei

100 ⊗

90

150 Hz

80 _



_ j' 70 Groult 63

e d i v i z e  _ k a t e g   ai divisé en _ catégories

s œ cette

i

_  s εt _ m  l a _ euh cette _ mâle

s y  s s assurance cet Prosogram v1.4.3

64

65

66 G=0.32/T2 vnuclei

100

90

150 Hz

 ε d l a m i z   i n i cet annuaire de la misogynie 70 Groult 66 67

80 sε t a n

k m d  l e p a  comme dans les pages

_ _



o n d  l a n  ε   f jaunes de l' annuaire Franc en e Prosogram v1.4.3

68

69 G=0.32/T2 vnuclei

100

90 150 Hz

80 f 



France

70 Groult 69

s

œ k a t e g   i p f e s j  n ε l _ euh catégories professionnelles _

pa s k õ vwa k o k y n n ε t e parcequ'on voit qu' aucune n'est épargnée Prosogram v1.4.3

70

71

72 G=0.32/T2 vnuclei

100 ⊗

90 150 Hz

80 e p a  n j e n i l e p épargnée ni les 70 Groult 72



ε poètes

t

_

n i s y  t u l e s a v a ni surtout les savants

_ Prosogram v1.4.3

73

74

75 G=0.32/T2 vnuclei

100 ⊗

90 150 Hz

80

70

_ Groult

a l  k s a d v  ε ε t alors queça devraitêtre

b 

εk t i objectif

f

œ l a s j a s heu la science

_ _

d õ k l  d e n ig donc le dénigrement Prosogram v1.4.3

First the speech chain is divided into autonomous dependency networks (ADN), which are demarcated by brackets in the notation below. For instance, the sequence « j’ai divisé en catégories cette “mâle assurance” » forms a single ADN, since all elements are both directly or indirectly connected and adjacent. In general, an element is located at the right boundary of an ADN when there is no direct or indirect dependency relation between the element and the next element. Note the treatment of hesitations and clitic repetitions: they are treated like clitic elements, and are incorporated in the stress group on the right.

94

Piet MERTENS [j'ai divisé en catégories ce ce cette mâle assurance] [cet annuaire de la misogynie] [comme dans les pages jaunes de l'annuaire en France] [catégories professionnelles] [parce qu'on voit qu'aucune n'est épargnée] [ni les poètes ni surtout les savants] [alors que ça devrait être objectif la science] DMd

The segmentation into ADNs is not always obvious. In the fragment above, the sequence « cet annuaire de la misogynie » may be analysed in two ways. First, as an autonomous dependency cluster; indeed, the object slot of the verb « ai divisé » is already saturated by « cette mâle assurance » and each valency position can be saturated only once. Alternatively, it may be analysed as the second instance of the referent already denoted by « cette mâle assurance », by a well-known phenomenon of incremental development14 of a referent. The possible relation between « assurance » and « annuaire » does not originate from a dependency relation between both elements, or between each of them and the verb, but rather from the role that each of these elements could play in relation to the verb « ai divisé ». Here we will assume the first analysis; however the alternative analysis would result in the same default intonation. The sequence « comme dans les pages… » can function as a dependent (manner complement) of « ai divisé » and as such constitute part of the verb kernel. However it is separated from that kernel by another ADN (« cet annuaire de la misogynie »). When reading the fragment, one may tend to relate « catégories professionnelles » to « comme dans les pages… », although there is no syntactic motivation for doing so, as contiguity does not imply the presence of a syntactic relation. Alternatively, assuming « catégories professionnelles » is an apposition, it will be delimited by OPBs. « alors que », a subordinating conjunction according to traditional grammer, is however separated from its governor by other ADNs and therefore constitutes an ADN in its own right. The subordination relation, suggested by the meaning of the conjunction, cannot be determined here on syntactic grounds and therefore supposes an interpretation by the listener. After segmentation into ADNs, we calculate the prosodic skeleton and apply prosodic constraints, to obtain the default intonation (DI).

14

cf. Blanche-Benveniste et al. (1990 : 17-29).

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

95

[ (j'ai ) (divisé ) (en catégories) (ce ce cette mâle ) (assurance)] GA ( o ) ( . . o ) (. . . . o ) ( . . . o ) (. . o ) GI ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) DI /LL < HH > /LL ||| [ (cet annuaire) (de la misogynie )] GA ( . . o ) ( . . . . . o ) GI ( ) ( ) DI /LL < |||

The stress group formation rule produces five groups for the first ADN; they are delimited by parentheses on the layer labeled GA. These stress groups are reorganised into GIs by the application of the MCSG, SMSG, PGCE principles. The following phenomena are expected. 1. 2. 3.

The merger of the groups « j’ai divisé » into one GI: the elements are connected and the auxiliary is monosyllabic. The prosodic boundary after « divisé » should be weaker than that after « catégories », since both elements are connected. The boundary after « catégories » should be stronger than that after « mâle », since both elements are unconnected.

The boundary after « assurance » requires a major prosodic boundary (|||), either a terminal boundary (L-L-), when the speaker presents the cluster as a completed information structure, or a non-terminal boundary (HH, H/H, LH…), when the intention is to complete it by other elements, in other words when the speaker wants to keep a link with what follows. Obviously, the non-terminal boundary may also be used as a strategy to avoid the loss of speaker turn. The comparison of the default intonation (DI) with the intonation that was actually pronounced (RE) reveals both similarities and differences. GA [ (j'ai) (divisé ) (en catégories ) (ce ce cette mâle ) (assurance)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) DI /LL < HH > /LL ||| RE \LL H H\H H H/H GA [ (cet annuaire) (de la misogynie)] GI ( ) ( ) DI /LL < ||| RE HH H/H

96

Piet MERTENS

On the whole, the predicted forms match the forms used by the speaker: as the two ADNs end in major prosodic boundaries, the relative strength of the internal boundaries is respected resulting in the predicted intonation packages. There are two exceptions: by putting an initial stress on « mâle », the speaker isolates the sequence « mâle assurance », indicating that it should be understood as a single semantic unit; in the same way the word « catégories » is made prominent. The two ADNs take a major non-terminal prosodic boundary. The speaker thus indicates that the information structure is incomplete and that additional elements are required to complete it. The information structure started here will remain open until the terminal contour on « professionnelles » is reached two ADNs later. The ADN « comme dans… » is terminated by a LH tone on « France », expressing both continuation and requesting approval. The initial stress on « comme » marks the start of the comparison and makes it prominent. The continuation on « France » and the finality after « professionnelles » creates an intonation package that covers the two ADNs linking them by prosodic means, which compensates for the absence of a syntactic link. GA [ (comme dans les pages) (jaunes) (de l'annuaire) (en France)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) DI < HH /LL ||| RE H HH /LL LH GA [(catégories ) (professionnelles )] GI ( ) ( ) DI /LL < ||| RE HH L-LGA [(parce qu'on voit ) (qu'aucune) (n'est) (épargnée)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) DI HH > /LL < ||| RE /LL /LL HH GA [(ni) (les poètes) (ni) (surtout) (les savants)] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) DI HH > /LL < ||| RE H LH H HH HLGA [ (alors ) (que ça devrait) (être) (objectif) euh (la science )] GI ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) DI /LL /LL ||| APP RE /LL /LL HLl-......l-

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

97

The subordinating conjunction « parce que » calls for a governing proposition, at least according to traditional grammar. Here, it is preceeded by a maximal prosodic boundary, indicating that it opens a new proposition or discourse unit. In spoken language « parce que », like other conjunctions, may be used independently of a governing verb cluster15. The syntactic relation between « parce qu’on voit qu’aucune n’est épargnée », on the one hand, and « ni les poètes, ni surtout les savants », on the other, is not obvious. However the two clusters are brought together by the prosodic grouping which turns it into a single maximal package. The ADN « ni les poètes, ni surtout les savants » presents several marked tones. Initial stresses mark the start of the two parts introduced by « ni », underlining the symmetry of the construction. Whereas the use of the LH tone on « poètes » involves the listener in what is said, the HL- tone stresses the importance of the word « savants » for the message, which will be further commented on by the speaker in what follows. The last part of the fragment provides an example of dislocation embedded in a proposition introduced by the conjunction « alors que ». The construction is accompanied by the predicted prosodic markers: OPB between the saturated verb cluster and the dislocated element, terminal contour on the verb cluster, and appendix contour on the dislocated part. The HL- tone on the verb cluster shows the importance of the word « objectif » to the assertion, while signaling the involvement of the speaker. The contribution of intonation observed in the analyzed fragment can be summed up as follows. First, intonation subdivides the speech chain into three major units, terminated by a maximal prosody boundary. These units may or may not be coextensive with traditional syntactic phrases, as indicated by the autonomy of subordinate clauses. 1 ( [j'ai divisé en catégories ce ce cette mâle assurance] // [cet annuaire de la misogynie] // [comme dans les pages jaunes de l'annuaire en France] // [catégories professionnelles L-L- ] ) 2 ( [parce qu'on voit qu'aucune n'est épargnée] // [ni les poètes ni surtout les savants HL- ] ) 3 ( [alors que ça devrait être objectif HL- la science] )

Second, it makes explicit the internal structure of these major units, by means of prosodic grouping. This allows for the association of parts without segmental, morpho-syntactic indications. Initial stress provides additional 15

cf. also Berrendonner 2002: 28.

98

Piet MERTENS

internal structure. These two aspects may be visualised as follows. 1 ([j'ai divisé en catégories ce ce cette mâle assurance] // [cet annuaire de la misogynie] // ( [comme dans les pages jaunes de l'annuaire en France] // [catégories professionnelles L-L- ] ) ) 2 ([parce qu'on voit qu'aucune n'est épargnée] // [ni les poètes ni surtout les savants HL- ] ) 3 ( [alors que ça devrait être objectif HL- la science] )

Third, intonation adds information that could not be expressed in another way, e.g. by lexical, morphological or syntactic means. This is the case of marked intonation morphemes such as final and initial stress tones. 1 ([j'ai divisé en catégories ce ce cette mâle assurance] // [cet annuaire de la misogynie] // ( [comme dans les pages jaunes de l'annuaire en France LH ] // [catégories professionnelles L-L- ] ) ) 2 ([parce qu'on voit qu'aucune n'est épargnée] // [ni les poètes ni surtout les savants HL- ] ) 3 ([alors que ça devrait être objectif HL- la science] )

6. Discussion and conclusion Nowadays, there seems to be a consensus (Blanche-Benveniste 2004, Berrendonner 2004) that the notion of the sentence, as inherited from traditional grammar, does not constitute an operational unit for the segmentation of the speech chain into minimal discourse units. Several alternative units have been proposed for French. In her critical analysis of these alternatives, Simon 2003: 131 observes a tendency towards a fragmentation of discourse into smaller units, some smaller than the syntactic proposition. However, the definitions of these alternative units refer to the mental representation of discourse information by the speaker and the listener, and it is not clear how one can verify statements about these representations. In contrast, the segmentation proposed here relies on several types of information, namely dependency relations, syntactic construction and prosodic form, which are readily observed and reproducible and largely unambiguous. In a first step, the establishment of the dependency network leads to the identification of autonomous dependency networks, which are combined into larger structures by means of syntactic constructions or prosodic grouping. This results in a reproducible segmentation based on formal criteria that are both objective and verifiable.

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

99

In common approaches to discourse analysis, prosody is often treated with low regards. Typically, the hierarchical organisation of the analyzed discourse fragment is set out, on the basis of logical or pragmatic relations between the discourse units. Only then is prosody considered in order to determine to what extent it confirms the assumed organisation. In the predictive approach, in contrast, prosody receives a prominent role, equal to other organising principles in syntax such as valency, dependency and construction. It is intonation that determines whether two otherwise independent units are part of a larger structure, and whether or not an information unit is completed. Moreover, in our approach, the role of intonation is not limited to the hierarchical organisation of bits of speech. On the contrary, a variety of prosodic forms are identified which make explicit other types of information, such as the informational status of this or that element or the way in which the speaker presents that information. The prediction of default intonation enables a separation between informational aspects linked to syntactic structure and aspects contributed by intonation. It appears that syntactic constructions are not neutral with respect to prosody. Default prosody allows a characterisation of the informational status of elements, without the need for a preliminary semantic interpretation of the message or pragmatic context. Instead of providing a priori definitions of notions such as topic, focus, assertion, we merely observe that specific parts in some constructions, given their prosodic properties, will be interpreted as topic, focus, information background, and the like. Our analysis moves from form to meaning, not the reverse. We do not deny that discourse presents levels of organisation other that those indicated by syntactic or prosodic relations. We do not question the existence of anaphoric relations, coreference relations, logical relations between propositions, world knowledge representation, or the dynamic nature of conversation. As it is not obvious that linguistics is able to provide the tools required to describe the inferences made by speakers, it is wise to take full advantage of tangible aspects such as prosody and syntax. References Berrendonner, Alain (1990) Pour une macro-syntaxe. Travaux de Linguistique 21, 25-36. Berrendonner, Alain (2002b) Les deux syntaxes. Verbum 24, 23-36. Blanche-Benveniste, Claire (2002) Phrase et construction verbale. Verbum 24 (1/2), 7-22. Blanche-Benveniste, Claire; Bilger, Mireille; Rouget, Christine & Eynde, Karel van den (1990) Le français parlé. Etudes grammaticales. Coll.

100

Piet MERTENS

Sciences du langage. Paris: Editions du CNRS. Blanche-Benveniste, Claire; Delofeu, José; Stefanini, Jean & Eynde, Karel van den (1984) Pronom et syntaxe. L'approche pronominale et son application au français. Paris: SELAF. Di Cristo, Albert; Auran, Cyril; Bertrand, Roxane; Chanet, Catherine; Portes, Cristel; Régnier, Alain (2004) Outils prosodiques et analyse du discours. Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 30 (1-3), 27-84. Dooren, Karin van & Eynde, Karel van den (1982) A structure for the intonation of Dutch. Linguistics 20, 203-235. Eynde, Karel van den & Blanche-Benveniste, Claire (1978) Syntaxe et mécanismes descriptifs: présentation de l'approche pronominale. Cahiers de Lexicologie 32, 3-27. Eynde, Karel van den & Dooren, Karin van (1983) Intonation and syntactic structure in Dutch. ITL-Review of Applied Linguistics 60/61, 27-42. Eynde, Karel van den; Mertens, Piet & Swiggers, Pierre (1998) Structuration segmentale et suprasegmentale en syntaxe: Vers un modèle intégrationniste de l’écrit et de l’oral. in: Bilger, Mireille ; van den Eynde, Karel & Gadet, Françoise (1998), Analyse linguistique et approches de l'oral. Recueil d'études offert en hommage à Claire Blanche-Benveniste. Collection "Orbis/Supplementa 10", Leuven-Paris: Peeters. pp. 33-57. Eynde, Karel van den & Mertens, Piet (2003) La valence: l’approche pronominale et son application au lexique verbal. Journal of French Language Studies 13, 63-104. Hirst, Daniel and Di Cristo, Albert (eds.) (1998) Intonation Systems. A Survey of Twenty Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lambrecht, Knud (1994) Information Structure and Sentence Form. Topic, Focus and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Lambrecht, Knud (2001) A framework for the analysis of cleft constructions. Linguistics 39, 3. 463-516. Mertens, Piet (1987) L’intonation du français. De la description linguistique à la reconnaissance automatique. Thèse de doctorat non publiée, Université de Leuven. Mertens, Piet (1992) L'accentuation de syllabes contiguës. ITL-Review of Applied Linguistics 95-96, 145-165. Mertens, Piet (1993a) Accentuation, intonation et morphosyntaxe. Travaux de Linguistique 26, 21-69. Mertens, Piet (1993b) Intonational grouping, boundaries, and syntactic structure in French. in House, D. & Touati, P. (ed) (1993) Proceedings of an ESCA Workshop on Prosody, September 27-29, 1993, Lund (S)

A Predictive Approach to the Analysis

101

Working Papers 41 (Lund Univ., Dept. of Linguistics), pp. 156-159. Mertens, Piet (1997) De la chaîne linéaire à la séquence de tons. Traitement Automatique des Langues 38 (1), 27-51. Mertens, Piet (2004a) Quelques allers-retours entre la prosodie et son traitement automatique. Le français moderne 72(1), 39-57. Mertens, Piet (2004b) Un outil pour la transcription de la prosodie dans les corpus oraux. Traitement Automatique des Langues 45 (2), 109-130. Mertens, Piet; Goldman, Jean-Philippe, Wehrli, Éric; Gaudinat, Arnaud (2001a) La synthèse de l'intonation à partir de structures syntaxiques riches. Traitement Automatique des Langues 42(1), 145-192. Mertens, Piet; Auchlin, Antoine; Goldman, Jean-Philippe; Grobet, Anne; Gaudinat, Arnaud (2001b) Intonation du discours et synthèse de la parole : premiers résultats d'une approche par balises. Cahiers de Linguistique Française 23, 189-209. Rossi, Mario (1999) L'intonation, le système du français : description et modélisation. Gap – Paris : Ophrys. Coll. L'essentiel français. Roulet, Eddy; Auchlin, Antoine; Moeschler, Jacques (1985, 1991) L'articulation du discours en français contemporain. Bern: Lang. Simon, Anne Catherine (2003) La structuration prosodique du discours en français. Une approche multidimensionnelle et expérientielle. Bern : Peter Lang. Tesnière, Lucien (1969,1988) Eléments de syntaxe structurale. Paris: Klinksieck.

English and German Prosody — A Contrastive Comparison — Manfred MARKUS 1. Introduction and state of the art Especially in British terminology, ‘prosody’ is the branch of linguistics that “goes beyond the study of phonemes to deal with such features as length, rhythm, stress, pitch, intonation, and loudness in speech” (McArthur 1992: 818). In American research, this area is also known as ‘suprasegmental phonology’, whereas the term ‘prosody’ is generally used for the theory and study of versification, i.e. the formal aspects in stanzas and lines of verse (cf. McArthur, loc. cit.). This ambivalence of the term ‘prosody’ suggests a proximity of every-day language to the language of verse. Such an affinity has occasionally been argued in view of rhyme and other patterns of repetition in normal English speech (cf. Knowles 1987: 85; Markus 1995), but seems far-fetched or non-existent with regard to German. Accordingly, the German term Prosodie is, as in the American terminology, generally used for features of verse1, and the usual cover term for features of length, rhythm, stress etc. is Intonation. Ignoring this terminological turmoil, however, the present paper will use the term ‘prosody’ in the British way to cover the linguistic features of the implicitly musical elements of spoken language both in English and German. Basically, this means dealing with three physical parameters of sounds, (a) their extension in time (length/duration), including patterns of regularity; (b) their loudness/sound intensity, as caused by wave amplitudes, and (c) their pitch or pitch contours, as caused by sound frequencies. These basic parameters combine with each other to create more complex ones. ‘Rhythm’ is made up by length, loudness and pitch when applied regularly; ‘stress’ (otherwise also referred to as ‘salience’ or ‘prominence’, cf. Halliday 1970: 1-3) is a term based on loudness and pitch in combination with concomitant aspects of length (such as speed and pauses); and ‘intonation’ is mainly pitch and loudness modified in their temporal extension. Things would be less complicated if all these parameters worked in the 1

One of the few counterexamples is Schwitalla 1997. But in a recent representative publication on features of spoken German (Fiehler et al. 2004), the term Prosodie is not used at all.

104

Manfred MARKUS

same way in different languages and dialects. This is, of course, not the case. So-called tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese and Thai, use syllable pitch for semantic purposes (cf. Crystal 1987: 172). But in both English and German, prosodic features, apart from word stress2, have the pragmatic function of marking such things as communicative intention, emphasis, suggestiveness of meaning, indifference or involvement, degrees of politeness and speech acts. As is obvious from everyday experience and also from the controversial discussion and definition of politeness principles (cf., e.g., Leech 1983:84), pragmatic rules are, more than grammatical ones, subject to national, dialectal and even personal variation. And while “intonation is perhaps the most deep-rooted and the least conscious of all aspects of linguistic behaviour” (Robert A. Hall, quoted in Davidsen-Nielsen and Ulseth 1989:8), it is definitely the one where even native speakers often fail – it is a common experience that news speakers or presenters using a teleprompter sometimes (re)produce their texts too mechanically, obviously without fully understanding them. Such performance deficits imply that prosody is based on rules and that prosodic features, far from being mere decoration of speech, are closely connected with the sense and grammatical structure of utterances. Just as the theme-rheme distribution, or better, the ‘communicative dynamism’ within clauses of a text (Firbas 1964), is connected with word order, so prosody, though primarily attributable to pragmatics, interacts with syntax. Again: this interaction does not work universally, but to some extent language-specifically (cf. Pilch 1984:201) – as, it is hoped, the following contrastive analysis of English and German will show. Previous research on English and German prosody has been extremely controversial (cf. the survey in Scuffil 1982:71-76; Whitworth 2002:175-178) and overwhelming in quantity (some 300 entries in the MLA Bibliography since 1961). Almost all contributions have, however, hardly been contrastive3, being often merely descriptive or too specific in their aims to throw light on the connection of prosody with syntax.4 By contrast, this paper will try to follow Halliday (1967; 1970:21), defining intonation as an integral part of 2 3

4

cf. the noun ‘éxport’ and the verb ‘to expórt’, where the different stress pattern has the (syntactic and semantic) function as a marker of word class. In the sense that the contrasts are seen as parts of a unified/system-based whole (as, e.g., by Hawkins 1986). I have tried to pursue this contrastive method in an earlier paper (Markus 1992), which this one partly draws on. cf., e.g., Esser 1988, Wieden and Nemser 1991, Mindt 2001, for English; Schwitalla 1997 and Fiehler et al. 2004 for German. In all these cases it is difficult to see the wood (of the language system) for the trees (of descriptive detail); cf. Hjelmslev's early complaint (1963/1970: 5) that the linguistic point of view was missing in “all this many-sided study”.

English and German Prosody

105

grammar. On the other hand, it is striking that many recent studies on prosody, both in English and German, tend to do justice to the role of varieties in the two languages (e.g., Knowles 1987: ch. 5-9; Schwitalla 1997:141-167) so that there is no focus on the systematic link between different prosodic factors within one variety, preferably the standard. This paper cannot pursue the aim of giving a full description of all features that are in some way connected with the length, loudness and pitch of sounds in both English and German. In particular, it will not unduly be concerned with phonemic and phonotactic details (for these, cf. Couper-Kuhlen 1993:79-100; Vennemann 1991), but give particular attention to the suprasegmental features of phrases and preferably clauses; in line with Esser (1975:120-126), these features could be called the ‘macrosyntax’ of intonation. On the other hand, the present author will abstain from trying to exhaust the theoretical and generally communicative aspects of spoken language (for which see Esser 1975:120-126, Schank and Schoenthal 1983 and Fiehler et al. 2004), but focus on interface issues between syntax and prosody. 2. Length Length, i.e. the extension of sound in time, moreover loudness and pitch are the ‘raw material’ of prosodic structuring. But they have different ranks and different modes of functioning in English and German. As regards length, it is well-known that the quantity of vowels – unlike that of consonants - is a phonemically distinctive feature in both English and German (cf. ‘ship’ vs ‘sheep’, Wall vs Wahl). Moreover, in English, but not in German, the length of a vowel is allophonically reduced before voiceless consonants: ‘bit’ vs ‘bid’ (cf. Kohler 1995:111). But beyond this, the feature [length] when modified to create a changing tempo of speech (Sprechtempo) has prosodic implications. It is here that German and English differ. In German these implications are purely communicative ones. Phonemically short or long vowels can be lengthened in colloquial speech to underline the speaker’s attitude involved, be it emphasis of statement (ja-a, da-a5), exclamation (a-ah, o-oh), or question raising (wie-ie/ wa-as/so-o?). This is, however, a marginal function of length in that it seems to concern mainly particles and function words. The quantitative variation can also go in the other direction: all examples just quoted are used in everyday casual situations with an extremely short vowel. Thus, ja (with an extra short a) would be common in telephone conversation (where short pragmatic signals 5

This notation, with the repeated vowel after a hyphen, is meant to express the extralong pronunciation of the vowel.

106

Manfred MARKUS

of continuous attention are needed). Average short a is the default form for normal conversation. But on the day of one’s marriage ceremony, one is likely to answer with a formal /ja:/, whereas the version with the hyperlong a-a will be used when people are shouting to somebody from a distance or are emphatic in a less externally conditioned way. It should be added here that length itself is not the tool for expressing attitude; it is, rather, the ‘catalyst’ for the more subtle signals of attitude to materialise – with the help of pitch and loudness contours (see below). It stands to reason that, for example, a high-fall pitch contour on German so-o, which sounds slightly ironical when used for a question, could not manifest itself if the vowel nucleus of so did not have a certain above-average extension in time. While German, then, uses length, in combination with pitch and loudness, as a stylistic marker on the scale between casualness and emphatic or suggestive modes of speaking, English, which is a good example of stress-timed languages, tends to adapt the quantity of syllables to the rhythm conditioned by word stress so that we get units similar to metrical feet. Length in English is therefore systematically interlinked with the accentuation of words, and thus with lexicology, whereas German, or at least its standard, is less stress-timed so that its syllables are not subject to rhythm. On the contrary, rhythm is subject to the given syllables. The tendentially equal length of either ‘feet’ (in English) or syllables (in French) has been generally known since Abercrombie (1967:96f.) as ‘isochrony’ (cf. Crystal 1991:185f.6). The term itself and even more its attribution to special languages have been the item of much heated debate. Some scholars have ‘disbelieved’ in the validity of the whole concept, proving with instrumental phonetics that absolute isochrony does not exist (e.g. Roach 1982; cf. survey in Couper-Kuhlen 1993:12). From a generally typological point of view, Dauer (1983: 56) has surprisingly grouped German and all other Germanic languages together with English as stress-timed (vs French and others as syllable-timed). But, as Halliday (1994:293) has pointed out, the amount of stress-timed isochrony in a special case is subject to the variety of English that one may be concerned with: The tendency towards a regular beat is much more marked in casual, spontaneous speech than in self-conscious monitored speech such as lecturing or reading aloud; it is also, apparently, more marked in British and Australian English than in American or Canadian speech.

6

Unlike Abercrombie, Crystal uses the term, with some sense, only for the syllable-timed subtype.

English and German Prosody

107

Regularity of rhythm as a result of the weakening of syllables has been claimed also for German (cf. Kohler 1995:211-213; Trouvain 2004:33), but here the weakening process concerns only suffixes and Formwörter (mainly function words). Halliday's latter point, however, deserves particular attention, since not only the Americans and the Canadians, but also many native speakers on the British Isles disregard the stress-timed isochrony in language rhythm which can still be claimed for the traditional British standard. 7 The accent of Londoners, for example, shows a noticeably extended articulation of unstressed syllables8, as in the phrase ‘England, Scotland and Wales’, which Leisi/Mair (1999:16), in my view, wrongly use to demonstrate the role of equal length of syllables in general English. In German, they suggest, things are just the opposite: ‘England, Schottland und Wales’, when set to music, would have to be given punctuated notes (Fig. 1):

Figure 1. Questionable punctuated rhythm in German

Again this is not in line with my own competence as a native speaker. I would mark the stressed syllables less by length than by pitch. The difference of opinion might be due to the authors’ southern German dialectal background (Swiss and Austrian respectively), which I do not share. Reference to one’s own competence is, of course, a subjective criterion to go by in prosody. On the other hand, the seemingly objective results of instrumental phonetics, giving evidence of the non-existence of strict isochrony in English, have been found counter-intuitive and mechanical (cf. Lehiste 1977; Couper-Kuhlen 1993:14). After a long phase of disagreement among scholars one tends to welcome Couper-Kuhlen’s compromising statement (1993:13) that the traditional dichotomy between stress-timing and syllable-timing is increasingly giving way to a view of rhythm as a continuum along which a language or language variety can be placed ...

7

8

The difference between American and British intonation to some extent explains the striking disagreement between British scholars such as Halliday (e.g. 1967) and American ones, such as Bolinger (e.g. 1972). This statement is based on my own observation on the occasion of a year's stay in the London area.

108

Manfred MARKUS

Where, then, are English and German on the scale between stress-timing and syllable-timing? While German, from a generally comparative point of view, may be classified as a stress-timed language (just as English), its standard pronunciation still differs considerably from English. The difference is less striking if dialectal sloppiness is taken as the basis of analysis (cf. Berlin German ham wa nich instead of haben wir nicht). But the question is whether the rhythm of the language can generally be based on this sloppiness in casual speech. As Whitworth (2002:181) has appropriately summarized (in line with a number of detailed previous studies), length is only one factor in the complex constitution of rhythm, the others being syllable structure, the role of vowel reduction, and stress. 9 As regards syllable structure, English syllables are shorter and have a less variable structure than the German ones (Abercrombie 1967:75; Kohler 1995:176). Vowel and consonant reduction are stronger in English than in German and occur in most unstressed syllables, whereas German only allows them in word endings and inflectional morphemes (Delattre 1981:93). Finally, word stress is based more on intensity and syllable duration in English and more on pitch in German (Kaltenbacher 1997:161). As a result of these structural differences between the two languages, German syllables, which are potentially highly variable (they can have up to five consonants after the syllable nucleus, vs only four in English) are, when performed, less subject to possible reduction. After all, German as an inflectional language has many more suffixes for marking its morphological categories than English. Crasis10 and many other forms of elision do occur, but they are widely limited to colloquial and dialectal variation. The various forms of reduction, assimilation and deletion that have been claimed by scholars to be of importance (e.g. Kohler 1995:201-213; Trouvain 2004:32f.) are limited to casual allegro speech much more than in the case of English. Thus, /haspmom@ntszaIt/, instead of /hast du: ain@n momEnt tsaIt/ (‘Hast Du einen Moment Zeit’/‘Do you have a moment to spare’), the example used by Kohler (201) and Trouvain, is on the lowest level of informality and sloppiness (to this point also cf. Schank and Schoenthal 1983:48f.). Moreover, as the example shows, the reduction – unlike reduction in English – leaves content words widely unaffected. In any case, the rhythm of German – no matter whether one includes spoken sloppiness or not – is still inevitably irregular. English syllables, by contrast, are systematically, and not only in 9 10

This is why acoustic computer displays are so difficult to decipher. I.e. contraction in the middle of two words: hat’s for hat es.

English and German Prosody

109

informal or sloppy articulation, subject to reduction. They are very much dependent on stress, both word and sentence stress. Only in a stressed position do syllables remain unmodified. In unstressed position they are subject to quantitative and qualitative reduction. This has been the case in the history of English for centuries and can still be seen in the present deviation of pronunciation from spelling, whether we take now monosyllabic Germanic words such as ‘make’ and ‘lord’ (< Old English ‘hlaf-weard’) or polysyllabic words of Romance origin, such as ‘factory’, ‘colour’ and ‘temporary’. Knowles (1987:107) rightly remarks that they have all been subject to reduction and syncope (/'f&ktrI/, etc). The reasons lie in the strong tendency of English towards an ‘alternating’ rhythm. This means that stressed syllables tend to occur at approximately regular (‘isochronous’) intervals (cf. McArthur 1992:869) so that the rhythmical units known as feet can be constructed (cf. Halliday 1970:1-3; 1994:292-295). According to this view, surplus unstressed syllables in a foot tend to be compressed and the stressed syllables in monosyllabic feet tend to be lengthened. This sense of a metrical foot, which structures our normal speech, is closely connected with the ubiquitous reduction of unstressed syllables. In the clause “the secretary is here” Southern Standard speakers tend to shorten the four unstressed syllables of ‘secretary is’ to the point where these syllables merge to just one syllable so that we get an alternation of stress and lack of stress: /'sektrIz/. The timing of English syllables according to feet is not totally free from phonological and syntactic implications. For example, ‘that’, when affected by reduction, is identified as the conjunction ‘that’ rather than the pronoun: “I know that ... (/@/)” vs “I know that. (/&/)”. But generally English prose rhythm can be said to be motivated by an aesthetic principle, namely the regularity of rhythm due to the recurrence of the stressed syllables. This aestheticism in everyday English may seem surprising, but then semantic and historical principles of word stress have not, as in German, provided alternative options. They have, in fact, led to a most hybrid inventory of English stress rules. Some verbs are marked by stress against nouns, others are not (cf. ‘the éxport’ vs ‘to expórt’, but ‘the deláy’ vs ‘to deláy’). Romance words in English owe their word stress partly to the original stress conditions in Latin (the stress was on the penultimate syllable), partly to the dominance of the Germanic initial stress11. As a result of the general hybridity of English, derivations often do not share the stress patterns of the base, but are dissociated – cf. ‘phótograph’, ‘photógraphy’, ‘photográphical’; ‘léxicon’, 11

The word ‘garage’, with its two sociolectally distinctive pronunciations (/'g&rIdZ/ and /g@'ra:Z/), illustrates the two stress principles within one lexeme.

110

Manfred MARKUS

‘lexicólogy’. As regards Germanic words, they, too, seem subject to a large number of contradictory rules – cf. ‘únderwear’ vs ‘understánd’. German is less hybrid here than English. As a result, the (Germanic-based) rule that word stress falls fall on the first stem syllable is widely valid in disyllabic words. Longer and all kinds of foreign words have been affected by this rule in that it was interpreted as a penultimate-stress pattern (cf. Kohler 1995:191). Affixes of verbs are usually unstressed, but prefixes of nouns are stressed unless they are secondarily derived from the verbs (Úrlaub; Ersátz from ersétzen). There are also patterns of semantic contrasting, as in ´übersetzen (‘to cross a river or lake’) vs übersétzen (‘to translate’). Learners will be confronted with further traps (cf. details in Kohler 1995:186-191), but all in all reasons of word class, word formation and etymology are close at hand to attribute a given word to its pattern of word stress, whereas English, due to its historically caused hybridity, has word stress rules which are far more opaque and variable, so much so that the regularity of an alternating rhythm could manifest itself as an aesthetic substitute principle. In this case speaking is like breathing: unless special factors intrude, we breathe regularly. 3. Loudness As in the case of length, the prosodic relevance of loudness, or sound intensity, has to be kept apart from its phonemic implications, for example, from the fact that vowels are more intense (i.e. sonourous) than consonants. We will not be concerned with such universal issues, which equally apply to the two languages. The pragmatic and communicative role of loudness functions twofold: loudness is used by speakers – depending on the person, the situation, the speaker’s attitude – in the way of microphone amplification for crossing a distance or for prevailing over noise, or when we are angry or otherwise excited. This may go to the point of shouting, with the declamatory articulation of public speakers before a big audience somewhere in between. Loudness also comes in as a concomitant of pitch. When we speak ‘up’, we speak in both a louder and higher voice than normal. The reasons may be manifold, for example, they may lie in the intention of contrasting two units of speech. The question, however, is to what extent English and German are similar in this respect of loudness contributing to stress patterns. Here it seems vital to keep word stress clearly apart from ‘sentence stress’. According to Kaltenbacher (1997:161), the prominence of a syllable in a German word is marked by high pitch and loudness, but in English it is more marked by syllable duration and intensity. This is demonstrated by the computer display for loudness and pitch in German Himbeere (/'hImbe:r@/)

English and German Prosody

111

vs English ‘raspberry’ (/'rA:zb(@)rI/), cut out from complete sentences (Fig. 2).12

Hím-

bee-

re

rásp-

berry

Figure 2. Word stress (loudness, pitch and length) in English and German

As regards the suprasegmental stress patterns, i.e. intonation, German and English are similar in marking the prominence of the tone-unit nucleus by pitch, loudness and length combined, but in the other parts of the tone group, English relies more on a functional pitch contour (see below under 4), whereas German has no particular pitch pattern to offer here, but uses length and loudness to mark tone group prominence (cf. Delattre 1965:33). Schematically (Table 1): unit German English E/G ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------word stress pitch, (loudness) length, loudness, (pitch) differ tone group nucleus pitch, loudness, length pitch, loudness, length similar tone group stress length, loudness, (pitch) pitch differ Table 1. Functions of prosodic features in English and German

The features in parentheses are concomitant features. Ignoring these, one may say that loudness in German contributes to sentence stress, in both the nucleus and the tone group as a whole, but less to word stress. By contrast, English uses loudness for marking nuclear salience of a 12

An isolated articulation of the words would immediately evoke the stress pattern of tone groups. – The acoustic displays, provided by the program ‘Speech Analyzer’ (http://www. sil. org), are based on recordings of my own voice and are, thus, provisional.

112

Manfred MARKUS

word/syllable in a tone group, but not for the tone group as a whole. Table 1 also shows that the other and more striking difference between English and German lies in the attribution of pitch. 4. Pitch While pitch is the basis of German word stress (see Fig. 2), English uses it for so-called ‘sentence stress’, i.e. the prominence of certain syllables in a tone group (often a clause).13 Within this framework, interest in pitch should not be limited to the nucleus of a tone group (cf. chapter 5 below).14 In the context of this paper the total range of a pitch contour in a tone group is the more important aspect of pitch because it is here that the two languages fundamentally differ. But what is a ‘tone group’? This is another prosodic term that has a long controversial discussion on its record. Admittedly, the term has some subjective quality about it (cf. Halliday 1967:18). Yet it is needed as a prosodic correlate of the communicative and syntactic structures of spoken language. As Tench rightly remarks (1996:33), neutral tonality in a discourse is characterised by “the functional equivalence of intonation unit, clause and unit of information, linking up phonology with grammar and semantics”. The tone group, then, is that part of a discourse text that the speaker by his voice wishes to identify as an informational unit. In syntax there are phrases and clauses as units, but the communicative or informational structure of clauses is best described in the well-known terms of the Prague school of linguists, ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, interpreted non-dichotomously in the sense of Firbas’ (1964) ‘communicative dynamism’ 15 . Even if we admit that theme (or ‘topic’) and rheme (or ‘comment’) are often manifold and difficult theoretically to identify in a given passage of text, yet it cannot be questioned that tone groups are essentially motivated by these concepts16. Given this theoretical background, a clause such as 1 13 14 15

16 17

Méine Schwéster Johánna géht jéden Fréitag in die Stádt zum Shóppen.17

‘Sentence stress’ is really a misnomer, since, strictly speaking, its domain is not the sentence, but the tone group (cf. McArthur 1992: 989). On this one-sidedness of researchers’ interest cf. Mindt 2001: 55. There is no need to go into the details of this theory now . But it should be understood that theme and rheme are polar abstractions on a scale so that, beyond the syllables marked by underlining, also the other stressed syllables in an utterance (such as 1) carry some degree of thematic or rhematic weight. – For a detailed discussion of the theory cf. Halliday 1994: 37-67. cf. Tench 1996: 32. For a more elaborate description of the role of the ‘given’ and the ‘new’ parts of tone groups, cf. also Halliday 1970: 40-43; 1994, 295-302. In this paper, word stress is marked by simple accents on the stressed vowels, sentence stress on both the theme and the rheme by (additional) underlining.

English and German Prosody

113

can be seen in terms of its communicative dynamism, with Johanna as (the main part of) the theme and the rhematic peak on Shoppen. The pitch contour of this clause and its waveform are shown in Fig. 3. Comparing the two profiles makes clear that German marks sentence stress mainly by loudness (amplitude) plus length18 rather than by pitch contour. There is, it is true, a modest prominence of the pitch on the topic (Johanna), and the rheme (Shoppen) is marked by the nuclear rise-fall contour, but the other stressed syllables in the tone group also have slightly higher pitch than their unstressed surroundings. Above all, the tone group does not have the striking declension of the pitch contour so typical of English. The reason is: German can very much rely on its most flexible word order; the given parts of a clause tend to come early in the tone group, whereas the new pieces of information tend to be presented towards the end. 19 It is therefore that Shoppen does not have to be marked by pitch nucleus as noticeably as in English – prominence by loudness and the clause-final position are sufficient signals of its rhematic weight.

Méine Schwéster

Johánna géht jéden Fréitag in die Stádt zum Shóppen.

Figure 3. Waveform and pitch in a German statement clause

18 19

The role of length is reflected, for example, in the extended pitch curve of Johanna compared with the other stressed words. The subtlety of Halliday’s (1994: 299-302) distinction between theme/rheme and given/new, based on the speaker's and the listener’s point of view respectively, is not needed for the purpose of this paper.

114

Manfred MARKUS

Now, depending on the context and the essence of what speakers of 1 want to add as ‘new’ to the hearers’ previous information, they can choose from many syntactic options, such as (to mention only three): 2 3 4

Zum Shoppen geht meine Schwester Johanna jeden Freitag in die Stadt. Jeden Freitag geht meine Schwester Johanna zum Shoppen in die Stadt. Meine Schwester Johanna geht jeden Freitag zum Shoppen in die Stadt.

Obviously German can easily functionalise its syntax to make clear what the informative essence of an utterance (its communicative dynamism) is. Clear nuclear marking by pitch is only needed in exceptional cases when syntax does not ideally correlate with the theme-rheme structure, as in 4. Here the salience of jeden (‘every single’) is based on pitch prominence. On the part of the theme, Johanna (as against another sister, for example) is interpreted as the real topic of the tone group the more the stressed syllable of the word Johanna is marked by pitch as the head of the tone group. English is, as is well-known, much less flexible in adapting its syntax to theme-rheme distribution, due to its strict word order rules. Given this background, it seems fair to see the elaborate pattern of English intonation as a substitute for its lack of flexibility in word order. The elaborateness of the pattern consists in that theme and rheme are marked by intonation more unmistakably than in German. In the tone unit (adapted from Halliday 1970: 42) 5

My sister Jane goes shopping in town every Friday.

the default interpretation is to understand ‘Jane’ as the theme of the tone group and ‘Friday’ as the rheme. This interpretation is marked by an extremely high pitch on ‘Jane’ (extreme by German standards), and the second, clearly less prominent peak of pitch on the essential rhematic unit, the first syllable of ‘Friday’. The general descent of the pitch curve, with the initial ‘mountain’ and the final ‘slope’, signals to the audience that the essential point of this piece of information comes at the end and is the time-when. The computer recording gives evidence of the signalling quality of the pitch curve (Fig. 4).

English and German Prosody ‘My si-

ster

Jane

115

goes shopping in town every Fri- day’.

Figure 4. Pitch in an English statement with final nucleus

Unlike German, English needs this regularly significant pitch contour since its word order is hardly reliable in view of the theme-rheme distribution. For example, if our clause was intended as an answer to the question “Where does Jane go shopping every Friday?”, the proper nuclear pitch would, of course, be on ‘town’. Likewise, the question “What does Jane do in town every Friday?” would trigger the answer with the nuclear pitch on ‘shopping’, even though the word is in the middle of the clause (Fig. 5). ‘My si-

ster

Jane goes

shopping in town every

Fri- day’.

Figure 5. Pitch in an English statement with early nucleus

For an analysis of English pitch prominence a theoretical understanding of the ‘tone group’ (or ‘tone unit’ or ‘speech group’) seems helpful. A ‘tone group’ divides into ‘pre-head’, ‘head’, ‘body’, ‘nucleus’ and ‘tail’.20 While only the nucleus is obligatory, all the other elements are optional 21 . Utterances with only a nucleus are totally normal in dialogue, where we do not insist on rounded-off clauses and where even the topic (the head) may be interpretable from the co(n)text. Here is an invented piece of discourse with 20

cf. Arnold/Hansen 1979: 209, where the English terms are explained to go back to the 1920’s. 21 This is perhaps the reason why Halliday (1970: 42), in his discussion of tonic prominence, focusses on the discussion of the nucleus, at the cost of the other members of the tone group.

116

Manfred MARKUS

different degrees of explicitness (Table 2): (pre-head) (head) (body) nucleus (tail) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It's been a very enjoyable evening for all of us.22 It has been nice talking to you. We hope we haven't stayed too long. Not at all. Thank you so much. Your umbrella! Thank you. Good night. Bye. Table 2. Different prosodic types in a discourse

The pattern of the tone group, in spite of the many possible zero positions, is as much a basis of orientation for spoken communication as the clause is for the syntactic one. For discourse to work one always has to know what an utterance is about and what its nucleus is. The prosodic nucleus, as the main and compulsory unit, is not reliably marked by its only tendentially (but not regularly) final or penultimate position, i.e. by syntax, but by its suggestive internal pitch contour. Before the different options of nuclear pitch contour are discussed, it seems, however, fair to summarise and to interpret the results of our instrumental analyses concerning the tone group: (1) Both English and German tone units have a compulsory nucleus and an optional pre-head, head, body and tail. Headless tone units correspond to syntactic ellipses of the theme of utterances. Needless to say that natural discourse can more often do without the explicit statement of the theme than, for example, news reports. (2) In common English statements, the head is considerably higher in pitch than the nucleus and the pitch falls down within the body in steps from one stressed syllable to the next. It is this regular pattern of the ‘flight of stairs’ that helps identify the head and the nucleus, and, thus, the theme and the rheme. In German there is less of a need for identifying theme and rheme because, due to its more flexible word order, speakers can usually front what needs to be topicalised, no matter whether it happens to be the subject or not. This syntactic flexibility of German was demonstrated in 2 to 4 above. By contrast, the sample clause “my sister Jane goes shopping in town every Friday” does not allow for much syntactic variation (except for split constructions). But the lack of syntactic flexibility is made up for in English by greater prosodic subtlety. In 22

The example has been taken from Arnold/Hansen 1979: 209.

English and German Prosody

117

addition to the variants of the clause in Fig. 4 and 5, with the nuclear stress on ‘Friday’ and ‘shopping’ respectively, several other theme-rheme interpretations are imaginable (as Halliday 1970:42, demonstrates); in fact, every unit of the tone group could be rhematised, given that the question (= theme) has been defined accordingly. (3) The hearer can reckon with two peaks in a tone group (on the head and the nucleus) unless there is ellipsis, which means that the topic and the other, optional parts of the tone group are to be interpreted from cotext or context. In view of the role of discourse and its elliptical units, this paper has to focus now, in line with the greater part of intonation research, on the nucleus of the tone group. 5. Prosodic variation in statements Daniel Jones has demonstrated nuclear intonation contours by distinguishing six different pitch types of the word ‘yes’ (Table 3).23 1a. 1b. 2a. 2b. 3. 4.

low fall: high fall: low rise: high rise: fall-rise: rise-fall:

Table 3.

_ Yes. = That is so. ` Yes. = Of course it is so. 7 Yes. = I understand that; please continue. ΄ Yes. = Is it really so? ˇ Yes. = That may be so. ˆ Yes. = Most certainly.

Types of nucleus contours (from Jones 1964: 277)

These seemingly irrelevant, but in fact pragmatically decisive rises and falls of the pitch within the short phase of the nucleus, as well as the combinations of rises and falls, also exist in German and seem to be quite universal. The six types, which have often been quoted (cf. O’Connor and Arnold 1973: 4f.; Bald 1976: 38f; Arnold and Hansen 1979: 208), are based on four parameters: falling pitch; rising pitch; combination of fall and rise; and the relative height of pitch (low vs high). To bring some light into Jones' types, it seems fair to say that the basic pitch contour of a nucleus in statements is a falling one (types 1a and b). The fall of the voice suggests matter-of-factness, or, as Halliday (1970: 23) suggests, “certainty with regard to yes or no”. If the voice starts exceptionally high, this is interpretable as emphasis (type 1b) of this self-assertive attitude. By contrast, the rising pitch 23

For a more detailed, yet in some points less transparent, description of the different options (‘tones’) cf. Halliday 1970: 10-21.

118

Manfred MARKUS

(2a and b) essentially suggests some kind of appeal to the interlocutor. In the case of a yes-no question one asks for a response; in commands the appeal refers to the required pursuance of directives; and in utterances which are statements on the surface the rising pitch suggests certain implications of the given act of communication. The exact interpretation very much depends on the context. Jones' “please continue” interpretation holds true for telephone talks, but we use the same pattern more generally, both in English and German, for example when asking somebody in after a knock on the door. In reciting and in discourse, interlocutors may also raise their voice at the end of statements to mark their wish to continue, or in order not to be interrupted. High rise always suggests emphasis, not only that of a question (type 2b), but possibly also that of a command. For example, a high-rise command “go!” signals ultimate resoluteness on the part of the speaker. Jones' last two types (3 and 4) are composites including the suggestiveness of the two types just discussed. A rise after a high fall suggests that the statement does not have ultimate validity, but is in need of complementation. And in the last type the high fall suggesting matter-of-factness is preceded by the high rise, which signals the reproachful tone addressed to the interlocutor (implication: “Don't you know?”, or “Why are you asking again?”). Jones' six types in principle function the same way in German (cf. Kohler 1995:198). But on the other hand, it is striking to see that the attitudes suggested in English by the modulation of the nucleus are often explicitly expressed by modal particles. Instead of a high fall `Ja (1b), German native speakers may as well say ja natürlich, ja klar, ja sicher. Type 2b (high rise) may be expressed lexically by German na ja and ach ja. Type 3, with its fall-rise first suggesting a statement and then a question/appeal, could be correlated with ja schon, and the last pattern (4: rise-fall) with ja doch. Note that lexis only works when accompanied by the right stress pattern: type 4, for example, needs the stress (in the form of pitch, loudness and length) on the first element – ja doch would mean something totally different, namely that the speaker is contradicting an interlocutor's negative statement. The pragmatic subtleties of the German modal particles are of no concern in this paper.24 The few examples may suffice to show that German uses stress on the nucleus as a marker, but with some support from lexis. English, by contrast, uses modal particles sparingly (e.g. in “well yes”), and relies more on the intonational nucleus. In John Cleese’s famous comedy series ‘Fawlty Towers’ the pitiable landlord of the hotel is constantly 24

But cf. Helbig’s Lexikon deutscher Partikeln (1988: 165-172 on ja).

English and German Prosody

119

harassed by his next-to-omniscient wife with “I ^know”, intoned with the (high) rise-fall of Jones’ type 4. Even a most shrewish German wife would not raise her voice as much as Mrs Faulty, but may use modal explicitness instead: Das weiß ich doch/schon (lange)/längst/sehr wohl! 6. Prosodic variation in questions and commands Questions and commands as speech acts have semiotically in common that they are addresses to the interlocutor. In English they accordingly share the feature of nuclear pitch raising: it signals that the speaker hopes for, or wants to encourage, a response. This is the default case. However, wh-questions do not need such a signal since they are marked as questions by the question word: “Where are you _staying?” The default interpretation, with nuclear stress on ‘staying’, is that the question word topicalises “the nature of the missing piece” (Halliday 1994, 46) and ‘(are you) staying’ has the status of the rheme. Alternatively, by stressing ‘where’ the speaker could mark it as the rheme, downgrading the rest of the question to a halfway superfluous thematic tail. Often this tail is not verbalised at all (ellipsis). Only in this case do we have a rising nucleus: “7Where?” By contrast, yes-no questions (“Have you met my friend 7John?”) need the rising prominence of the nucleus. Here the rheme is marked by the nuclear prominence of one of the clause-final units, in this case the very last one, John. But there are all kinds of modifying options. Wh-questions marked by a seemingly redundant nuclear rise suggest empathy (“Where are you 7staying?”) or concerned disgreement (“Where are you 7going?”), in any case some kind of emotionality. Yes-no questions which do not mark their rhematic nucleus as such (“Have you met my friend _John?”) are to be interpreted as routine questions or otherwise rhetorical questions (“What does this _tell us?”) or exclamations (“Haven't I been _quick!”25). Much depends on the context here. If a yes-no question which implies action on the part of the addressee is intoned as a statement, this may well be interpreted as negative emotionality/impatience: “Are you _ready?!” A similar relationship between norm and deviation can be found in the case of commands. For its default or neutral form it seems fair to define the pitch with a low rise: “Don't 7move!” “7Go!”26 A command with a low-fall pitch contour in the nucleus suggests matter-of-factness; the commander takes it for granted that his or her commands are fulfilled: “Don't _move!” 25 26

This example is taken from Arnold/Hansen (1979: 211). Arnold/Hansen (1979: 211) interpret this form as the deviant one (höfliche Aufforderung, Bitte) and the more factual tone as the norm (neutral).

120

Manfred MARKUS

Emotional or attitudinal suggestiveness, both in questions and commands, are one of the “disturbing” factors of a simple correlation of nuclear pitch contours with these sentence types. There is a second source of disturbance: explicit or implicit contrasts. Utterances such as 6 and 7 6 7

would you like 7tea or _coffee? 7take it or _leave it!

mark the end of the alternative list of the options mentioned by the low fall on the second item. If one intones “7tea or 7coffee?”, with a rise on both ‘tea’ and ‘coffee’, the implication is that the list of options is not finished with the coffee yet and that other options of drinks are available.27 Pitch contouring of nuclei in German questions and commands is not basically different from the one just described for English. The nuclear pitch contour suggests the unmodified or otherwise attitudinally or contrastively marked utterances, in particular, the basic types of statements, questions and commands. German discourse, thus, has the gamut of tones that English has, with again a greater share of modal particles. For example, after a positive statement of speaker A, speaker B may refer to it by saying: 8 9 10 11 12

Ach 'ja? Ach 'so? Ach _so? _Ach! So _so!

A's statement questioned by B (irony involved) Surprise and keen interest of B B: 'Yes, but I haven't thought of it.' B: 'What you are telling me sounds surprising.' B: sceptical to ironical comment

With all these German and the preceding English examples this paper has so far focussed on isolated text passages, widely ignoring their subtle conditioning by surrounding text as well as pragmatic complexities. Text continuity is generally marked by a rising tone, for example at the end of a subordinate clause before the main clause: 13 When he 'saw us, | he ran a-_way.

According to Arnold/Hansen (1979:216), from whom text samples 13 and 14 are taken (with modification), such clause-final rises are really functional in English as markers of subordination, whereas coordinated tone groups within a longer sentence do without the final marking of text continuity, cf. 27

cf. Halliday (1970: 22); Arnold/Hansen (1979: 217).

English and German Prosody

121

14 The referee blew his 'whistle, | and the game _started.

By contrast, German seems to be less subtle here, mechanically marking any text continuation by a nuclear rise, irrespective of the syntactic structure: 15 Der Schiedsrichter blies die 'Pfeife, | und das Spiel be_gann.

This contrast is not so surprising in view of the function of the English nuclear pitch within the tone group. Its additional functionalisation as a marker of cohesive coordination would prosodically overburden the nucleus, whereas German, with its less systematic integration of the nucleus in the tone group, can functionalise nuclear pitch as a marker of text cohesion. 7. Conclusion Halliday (1970:35-49), Cruttenden (1997:68-124) and various other researchers have described many such special cases of nuclear distribution, for example, in appositions, lists, long sentences and clause-final adjuncts. While such issues go beyond the scope of this paper in any case, it can be assumed that they would produce roughly similar results for English and German because they are mainly concerned with pragmatic and communicative aspects of prosody. But it has to be admitted that much work is still waiting for researchers in this interesting field between prosody and grammar. Meanwhile, this paper has tried to pull some of the threads together and, above all, to argue why and how English prosody is different from the German one. Emphasis has been laid on the interconnection of prosody with both morphology and syntax. Since German is quite an inflectional language, it tends to avoid the phonological reduction of inflections, except in (non-inflected) function words and in casual/sloppy speech. By contrast, English, which is more a syntactic (analytic) language, has been under the influence of a ‘reductive trend’ since Middle English so that systematic reduction of unstressed syllables now allows for a tendentially stress-timed isochrony of rhythm. On the other hand, the rigorous syntax of English disallows flexible word order (as practiced in German) along the lines of theme and rheme so that a regular pitch contour within tone groups could develop to fill the semiotic gap. The nucleus part of this pitch contour, which functions similarly in English and German, is generally iconic: while pitch raising means openness towards the communicative partner, lowering of pitch suggests self-certainty and a closed attitude.

122

Manfred MARKUS

The pre-nuclear pitch contour, from the prehead onwards, is a specific feature of English intonation – due to its distinct and steadily descending profile and its implicit function of marking communicative dynamism. By contrast, German uses pitch mainly for word stress. This makes sense since words, less affected by reduction in terms of length and loudness, can thus better preserve their morphological substance. References Abercrombie, D. 1967. Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Arnold, Roland, and Klaus Hansen. 1979 (1975). Englische Phonetik. 3. Aufl. Leipzig. VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie. Bald, Wolf-Dietrich. 1976. “Contrastive studies in English and German intonation. survey”. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 4. 37-47. Bolinger, Dwight L. 1972. Intonation. Selected readings. Harmondsworth. Penguin. Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth 1986. An Introduction to English Prosody. Tübingen. Max Niemeyer Verlag. . 1993. English Speech Rhythm. Form and Function in Everyday Verbal Interaction. Amsterdam, Philadelphia. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Cruttenden, Alan. 1997. Intonation. Second ed. (1st ed. 1986). Cambridge. University Press. Crystal, David. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge. University Press. . 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 3rd ed. Oxford. Blackwell. Dauer, R.M. 1983. “Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalysed”. Journal of Phonetics 11. 51-69. Davidsen-Nielsen, Niels, and Brit Ulseth. 1989. English Intonation. Copenhagen. Universitetsforlaget. Delattre, P. 1981 (1965). Comparing the phonetic features of English, French. Reprint Darmstadt. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Esser, Jürgen. 1975. Intonationszeichen im Englischen. Tübingen. Niemeyer. , in cooperation with Andrzej Polomski. 1988. Comparing reading and speaking Intonation. Amsterdam. Rodopi. Fiehler, Reinhard, Birgit Barden, Mechthild Elstermann, and Barbara Kraft. 2004. Eigenschaften gesprochener Sprache. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Firbas, Jan. 1964. “On defining the theme in functional sentence analysis.”

English and German Prosody

123

Travaux Linguistiques de Prague 1. 267-80. Halliday, M.A.K. 1967. Intonation and grammar in British English. Mouton. The Hague. . 1970. A course in spoken English intonation. London. Oxford University Press. . 1994 (1985). An introduction to functional grammar. 2nd ed. London. Arnold. Hawkins, John. 1986. A comparative typology of English and German. Unifying the contrasts. London. Routledge. Helbig, Gerhard. 1988. Lexikon deutscher Partikeln. Leipzig. VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie. Hjelmslev, Louis. 1963/1970. Language: an introduction, tr. F.J. Whitfield. Madison. University of Wisconsin Press. Hockett, Charles. 1958. A Course in Modern Lingustics. New York. MacMillan. Jones, Daniel 1964. An outline of English phonetics. Rev. by A.C. Gimson. Cambridge. Kaltenbacher, E. 1997. “German speech rhythm in L2 acquisiton”. In Leather, J., and A. Jams (eds.) New Sounds '97. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second-Language Speech. Klagenfurt. The University of Klagenfurt 1997. 159-166. Knowles, Gerald. 1987. Patterns of Spoken English. An Introduction to English Phonetics. London, New York. Longman. Kohler, Klaus H. 1982. “Rhythmus im Deutschen“. Aipuk 20 (Arbeitsberichte Institut für Phonetik Kiel). 89-105. . 1995 (1977). Einführung in die Phonetik des Deutschen. 2. Aufl. Berlin. Erich Schmidt Verlag. Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London. Longman. Lehiste, Ilse. “Isochrony Reconsidered”. Journal of Phonetics 5. 252-263. Leisi, Ernst, and Christian Mair. 1999. Das heutige Englisch. Wesenszüge und Probleme. 8. Auflage. Heidelberg. Universitätsverlag C. Winter. Markus, Manfred. 1992. “Rhythm, stress and intonation in English and German seen contrastively”. New Departures in Contrastive Linguistics, eds. Mair, Christian, and Manfred Markus. Wien. Braumüller. 21-36. . 1995. “The sing-song of chit-chat. Zur Poetizität in der englischen Alltagssprache (am Beispiel der Lautung)”. Moderne Sprachen 39. 1-18. McArthur, Tom (ed.). 1992. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford, New York. UP. Mindt, Ilka. 2001. Intonation im Lancaster/IBM Spoken English Corpus. Falls und fall-rises, Sprecherwechsel, paratones, declination. Tübingen.

124

Manfred MARKUS

Gunter Narr Verlag. Newman, Stanley S. 1946. “On the stress system of English.” Word 2. 171-187. O’Connor, J.D., and G.F. Arnold 1973 (1961). Intonation of colloquial English. 2nd ed. London. Pilch, Herbert. 1984. “Intonation als kommunikatives Problem.” In Halfmann, Ulrich, Kurt Müller and Klaus Weiss (eds.). Wirklichkeit und Dichtung. Studien zur englischen und amerikanischen Literatur. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Franz Link. Berlin. Duncker & Humblot. 195-210. Roach, P. 1982. “On the distinction between stressed-timed and syllable-timed languages”. Crystal, D. (ed.) Linguistic controversies. essays in linguistic theory and practice in honour of F.R. Palmer. London. Arnold. 73-79. Schank, Gerd, and Gisela Schoenthal. 1983. Gesprochene Sprache. Eine Einführung in Forschungsansätze und Analysemethoden. 2. Aufl. Tübingen. Niemeyer. Schwitalla, Johannes. 1997. Gesprochenes Deutsch. Eine Einführung. Berlin. Erich Schmidt Verlag. Scuffil, Michael. 1982. Experiments in Comparative Intonation: A Case Study of English and German. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Tench, Paul. 1996. The intonation systems of English. London: Cassell. Trouvain, Jürgen. 2004. Tempo Variation in Speech Production. Impliciatons for Speech Synthesis. Diss. Universität Saarland. Phonus 8. Saarbrücken. Institut für Phonetik der Universität des Saarlandes. Vennemann, Theo. 1991. “Skizze der deutschen Wortprosodie”, Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 10. 86-111. Whitworth, Nicole. 2002. “Speech Rhythm production in three German-English bilingual families”. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics 9. 175-205. Wieden, Wilfried, and William Nemser. 1991. The pronunciation of English in Austria. Tübingen. Gunter Narr Verlag.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English — Transfer from Japanese1 — Hiroko SAITO 1. Introduction Soon after the annual Center Test2 of 2002, a letter was sent to a monthly magazine, Eigo Kyouiku (English teaching), 3 by a high-school English teacher concerning one of the questions on the English exam. The letter candidly expressed the shock experienced by Mr. Ikegami, an experienced teacher of English, when he tried answering the questions and ended up getting one question, which was about placement of the nucleus in a sentence, wrong. The question was the second part of a ‘pronunciation’ question, the first part asking about placement of word stress. The rest of the English exam tests knowledge of vocabulary, idioms, and reading comprehension. All questions are printed and no listening or speaking tasks are required of examinees. Every year, this test follows the same format and students usually prepare for the examinations well beforehand. This is how the question ran:4 For each of the underlined parts, (1) to (4), choose one word which is pronounced with the greatest emphasis: Jim: What job do you eventually want to have? Rie: (1) I haven’t thought about it. Have you? 1 2

3 4

I would like to thank Margaret Maeda for her suggestions and invaluable comments on an earlier version of this paper. A set of exams given once a year by the National Center for University Entrance Examinations in Japan. Most national and public universities and many private universities require students to take these exams and candidates are admitted to a university according to the total score they achieve on the exams. Most students are required to take the English test, regardless of the department they are applying for. Approximately 536,000 examinees sit for the English test each year, and therefore the examination is quite influential. Eigo Kyouiku 2002, vol.51, no. 1:86. The directions are originally in Japanese.

126

Hiroko SAITO Jim: Rie: Jim: Rie: Jim: Rie:

Yeah, I want a job (2)that allows me to travel. Hmm, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? What kind of job? I’d like to be a tour guide. (3)What would you like to do? Now that you mention it, I guess I’d also like a job allowing me to travel. Doing what? (4)I’d like to be a pilot.

For (1), examinees were given the following four words to choose from: haven’t, thought, about, and it. Mr. Ikegami was certain that the answer was haven’t, and when he found out that it was otherwise5 and that he would have lost three points for the mistake had he been a student sitting for the exam, he was deeply shocked. The next day, however, he turned up at work and found out that his fellow Japanese English teachers had also looked at the exams and had gotten the same question wrong in exactly the same way. Neither he nor the other Japanese teachers could understand why the answer wasn’t the strongest accent on haven’t, because they had always thought (and taught) that negative auxiliary verbs were accented. Indeed, Mr. Ikegami’s junior-high-school son’s English textbook6 even contained the following exercise on practising the rhythm of English: ● I like soccer. ● I don’t like tennis.

With this evidence, Mr. Ikegami regained his confidence and realized that the Center Test question itself was to blame, and that it should be criticized. His confidence was strengthened when he discovered that one of the famous cram schools took up the question in its commentary of the Center Test on the Web and said that the word thought could be the strongest emphasized word, but haven’t could also be the correct answer. A question with two possible answers is not a very well-designed exam question, concluded the commentary.7 It became apparent at the time that it was not only Mr. Ikegami, but also numerous other high-school teachers and cram-school instructors who felt uneasy about this type of question, and Mr. Ikegami decided to voice this 5 6 7

The answers are printed in major newspapers as soon as the examinations are over. New Horizon1 (2004: 27). This is a summary of the account in Mr. Ikegami’s first letter to Eigo Kyouiku.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

127

uneasiness claiming that firstly, this aspect of English was not teachable, and secondly, that there was no correlation between this and the rest of the English exam questions: in other words, those students who answered this particular question correctly did not necessarily score high on the test as a whole, and those who did well overall did not always succeed in answering this specific question correctly. Therefore, this type of question was not valid or suitable to be asked on a written test of English. The third point the English teacher emphasized in his letter was that no correlation could be seen between the ability to answer this type of question and the student’s actual pronunciation of English. According to Mr. Ikegami, who carried out a survey among his students,8 those who were able to answer correctly as to where the nucleus was, did not necessarily have ‘natural-sounding’ pronunciation of English when asked to read a passage out loud. Again, he questions the aim and validity of this kind of paper-and-pencil test. This paper will attempt to explore and explain the problems behind this teacher’s—and the Japanese English learners’—distress. In the present paper, the terms ‘nucleus,’ ‘nuclear stress,’ ‘nuclear accent’ all mean the same: the intonation nucleus of an intonation unit. 2. Is it Possible to Teach Nuclear-Stress Placement? After I read the English teacher’s article, I wrote in to the same journal9 and explained that there were certain rules concerning nuclear-stress placement and that such rules were indeed teachable. I explained about the last content word receiving nucleus (what the Center Test was asking for when it said “the word which is pronounced with the greatest emphasis”) when the whole sentence was new information, i.e. in broad focus. I also explained the difference between words which were pronounced clearly and with strong vowels (as in the case of haven’t) and those pronounced not only clearly but with accompanying pitch change (as with thought, the only content word in sentence (1)). The rule is no secret and has been known to phoneticians for a long time. Japanese phoneticians too, are aware of the rules, and books on English phonetics regularly contain this information. It just so happens that some writers and publishers of high-school English textbooks 10 have not been including sufficient information or correct explanations on the prosody of English. 8 9 10

Results are tabulated in his second letter to the magazine. Eigo Kyouiku 2002. vol.51, no.5:81. High-school textbooks in Japan are usually written by a group of high-school teachers and academics in the field concerned, along the guidelines set down by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and authorized by the same ministry before they are adopted by the schools.

128

Hiroko SAITO

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule that states that the last content word of an intonation unit receives the nuclear accent in non-contrastive situations, for example, in cases of so-called ‘event’ sentences11 where it is the subject noun, and not the verb, that receives nuclear stress: Watch OUT! That BUILDing’s falling down.12

Here, the whole sentence is new information, and yet, instead of the last content word, the noun building is allotted the nucleus. However, upon checking past Center Tests,13 it became clear that the test-makers were obviously avoiding setting questions around such exceptions to the rule: all nuclei were either neutral as in (1), (2), and (4) in the above-cited question, or contrastive like in (3). English intonation, especially nucleus placement, does get complicated when it comes to having to teach exceptions to the rule. And there are many cases where more than one ‘correct’ answer is possible in the same context. However, there are many more cases where teaching of the nucleus placement rule for neutral sentences and contrastive accent placement is not a difficult task. Moreover, it can be useful because knowing where the nucleus should be placed has much to do with understanding the syntax and interpreting the meaning of the sentence correctly. After all, tests asking which syllable receives primary stress in citation forms of English words have always been a popular item on tests and exams at all levels in Japan, and no one denies the importance of knowing which syllable receives the word accent. Such knowledge helps one to pronounce English words correctly. Therefore, in that sense, asking about placement of nuclei has its place even on a paper-and-pencil test. The current trend in English teaching around the world is towards teaching of a ‘global’ model of English: that is, in this day and age when second-language speakers of English outnumber those speakers whose mother tongue is English, the important goal in learning English is to make oneself understood and to understand what other people—and they are not necessarily native speakers of English—are saying, and not to sound exactly like an American (or an English person, Canadian, Australian, etc.) It is only natural for speakers whose mother tongue is not English to retain the pronunciation features of their native languages when speaking English, and 11 12 13

Cruttenden (1990, 1997). Cruttenden (1990:12). Traced back to 1997, for both the main test and the second test given a week after the main test for those who could not take the first test for inevitable reasons.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

129

teachers should not waste time forcing students to shed these accents. However, there are certain elements of pronunciation that the student should struggle to acquire and the teachers should teach in order to achieve the goal of a global model of English, and Jenkins (2000) proposes such a model. Jenkins goes through various (segmental and supra-segmental) aspects of the pronunciation of English considering what to keep and what to discard, in order to set up pedagogic priorities for her model of English. As for intonation, she asserts that of the three principal areas, i.e. pitch movement, nuclear stress, and tone units, nuclear stress is one of the most important features that should be taught as part of the ‘core’ in her model of ‘international’ English.14 After running an experiment with L1 and L2 speakers of English to test both the receptive side (hearing nuclear stress in its intended position) and the productive side (placing nuclear stress appropriately and pronouncing it correctly for others to hear), she finds that the receptive aspect is easier for learners to acquire compared to production. Through this and other experiments as well as experience, Jenkins states that ‘the greatest phonological obstacles to mutual intelligibility appear to be deviant core sounds in combination with misplaced and/or misproduced nuclear stress.’15 However, ‘(a)s far as nuclear placement is concerned, the rules, both unmarked and contrastive, are simple enough for learners to master in the classroom…. Pedagogically, nuclear stress can be easily integrated receptively and productively into almost all classroom work….’16 In sum, it is possible, as well as essential, to teach nuclear stress placement rules as a part of the skill towards effective communication in English. 3. Nuclear Stress on a Function Word: A Japanese tendency At this point, I would like to return to the problem of why teachers and students decided that the word haven’t should receive the greatest emphasis in the sentence I haven’t thought about it, as well as survey other tendencies that Japanese English learners reveal when reading English sentences. Experiment by Sakamoto Inspired by the series of articles in Eigo Kyouiku, Sakamoto (2005)17 carried out an experiment on English learners’ awareness (or lack of awareness) of the intonation nucleus. She recorded readings of the English dialogue that appeared in the 2002 Center Test English exam mentioned 14 15 16 17

Jenkins (2000: 151-156). Jenkins (2000: 155). Ibid. Unpublished graduation thesis submitted in January 2005 to the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, written under the supervision of the present writer.

130

Hiroko SAITO

above, by 22 Japanese university students. She added some more sentences at the end to include ‘event’ sentences which were not in the original test. After the first reading, Sakamoto explained briefly what intonation nuclei were, and where they usually appeared in English sentences. After hearing this short18 explanation on the basic rules of nucleus placement, the subjects were asked to mark on paper which words in the dialogue should have received nuclear stress, according to the rules. Incorrect markings were pointed out by Sakamoto on the spot. Then, the same subjects were asked to read the dialogue again, this time looking at the nucleus markings. Incorrect readings were indicated, and the subjects were made to practice repeatedly until they could read with correct emphasis. These readings were also recorded. One month after the first meeting, the same subjects were summoned and shown a new dialogue in addition to the previous dialogue. They were asked to put down markings to show where the nuclei should be, then told to read the dialogues out loud to see if the teaching session of the previous month still had any effect on the subjects’ performance. Results As was expected from how English teachers reacted directly after the 2002 exam, more than half (54.5%) of the subjects in this experiment read with the nucleus on haven’t in the sentence I haven’t thought about it, in their very first reading, before any explanation or practice. Asked why they put so much prominence on this word, the subjects replied that because the sentence was a negative answer to a question, and just like answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question, they thought they should pronounce this negative word haven’t clearly and strongly. Even after the subjects were given a short lecture on what kind of words were likely to contain nuclear stress, that is, content words with information as against function words, the number of people marking haven’t actually increased to 68%. The more conscious that students became of the meaning of the sentences, the more they chose haven’t. As for how the subjects read out the dialogue after an explanation was given about nuclear stress placement, and correct placement for the nucleus for each intonation unit of the dialogue had been taught, only three people (13.6%) read with emphasis on haven’t, and 68% were able to read with the correct nucleus on thought. For the other items, similar improvements compared to the first readings could be observed after teaching of the rules. 18

Approximately five minutes per person.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

131

Apart from haven’t, other words wrongly accented19 in the subjects’ first readings were job in What kind of job? / do in What would you like to do? / travel in I guess I’d also like a job allowing me to travel. There was a tendency among the subjects to place the nucleus on the very last word of sentences even for sentences that should have received contrastive stress. For these sentences, however, the number of subjects marking nuclear stress on the last words decreased dramatically after they acquired knowledge about nucleus placement and when they were more conscious of the difference between new and given information. Thus, there were only two instances of marking on job instead of the seven people reading with the nucleus in the first readings, and for do in What would you like to do, sixteen subjects of the first readings decreased to only two people marking the last word, and the number was fifteen decreasing to ten for travel in I guess I’d also like a job allowing me to travel. Looked at another way, the number of subjects that placed the nuclear stress on the correct word increased dramatically after the lecture on the rules, as can be seen in figure 1: 20 15 first reading nucleus marking second reading

10 5 0

kind

Figure 1.

you

also

The number of people that placed the nucleus on the correct word

One important comment made by Sakamoto is that although there were no nuclei placed on the interrogative what in the following sentences during the very first readings, the interrogatives were read with a noticeably high pitch and with stress. What job do you eventually want to have? What kind of job? What would you like to do?

None of the subjects read the interrogative as containing the nucleus, i.e. 19

Words that should have contained the nuclei have been underlined.

132

Hiroko SAITO

with pitch change, and yet, five, six, and four subjects respectively, for the three sentences, marked what as the nucleus on paper after they had listened to the explanations and when they were given time to think. Again, Sakamoto asked for the reason they thought this interrogative should be emphasized, and the answer was that it was a very important word carrying important information. If they were being asked a question, the students said, they would always listen closely for the interrogative, so they only thought it natural that interrogatives should be pronounced clearly and strongly. Through Sakamoto’s experiment, we have seen some tendencies among Japanese English learners: the tendency, or assumption, that negative auxiliaries should be given greatest emphasis; the tendency towards end focus when not paying attention to the meaning of the sentence and therefore missing contrastive stress; and the tendency for high pitch on interrogatives (in this case, the word what) at the very beginning of a sentence. From another point of view, a different experiment was carried out by Mori (2005), who recorded and analyzed readings of sentences by Japanese English learners to see the level of pitch especially in sentence-initial positions. Experiments by Mori Mori had 30 Japanese university students read out sentences, all of which began with the unstressed pronouns I or they followed by a stressed lexical verb (think, thought, or bought). The intonation nucleus lies elsewhere in the sentence, since Mori’s concern is not with nuclear stress placement, but to ascertain the tendency of Japanese learners starting a sentence with high-pitched pronouns that should not be stressed. Native speakers of English read the sentences, as expected, with low pitch on the pronouns and raised pitch on the verbs. In contrast, over half of the Japanese students (60 to 70%) typically read the sentences with higher pitch on the pronouns compared with the verbs that follow. Mori then went on to explore whether this tendency of initial high pitch applied only to pronouns, or whether it extended to other function words as well. In her second experiment, four new sentences were added for another 30 students to read, and these new sentences started with the article the and the preposition at, as well as a preposition plus an article in the, and on the, all followed by a content word. In this second experiment, it turned out that the monosyllabic prepositions and articles were not produced with an initial high pitch. So Mori next considered whether syllabic or segmental structures affected the pitch pattern in sentence-initial positions, and ran another set of

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

133

experiments with more variation in the syllable structure of the sentence-initial function words. For all recorded readings, she analyzed the results physically by measuring the mean F0 and the maximum and minimum F0 of vowels and nasals of the target words, and these results were tabulated each time. Results The results of Mori’s experiments showed that a significant number of Japanese students produced an initial high pitch where native speakers of English did not, in the following words: I, they, it, and you, all personal pronouns, whereas no initial high pitch was observed for the articles a and an. High pitch was sometimes found in sentence-initial prepositions such as to, at, in, on, and by but it was not as obvious as for pronouns. From her data, Mori concluded that syllable structure did not seem to be the contributing factor towards the frequency of initial high pitch: i.e., whether the vowel in the word was a short vowel or diphthong did not seem to matter, nor whether the word ended in a consonant or not. Then what factor is contributing to the difference? Mori’s conclusion is that her results indicate that syntactic category has the greatest effect on the frequency of occurrence of initial high pitch among her Japanese subjects. Mori suggests that this might be a transfer from Japanese, because in Japanese, subject pronouns, if used at all, appear at the beginning of a sentence and are accented (i.e., high pitched). Verbs in Japanese, on the other hand, usually appear at the end of the sentence, and in this position, words do not receive an accent except for focus.20 This also explains why the articles a, and an were never given a high pitch even when they were sentence initial, and why prepositions were seldom allotted a high pitch: there are simply no articles in Japanese and they are therefore not accentable, and prepositions are actually particles that appear not before, but after nouns in Japanese, and these are not accented except for contrastive focus. Here we should recall Sakamoto’s experiment, where it was found that the interrogative what at the beginning of sentences was pronounced by her subjects with high pitch, and later when asked why, the students replied that interrogatives were ‘important’ information. This phenomenon too, may be explained as interference or transfer from Japanese. In Japanese, the corresponding interrogative adjective donna, or the more formal form donoyoona that comes before a noun, and the interrogative pronoun nani

20

Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988), Sugito (1996).

134

Hiroko SAITO

also appear sentence-initially:21 HLL

LLL L L HHLH

Donna shigoto ni tsukitai no? HLLLL

LL H

Donoyoona shigoto? HL L

(What job do you eventually want to have?)

(What kind of job?)

LHL H

Nani wo shitai no?

(What would you like to do?)

Notice that in Japanese, even when a noun follows the interrogative adjective, the noun loses its original accent pattern (shigoto [LHH]) and it is the high-pitched accent of the interrogative that remains. This high pitch may have been transferred to the English pronunciation, when for English, the natural pronunciation would be no stress and lower pitch for what, and a strong stress on job in the first sentence and the nucleus on kind and you in the second and third sentences respectively. Mori’s assertion when explaining transfer of Japanese high pitch to English is mainly about the transfer of prosodic characteristics in certain syntactic positions. That is, sentence-initial pronouns are high-pitched in Japanese, and this high pitch is transferred to pronouns in the same position of an English sentence. Particles that do not take up initial position in Japanese (syntactic category equivalent to English prepositions) are high-pitched neither in Japanese nor in the English read by Japanese students. Is it possible to extend the process of transfer further? It might be that the Japanese learners, when reading English aloud, think about the meaning of the words they are reading, translate the word into Japanese, then the prosodic traits of that word in Japanese are brought to mind and transferred to English prosody, as it were. The transfer is not only about the syntactic position or the position a certain syntactic category occupies in a sentence, but what prosodic feature that word has in Japanese. The indefinite article,22 which is a syntactic category that does not exist in Japanese, is ignored in the first place, but personal pronouns tend to receive more prominence (high pitch) than necessary, because when a personal pronoun is used at all in Japanese, it is contrastive in nature, and 21 22

H shows high-pitched mora, and L low-pitched mora. The Japanese examples are in standard Tokyo dialect. The English definite article the is often translated into Japanese as sono, a demonstrative adjective.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

therefore accented.

135

Compare the following:

L H HHHHL

Soo omoimasu. LHH

(I think so.)

H LH HHHHL

Watashi wa soo omoimasu .

(As for me, I think so.)

As Mori also states, ‘there is a large difference between English pronouns and Japanese pronouns.’ 23 In English, subject pronouns are ‘given’ pieces of information, whilst in Japanese, the pronoun is usually ‘omitted except for emphasis or for clarification.’24 Therefore, when a pronoun is unduly stressed in English by Japanese speakers, it might affect the meaning or nuance of the utterance. Since Mori’s concern is sentence-initial pitch level, her experiment does not include negatives or auxiliary verbs. However, with the above results in mind, it might be possible to say that since the negating lexical item ~nai (not ~) in Japanese is often accented, those Japanese speakers who guessed wrongly that the word haven’t should receive the nucleus in I haven’t thought about it, may have carried this over from Japanese to English. Consider the following: LHHLL LLL

Kangaete imasu.

(I’m thinking about it.)

LHHLL LHLLL

Kangaete inaidesu.

(I haven’t thought about it.)

LHHLL LHHL

Kangaete imasen.

(I haven’t thought about it.)

Summary of the Two Experiments We have looked at two separate experiments investigating the way Japanese learners read English sentences. Through Sakamoto’s survey, we witnessed the evidence for the reason why many examinees and even English teachers thought that the function word haven’t should be the most emphasized word in a supposedly neutral reading of the sentence I haven’t thought about it, which was one of the questions on the 2002 Center Test. 23 24

Mori (2005:53). Ibid.

136

Hiroko SAITO

Another word, what, was pronounced with high pitch and consequently unduly accented by the Japanese subjects. For both haven’t and what, the students testified that these were ‘important’ words and hence should be stressed, if not given nucleus status. The other factor that became apparent from her survey was that for the first reading, Japanese students were not able to de-stress given information and move the nucleus onto a word that was new and/or contrastive against another word in the dialogue. Mori set out in her series of experiments to find out the cause behind sentence-initial high-pitch pronunciations of Japanese learners of English. It was discovered that function words were not all indiscriminately high-pitched at the beginning of a sentence: only those belonging to a particular syntactic category, namely subject pronouns, seemed to be involved. She reached the conclusion that this must be a transfer from Japanese, since Japanese subject pronouns, if used at all, appear sentence-initially and are realized with high pitch. After surveying the two different sets of experiments, the present writer suggested that findings by Sakamoto about misplacement of the intonation nucleus by Japanese students might also be explained by the kind of transfer from Japanese explored and discovered by Mori. When Japanese learners read English aloud, they think in terms of words, not larger units, and the syntactic category the word belongs to reminds them of the prosodic features the counterpart word has in Japanese. The learner then transfers this prosodic feature to their English pronunciation. This happens at both the conscious and unconscious levels,25 and even for students who are studying English at intermediate level in universities.26 4. Validity of Testing Nuclear Stress Placement This paper set out by trying to find the reason behind an English teacher’s complaint concerning the Japanese national Center Test of 2002. A question on the English exam contained an item that the teacher and his colleagues, and hence their students, had insufficient knowledge about, because it had never been taught properly in many schools in Japan, and even textbooks authorized by the Ministry of Education had wrong information about it. The teacher’s first complaint, that nuclear stress placement was not 25

26

Remember that Sakamoto had the subjects ‘think’ which words to mark after they had listened to her explanation on nuclear stress placement, and moreover, she often asked the subjects the reason in cases where they misplaced stresses. These could be considered as ‘conscious’ nuclear stress placement. Both Sakamoto and Mori used university students as subjects, and these students’ English level can be considered to be above average in Japan.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

137

teachable, cannot be sympathized with, because rules exist and it is not at all difficult to teach these rules. Once the basic rules and prosodic differences between English and Japanese are taught, thinking about where the nucleus should be placed and how it should be realized will help students to become aware of the syntax and the meaning of what they are trying to read, hear, or say. Jenkins (2000: 154) admits that although the receptive side (listening for the nucleus) is easier to acquire, production of appropriate accentuation takes much more time and practice. However, as was observed in Sakamoto’s experiment where production of proper nucleus placement improved dramatically after she explained the rules to the students, 27 nuclear-stress placement is indeed teachable, and once acquired, very useful. The teacher’s next complaint was that no correlation could be observed between this type of test and the rest of the exam that tested knowledge of vocabulary, idioms, and reading comprehension. The present paper was not able to delve into this problem, but would suggest that this may partly be because the rules of nucleus placement, that is, knowing exactly what is meant by putting ‘emphasis’ on words, and knowing what to look for in a sentence, has not been taught up until now, and that is why this type of test showed no correlation between questions concerning vocabulary and grammar which are being taught in the classroom and for which the examinees had prepared. The third complaint by Mr. Ikegami was that being able to answer this type of question had no correlation to the test-taker’s actual pronunciation of English, and therefore the test was not valid. Let us consider this last topic at this stage. Tara and Taniguchi (2004) also found through experiment that firstly, results of indirect tests, i.e. tests asking about stress placement on paper, do not predict the student’s ability of proper sentence-stress placement in real speech. Secondly, they also found that a student whose general ability of English was high did not necessarily score high on direct tests (reading out dialogues) or on indirect tests (marking sentence stress on paper). Therefore, they concluded, it was of extreme importance that a student’s ability to produce appropriate sentence stress should always be ascertained by the teacher actually listening to the student, and not by paper-and-pencil tests. It seems that Tara and Taniguchi’s tests were carried out without any explanations or lectures on nuclear-stress placement rules, although their subjects were their students in the English Department at a university, and 27

See results in figure 1.

138

Hiroko SAITO

there may have been phonetics lectures at some point before the experiment. The second part of their findings, that is, that students with high scores on general tests of English did not necessarily score high on indirect or direct tests of sentence-stress placement, matches the complaint made by Mr. Ikegami, and the same suggestion as to him can be repeated here: that the reason for a lack of correlation may be because intonation and nuclear-stress placement have hardly been taught at school, and students are simply not aware of what is involved in this kind of test, direct, or indirect. The present writer agrees with Tara and Taniguchi on the importance of the teacher being able to judge objectively the ability of proper stressing and accenting of their students so that they do not have to depend on paper-and-pencil tests. In Sakamoto’s experiment, it was also found that there was no correlation between what the students marked on paper and how they realized the dialogues,28 and among both Sakamoto and Mori’s subjects, there were cases where a word was pronounced with an unduly high pitch but which did not have a pitch change and therefore was not the nucleus—such a phenomenon would not have revealed itself on an indirect test. And yet, there was a dramatic improvement in the production skills of the students after they learned about nuclear-stress placement, and this proves that this aspect of prosody is teachable and when acquired, a valid skill for efficient communication. References Abe, I. 1962. Eigo intoneeshon no kenkyuu (A Study of English Intonation). Tokyo: Kenkyusha Shuppan. Abe, I. 1972. Nichiei intoneeshon hou (Principles of Japanese and English Intonation). Tokyo: Gakushoboo Shuppan. Cruttenden, A. 1990. “Nucleus Placement and Three Classes of Exception”. In S. Ramasaran (ed.) Studies in the Pronunciation of English. London: Routledge. . 1997. Intonation 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Culicover, P. and M. Rochemont. 1983. “Stress and Focus in English”. Language Vol.59, No.1: 123-165. Gussenhoven, C. 2004. The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikegami, H. 2002a. “Sentaashiken wa seito no eigoryoku wo kentei shitaka (Did the Center Test Test the Ability of English of Students?)”. Eigo Kyouiku (English Education) Vol. 51, No. 1: 86-87. Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten. 28

See the graph in figure 1.

Nuclear-Stress Placement by Japanese Learners of English

139

. 2002b. “Sentaashiken wa seito no eigoryoku wo kentei shitaka (sono 2) (Did the Center Test Test Ability of English of Students? Part 2)”. Eigo Kyouiku (English Education) Vol. 51, No.7 : 82-83. Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten. Jenkins, J. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language: New models, new norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kasashima, J. et al. 2004. New Horizon English Course 1. Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki. Ladd, R. 1996. Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mori, Y. 2005. “The Initial High Pitch in English Sentences Produced by Japanese Speakers”. English Linguistics 22:23-55. Pierrehumbert, J.B. and M.E. Beckman. 1988. Japanese Tone Structure. Cambridge: MIT Press. Saito, H. 2002a. “‘Sentaashiken wa seito no eigoryoku wo kentei shitaka’ wo yonde (Upon Reading ‘Did the Center Test Test Ability of English of Students?’)”. Eigo Kyouiku (English Education) Vol. 51, No. 5: 81-82. Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten. . 2002b. “‘Sentaashiken wa seito no eigoryoku wo kentei shitaka sono 2’ nitsuite (On ‘Did the Center Test Test Ability of English of Students? Part 2’)”. Eigo Kyouiku (English Education) Vol. 51, No. 11:86-87. Tokyo: Taishukan Shoten. Sakamoto, A. 2005. “Nihonjin no eigo intoneeshon: Yomi to shirushizuke no ryouhou ni okeru kaku no ichi no keikou (English Intonation of Japanese Speakers: Tendency of nucleus placement in both readings and markings)”. Unpublished graduation thesis submitted to the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in partial fulfilment of the degree, Bachelor of Arts. Sugito, M. 1996. Nihonjin no eigo (English of the Japanese). Osaka: Izumi Shoin. Takebayashi, S. 1996. Eigo onseigaku (English Phonetics). Tokyo: Kenkyusha. Tara, S. and M. Taniguchi. 2004. “Bun kyousei wo tesuto suru: bun kyousei ni kansuru chokusetsu tesuto to kansetsu tesuto (Testing Tests on Sentence Accent: Direct tests and indirect tests on placement of sentence accent)”. Preprints for the Fifth Meeting of The English Phonetic Society of Japan. Tench, P. 1996. The Intonation Systems of English. London: Cassell. Toivanen, J. 2003. “Tone Choice in the English Intonation of Proficient Non-native Speakers”. PHONUM 9. Watanabe, K. 1994. Eigo intoneeshon ron (On English Intonation). Tokyo: Kenkyusha Shuppan

Mismatch of Stress and Accent in Spoken Spanish Takuya KIMURA 1. Introduction In this paper I will discuss the relations between lexical stresses and pitch movements in spoken Spanish, paying special attention to the cases where the stresses and the pitch accents do not coincide. Then I will argue that some of the assumptions which seem to be widely agreed upon in the current Sp-ToBI framework should be revised. In the next section the two terms ‘stress’ and ‘accent’ will be defined. In Section 3 the Spanish version of the ToBI framework, which is considered to be the de facto standard of prosodic representations, will briefly be explained. Sections 4 and 5 show some examples of stress-accent mismatch ― stresses without accent, and accents without stress ― observed in spoken Spanish. In Section 6 two examples will be given to demonstrate that the combination of tones H*+L H%, whose existence has been denied in the literature, really exists. In Section 7 some concluding remarks will be given. 2. Definitions I will use the term ‘stress’ to refer to lexical stresses. As is well known, Spanish is one of the so-called free stress languages, which means that the position of the stressed syllable can differ from word to word and that different stress positions cause changes in the meaning: e.g. término “end (noun)” / termino “I end” / terminó “s/he ended”.1 Stress by itself is an abstract property which does not have any particular phonetic realization. In connected speech a stressed syllable is pronounced with some prominence in terms of pitch, loudness and/or duration, and the pitch is also the realization of intonation pattern. In other words, the intonation pattern and the location of the stresses are combined and determine the way the stressed syllables are realized. In this paper I will use the term ‘accent’ to refer to a pitch prominence 1

The underlined syllables are stressed. Many of the function words (prepositions, conjunctions, definite articles, etc.) are unstressed in connected speech, and therefore have no stressed syllables.

142

Takuya KIMURA

which appears on higher pitch than pronounced with a be, for example, possibilities).3

a stress.2 If a stressed syllable is pronounced with a the preceding syllable and the following syllable is lower pitch than the stressed one, there is considered to an H*+L pitch accent (although there are other

3. Sp-ToBI “ToBI” is the abbreviation for ‘Tones and Break Indices’. The ToBI Website (http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~tobi/) explains what ToBI is as follows: “ToBI is a framework for developing community-wide conventions for transcribing the intonation and prosodic structure of spoken utterances in a language variety. A ToBI framework system for a language variety is grounded in careful research on the intonation system and the relationship between intonation and the prosodic structures of the language (e.g., tonally marked phrases and any smaller prosodic constituents that are distinctively marked by other phonological means).” The ToBI system is not universal, so each language (or each dialect) needs its own system.4 Sp-ToBI is the ToBI system developed for Spanish, and its details can be seen on the Sp-ToBI Website: (http://www.ling.ohiostate.edu/~tobi/sp-tobi/spanish.html).5 Figure 1 is an example of the application of Sp-ToBI on a real utterance, copied from the Sp-ToBI Website. The graph is divided into five tiers. The tier at the top shows the wave form. The second tier, called the tone tier, contains the pitch accents and the boundary tones that have been analyzed to be there.6 The third tier is called ‘the word tier’, where the 2

3 4

5

6

This sort of stress / accent distinction is essential in the ToBI framework, treated in the following sections, but its origin can be found in some pre-ToBI works, such as Cruttenden (1986:21). “H” and “L” mean “high” and “low”, respectively. The asterisk “*” means that the tone is associated with a stressed syllable. The ToBI Website puts the following note: “ToBI is not an International Phonetic Alphabet for prosody. Because intonation and prosodic organization differ from language to language, and often from dialect to dialect within a language, there are many different ToBI systems, each one specific to a language variety and the community of researchers working on that language variety.” (The boldface is original.) This site is incomplete and has not been updated since October 13, 1999. Its content is based on the consensus that emerged from the first Sp-ToBI Workshop, held in October 1999. The second Sp-ToBI Workshop was held at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona on June 22, 2005, but its results have not appeared. "L%" on the tone tier indicates a low boundary tone. A boundary tone appears at the end of an intonation phrase. An asterisk "*" without tone mark means compression, which is the lack of a pitch accent in a word in which we would expect to have one. In this example, the noun número loses the pitch accent because of the contrastive narrow focus on the verb dieron. “!H” denotes a downstepped (i.e. phonologically lowered) high tone.

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

143

uttered sentence is spelt out orthographically and the end timing of each word is indicated. The fourth tier shows the end timing of each stressed syllable. In the bottom part of the graph the fundamental frequency is shown by a dotted line. The only pitch accent present in this example is L+H*, which appears three times. Indeed, the inventory of the pitch accents admitted in the Sp-ToBI Website is remarkably small: L*+H, L+H*, H+L* and H*. Sosa (2003:189) admits only three basic pitch accents for Spanish: L*+H, L+H* and H+L*; when it is difficult to identify an stressed syllable as either of the three pitch accents, Sosa recommends using the labels “H*” or “*” provisionally, and reanalyzing it after a better understanding of the pitch accent inventory is obtained. Beckman et al. (2002:33) share the same opinion. I do not agree with them and I think it is necessary to include other pitch accents, such as H*+L, in the inventory of Spanish pitch accents. I will return to this point in Section 6.

Figure 1.

Sp-ToBI transcription of the underlined part of Dices que le pidieron el número del vuelo. No, que le dieron el número del vuelo. “You say he was asked the flight number. No, he was given the flight number.” Copied from http://www.ling. ohio-state.edu/~tobi/sp-tobi/compress

144

Takuya KIMURA

4. Stress without Accent We have already seen in the previous section an example of a stress without accent: in the utterance shown in Figure 1, the stress on the first syllable of the word número does not carry any pitch prominence. In this section we will see another type of lack of accent on a stressed syllable, often observed in the utterances of wh-questions. In Spanish, all the interrogatives are lexically stressed. But there are abundant tokens of utterances of wh-questions where the interrogative does not carry any pitch prominence. Figures 2 and 3 give us two examples of this phenomenon.7

Figure 2.

7

Waveform and pitch curve of ¿A dónde vas? “Where are you going?” taken from the TUFS Spanish Conversation Module, es01.wav

These two examples are taken from the TUFS Spanish Conversation Module. The audiovisual files are available on http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/modules/es/dmod/. All the graphs on this paper, except Figure 1, are outputs from the software “SUGI Speech Analyzer Ver.1.07” (Animo Corporation:1999).

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

Figure 3.

145

Waveform and pitch curve of ¿Qué vas a hacer este verano? “What are you going to do this summer?” taken from the TUFS Spanish Conversation Module, es10.wav

What is striking in these examples is a marked pitch rise on the last stressed syllables: vas in Figure 2, and -ra- in Figure 3. In Figure 3 the pitch lowers at the end of the utterance, while in Figure 2 the lowering does not occur since the stressed vas is the very last syllable of the utterance. Another remarkable point is that, in the utterance of Figure 3, none of the non-final stresses carry any pitch prominence.8 This overall pitch pattern ― consisting of an initial interrogative without accent, following non-final stressed syllables without accent, and an abrupt rising on the last stressed syllable ― is widely found in wh-questions in colloquial style spoken Spanish. 5. Accent without Stress 5.1. HLH* Tone In this section I will show some examples of a peculiar tone pattern widely observed in formal style spoken Spanish, explicitly treated for the first time in Kimura (1992). This phenomenon consists of a high pitch on a pre-pre-tonic syllable,9 usually followed by a lower pitch on the pre-tonic, returning to a high pitch on the tonic. When the tonic is not the last syllable of the word, the high pitch of the tonic continues until the end of the word. 8 9

The stresses are on the underlined syllables: ¿Qué vas a hacer este verano? Here I am using the term ‘tonic’ to refer to the lexically stressed syllable. Thus, in the case of the word dependientas, whose stressed syllable is -dien-, the pre-pre-tonic is the first syllable de-.

146

Takuya KIMURA

I will call this the ‘HLH* tone’.10 This tone is observed in spoken Spanish of a more or less formal style, especially, but not exclusively, in TV news programmes, in politicians’ speeches, etc. The frequency of use of this tone varies much from speaker to speaker, but there is a constant tendency for this tone pattern to appear immediately before some sort of syntactic boundary (but never sentence-finally). The longer and the more complicated the sentence is, the more likely this tone pattern is to appear in the utterance. Therefore I consider this tone to have a function of marking a syntactic boundary within a sentence.11 Figures 4-8 are five examples of the HLH* tone. All these examples have been taken from the NHK Radio Spanish Course (Intermediate Level, January to March, 1992).12 The sentences are read by a female speaker from Zaragoza, Spain. Figures 4 and 5 are taken from the recording of sentence (1), which is a part of a situation-vacant advertisement. Figures 6-8 are from sentence (2), a weather forecast. The lexically stressed syllables are indicated by underlining, and the syllables in boldface italic are the pre-pre-tonic syllables pronounced with a high tone in the recorded material.

10

11 12

(1)

Cámper para atender a su fuerte y dinámica expansión comercial desea contratar dependientes y dependientas para incorporarlos a su red de establecimientos en Madrid. “Cámper (name of a Spanish shoemaking company), in order to deal with its strong and dynamic commercial expansion, wants to take on salesmen and saleswomen, to incorporate them in its chain stores in Madrid.”

(2)

Altas presiones en el resto del país, con un anticiclón muy fuerte situado al noroeste de Irlanda y que se extiende por el centro de Europa y el Mediterráneo. “High pressures in the rest of the country, with a very strong anticyclone located to the Northwest of Ireland and expanding

Formerly I called this phenomenon a ‘pseudoaccent’ (niseakusento in Japanese) as in Kimura (1992, 1998). My colleagues and I have abandoned this term, for, based on the definitions given in Section 2 of this paper, it can indeed be considered an accent. For the present, however, we refrain from calling it an ‘HLH* pitch accent’ either, since the current Sp-ToBI framework does not admit the existence of tritonal pitch accents. See Section 7 of this paper on this point. Incidentally, I represent this tone without plus signs “+”, instead of writing “H+L+H*”. This is just for the sake of simplicity. See Kimura et al. (2005) for details. NHK stands for Nippon Hôsô Kyôkai “Japan Broadcasting Corporation”. The teacher in charge of the intermediate level was Professor Norikazu Akiyama (Tamagawa University).

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

147

toward Central Europe and the Mediterranean.”

Figure 4.

Waveform and pitch curve of the part dependientes y dependientas “salesmen and saleswomen” in (1), taken from the NHK Radio Spanish Course cassette tape.

Figure 5.

Waveform and pitch curve of the part para incorporarlos “to incorporate them” in (1), taken from the NHK Radio Spanish Course cassette tape.

148

Takuya KIMURA

Figure 6.

Waveform and pitch curve of the part en el resto del país “in the rest of the country” in (2), taken from the NHK Radio Spanish Course cassette tape.

Figure 7.

Waveform and pitch curve of the part situado al noroeste de Irlanda “located to the Northwest of Ireland” in (2), taken from the NHK Radio Spanish Course cassette tape.

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

Figure 8.

149

Waveform and pitch curve of the part y que se extiende por el centro de Europa “and expanding toward Central Europe” in (2), taken from the NHK Radio Spanish Course cassette tape.

In Figure 4 we observe a high pitch on the pre-pre-tonic de- of the word dependientas, followed by a lower pre-tonic -pen-. The stressed -dien- and the following unstressed -tas are pronounced once again on a high pitch, and the height of these two syllables are almost the same. This is a typical occurrence of the HLH* tone. Figure 5 shows another typical example of this tone. Here the pre-pre-tonic -cor- of the word incorporarlos is pronounced with a strikingly higher pitch than the preceding syllables. The rising from the pre-tonic -poto the tonic -rar- is not very clear on the graph, but, when we listen to it, a clear rising is observed. Figures 6-8 are also examples of the same tone, but with some peculiarities. In Figure 6 the pre-pre-tonic syllable pronounced with a high pitch is del, the contracted form of the preposition de and the definite article el. This is a function word and therefore it is lexically unstressed. In this utterance this unstressed word receives a high pitch because it happens to be in a pre-pre-tonic position, being located before a word whose second syllable is stressed: país. The utterance shown in Figure 8 is a similar example in that an unstressed function word ― the relative pronoun que in this case ― receives a high pitch. The reflexive pronoun se (also unstressed) and the first (unstressed) syllable of the following verb extiende are merged into only one syllable by synaloepha, putting the preceding que into the pre-pre-tonic position to where it has to receive a high pitch in this tone. The stressed

150

Takuya KIMURA

syllable -tien- and the last -de are pronounced with a higher pitch than the preceding part: se ex-.13 Something contrary is happening in the example of Figure 7. Here the initial si- of the word situado is on the high pitch even though it is immediately before the stressed syllable. Orthographically this word is considered trisyllabic: si-tua-do, the second being stressed and containing a rising diphthong /wa/. However, considering the long and stable realization of the [u] vowel, it is more reasonable to think that this word is here pronounced as tetrasyllabic: si-tu-a-do, the third syllable being stressed, thus the first syllable si- receives the pre-pre-tonic position and consequently a high pitch. Notice that in all these examples there is a syntactic boundary, minor as it may be, immediately after the HLH* tone. 5.2. H* on an unstressed syllable? Let us go on to see another case in which there seems to be an accent on an unstressed syllable. The utterance of Figure 9 is from the CD accompanying a SpanishJapanese dictionary.14 This utterance begins with the word préstame “lend me”, of which the last syllable -me is an indirect object pronoun suffixed to the imperative verb form, and it is naturally unstressed. But we observe a typical realization of the H* tone accent on this last syllable, followed by a boundary L%. Attention must be drawn to the duration of this syllable. It is pronounced as long as, or even longer than, the stressed syllables. There must be some postlexical mechanism which gives an accent to lexically unstressed syllables under certain conditions.

13

14

These two examples (of Figures 6 and 8) clearly indicate that this tone is a postlexical phenomenon, since lexically unstressed words are given a high pitch because of a stress in the following word. By the same token, we must not think that the syllables de- in dependientas and -cor- in incorporarlos have secondary stresses. Kenkyûsha Shin Supeingo Jiten CD-ban Hatsuon to Intonêshon [Pronunciation and Intonation in CD for Kenkyusha’s New Spanish Dictionary] (1992), Tokyo. Kenkyusha.

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

Figure 9.

151

Waveform and pitch curve of the utterance of the sentence: Préstame siquiera mil pesetas. “Lend me at least a thousand pesetas.” taken from the CD Kenkyûsha Shin Supeingo Jiten CD-ban Hatsuon to Intonêshon [Pronunciation and Intonation in CD for Kenkyusha’s New Spanish Dictionary] (1992), Tokyo. Kenkyusha.

6. H*+L H% As we saw in Section 3, the active investigators of Sp-ToBI, like Sosa (2003:189) and Beckman et al. (2002:33), admit only a limited number of pitch accents in Spanish. They consistently deny the existence of a H*+L tone accent. Sosa, in his book in 1999, had admitted more variety of accents. He said that H*, L*, H*+L, H+L*, L*+H, L+H*, H*+H and H+H* were all possible in Spanish as prenuclear accents, but that in nuclear positions H*+L and H+H* were impossible (Sosa 1999:133).15 And on the previous page he strongly denies the possibility of a tone sequence H*+L H% in Spanish. After presenting an inventory of eleven possible combinations of nuclear accents and boundary tones,16 he argues: “Other three possible tonematic combinations would be as follows: the sequence H*+L H%, which would give a fall-rise toneme, similar to that of English. We have not found any 15

16

A ‘nuclear accent’ is an accent that appears at the end of an intonation phrase, immediately before a boundary tone. All the preceding accents in the intonation phrase are ‘prenuclear accents’. A nuclear accent and a boundary tone are combined and constitute a ‘toneme’. The list of the possible combinations Sosa presents is as follows: 1. Falling: H* L%, L* L%, H+L* L%, L+H* L%, H+H* L%. 2. Rising: H* H%, L* H%, H+L* H%, L+H* H%, L*+H H%. 3. Level: H*+H L%.

152

Takuya KIMURA

example of this contour in our sample, and we can say that at least in the dialects known to us, there do not seem to be clear contexts in which it could be used grammatically. Put in other words, we think that its absence is not accidental, but it reflects a peculiarity of Spanish intonation.” (Sosa 1999:132)17 In this section I will demonstrate that, in spite of Sosa’s negative remark, Spanish does have the sequence H*+L H% in the inventory of the possible contours. Figure 10 is taken from a Spanish course for beginners, broadcast on Japanese TV, where a Spanish male speaker and a Bolivian female speaker pronounce alternately the Spanish numerals from zero to ten.18 Notice that in each utterance by the Spanish male speaker, the pitch is rather high at the beginning, it dips a little, and then it shows a rapid rising. This contour should be analyzed as an H*L tone accent plus H% boundary tone.19 Let us examine another example in Figure 11. This is taken from a scene in a Spanish movie, where a little girl says “You were with Rosa.” to another, and then suddenly a third girl asks “With Rosa?” surprisedly. The contour of the last word Rosa should be regarded as a realization of H*L H%, as can be seen in the graph.

17

18 19

The original is as follows: “Otras tres combinaciones tonemáticas posibles serían las siguientes: la secuencia H*+L H%, que daría un tonema descendente-ascendente, análogo al fall-rise del inglés. No hemos encontrado ejemplos de ese contorno en nuestra muestra, y podemos decir que al menos en los dialectos que conocemos, no parece haber contextos claros en los cuales podría usarse gramaticalmente. Dicho en otras palabras, creemos que su ausencia no es contingencial, sino que refleja una peculiaridad entonativa del español.” I ignore the other two possibilities Sosa mentions as irrelevant here. In the original recording there was a longer pause between each utterance of a numeral. I removed large parts of the pauses before analyzing it. I represent the tone H*L without the plus sign “+”, but it is the same thing as H*+L Sosa mentions. See also note 10.

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

153

Figure 10. Waveform and pitch curve of ― Cero, ― Cero, ― uno, ― uno, ― dos, ― dos, ― tres, ― tres,... “― Zero, ― Zero, ― one, ― one, ― two, ― two, ― three, ― three,...” pronounced alternately by a Spanish male speaker and a Bolivian female speaker, taken from the NHK TV Spanish Conversation Programme.

Figure 11. Waveform and pitch curve of the dialogue: ― Con Rosa has estado. ― ¿Con Rosa? “― You were with Rosa. ― With Rosa?” by two little Spanish girls in the Spanish movie Cría cuervos (1976).

154

Takuya KIMURA

7. Concluding remarks We have seen a number of examples of Spanish utterances that are difficult to interpret within the current Sp-ToBI framework, proposed by Sosa (2003) and Beckman et al. (2002). Based on what we have seen we may conclude that at least the following two points should be taken into account for the theory to fit the reality of Spanish prosody. Firstly, we should not limit the number of possible accents too much. Certainly one of the purposes for which these notations were invented was to make the hidden rules visible, reducing apparently chaotic phenomena to a set of a limited number of units. So it is right to avoid an unnecessary increase of the descriptive units. But at the same time we always have to be aware that there is a danger of putting too much weight on descriptive simplicity, missing important linguistic / phonetic facts. At least the accent H*L arguably is a member of the inventory of the Spanish pitch accents. Secondly, some new mechanism must be devised to explain such cases as the HLH* tone demonstrated in Section 5.1. There are two possible solutions to this problem: (1) to assign a starred tone postlexically to an unstressed syllable under certain conditions; (2) to admit the existence of tritonal accents like HLH*. Either of these two solutions would mean a drastic change in the theoretical framework of the ToBI system, but Hualde (2003) advocates the second possibility when he says: “In addition to the notations given, there exist other possibilities like H+H* (used in some analyses of English) and the existence of tritonal accents (like, for example, L+H*+L) is not necessarily excluded either, though it has not been used in any of the languages analyzed so far in this model.”20 (Hualde. 2003: 164) Acknowledgement I wish to thank Takehiko Makino(Chuo University) for reading the draft and making a number of helpful comments and suggestions. References Beckman, M.E., M. Díaz-Campos, J.T. McGory, T.A. Morgan. 2002. “Intonation across Spanish, in the Tones and Break Indices framework”. Probus 14.9-36. Cruttenden, A. 1986. Intonation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hualde, J.I. 2003. “El modelo métrico y autosegmental [Autosegmental 20

The original is as follows: “Además de las notaciones dadas existen otras posibilidades como H+H* (empleado en algunos análisis del inglés) y la existencia de acentos tritonales (como, por ejemplo, L+H*+L) no está tampoco necesariamente excluida, aunque no se haya utilizado en ninguna de las lenguas analizadas hasta ahora en este modelo.”

Mismatch of Stress and Accent

155

Metrical Model]”, Chapter 6 of Prieto (coord.) 2003. Kimura, T. 1992. “Supeingo no aratamatta hatsuwa ni mirareru genshou ni tsuite [ – a Phenomenon Observed in Spanish Formal Utterances]”. Hispanica 36.76-88. Kimura, T. 1998. “Kyousei no fuyo to sono jitsugen – kara manaberu koto [Stress Assignment and Its Realization – Case Studies on ]”. Hispanica 42.1-12. Kimura, T., H. Sensui and A. Toyomaru. 2005. “Relaciones entre el tono HLH* y la pausa –Un estudio fonético sobre noticias leídas- [Relations between HLH* Tone and Pause –A Phonetic Study on News Reading-]”. Hispanica 49. (The) Ohio State University Department of Linguistics. 1999. ToBI, http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~tobi/ Prieto, P. (coord.) 2003: Teorías de la entonación [Intonation Theories], Barcelona: Ariel. Sosa, J.M. 1999. La entonación del español [Spanish Intonation], Madrid: Cátedra. Sosa, J.M. 2003. “La notación tonal del español en el modelo Sp-ToBI [Spanish Tonal Notation in the Sp-ToBI Model]”, Chapter 7 of Prieto (coord.) 2003. Tevis McGory, J. and M. Díaz-Campos. 1999. Sp-ToBI (Spanish Tones and Break Indices), http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~tobi/sp-tobi/spanish.html

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb — How Morphology and Phonology Interact — Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

1. Introduction Since the advent of generative grammar, phonology has long been assumed to be a mere interpretative component of the grammar. As such, the phonological module has been viewed as a unidirectional algorithm ‘translating’ the underlying representations supplied by the syntax and the lexicon into phonetic surface forms. Thereby, as opposed to the old structuralist postulate of ‘separation of levels’, phonological rules can be sensitive to morphological information, phonology being at liberty to work, but, so to speak, under a legal restraint, and always likely to obey orders given by the morphosyntactic core of the grammar. However, the last twelve years have seen an interesting drift. If Optimality theory (henceforth OT) can be said to have brought any real welcome evolution in phonological research, this might follow from its focusing on a bidirectional relationship between phonology and morphosyntax. Indeed, much in the line of the neogrammarian views on the interaction of phonetic and analogical changes, OT assumes that surface forms result from the possibly conflicting interplay of phonological constraints proper such as ONSET, NO-CODA, etc., and of constraints which refer to the morphemic structure of words, such as ALIGN and FAITHFULNESS in the earlier versions of the theory (cf., for example, McCarthy & Prince 1994). In what follows, I wish to show that the structure of inflectional paradigms may be based on the exploitation of phonology by morphology, whereby morphological markedness uses stress placement and phonological markedness in order to build a five-degree scale of the complexity of inflected forms. This will be illustrated by the ‘weak’ and productive verbal paradigms of Portuguese. Should such facts be corroborated by additional evidence from other languages, interactions of this kind might be viewed as strong arguments for the non-interpretative status of phonology in linguistic theory. The article is organized as follows. In § 2, I will recall Carvalho’s

158

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

(1989) arguments for quantity-sensitive stress in Portuguese. In § 3, following on from Carvalho (2004), it will be shown how syllabic quantity is used by morphology within a two-mora dissyllabic template characterizing the unmarked forms of the verb. In § 4, it will be seen how this phonologically-based constraint (henceforth Ph-constraint) interacts with an independent morphological constraint (M-constraint) on stress placement, in such a way that all inflected forms of the verb can be ranked within a markedness scale according to violation of either constraint. The conclusion (§ 5) will deal with the type of relationship between phonology and morphology that this interaction suggests; as will be seen, it ultimately diverges from both SPE- and OT-based views. 2. The basis of the Ph-constraint : quantity-sensitive stress In European Portuguese (henceforth EP), vowels generally undergo a process of reduction in unstressed syllables, which is described and exemplified in (1): (1)

a.

/i/ /e/ /E/ g 0g1 [i] [ ´]

b.

Tonic / pretonic alternations: [i] ↔ [i] tiro / tirar ´ [e] ↔ [ ] meto / meter [E] ↔ [´] levo / levar [a] ↔ [å] bato / bater [O] ↔ [ú] voto / votar [o] ↔ [ú] cozo / cozer [u] ↔ [ú] furo / furar

‘I / to take off’ ‘I / to put’ ‘I / to take away’ ‘I / to strike’ ‘I / to vote’ ‘I / to cook’ ‘I / to form a hole’

Tonic / post-tonic internal alternations: [i] ↔ [i] suplica / súplica ´ [E] ↔ [ ] hospede / hóspede [a] ↔ [å] naufrago / náufrago [O] ↔ [ú] ancora / âncora [u] ↔ [ú] macula / mácula

‘he implores’ / ‘request’ ‘he house’ (subj.) / ‘host’ ‘I wreck’ / ‘shipwrecked’ ‘he anchors’ / ‘anchor’ ‘he maculates’ / ‘spot’

c.

d.

/a/ g å []

/O/

/o/ /u/ 0g1 [ u]

Tonic / post-tonic final alternations: [a] ↔ [å] matar / mata ‘to kill’ / ‘he kills’, ‘kill!’ [e] ↔ [´] comer / come ‘to eat’ / ‘he eats’, ‘eat!’ [i] ↔ [´] ferir / fere ‘to wound’ / ‘he wounds’, ‘wound!’

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb

159

Now, two points are to be outlined. Firstly, unstressed vowel reduction takes place in syllabic rhymes of the type /V(s)/ and, in pretonic position, /Vr/, but fails to occur when the vowel is associated to a nasal element (henceforth /VN/), or is followed either by a glide or by /-l/ or, word-finally, by /-r/. 1 Secondly, word-final /V(s)/-rhymes are generally unstressed, as exemplified in (2a), while diphthongs, /VN/, /Vr/ and /Vl/-rhymes are normally stressed in word-final position, as illustrated in (2b). (2)

a.

Paroxytones: cola soma alta molhe figo

‘glue’ ‘sum’ ‘high’ (fem.) ‘mole’ ‘fig’

b.

Oxytones: colar pomar altar colher vigor

‘collar’ ‘orchard’ ‘altar’ ‘spoon’ ‘strength’

casa pomba porra corte lenço

‘house’ ‘pigeon’ ‘mace’ ‘court’ ‘handkerchief’

casal pombal corral cordel lençol

‘couple’ ‘pigeonry’ ‘corral’ ‘string’ ‘sheet’

erva pera erma vale

‘grass’ ‘pear’ ‘deserted’ (fem.) ‘valley’

carvão verão irmão, irmã além

‘coal’ ‘summer’ ‘brother, sister’ ‘beyond’

casas porras cortes lenços

‘houses’ ‘maces’ ‘courts’ ‘handkerchiefs’

casais corrais cordéis lençóis

‘couples’ ‘corrals’ ‘strings’ ‘sheets’

In other words, two classes of syllables can be defined in EP: one is 1

Note that /s, r, l, y, w/ and nasality (nasal diphthongs such as [å)w)] and [e)y)], spelled -ão / -am and -em respectively, being also possible) are the only phonological objects which can be added to the vowel within the rhyme, /s/ being the only possible obstruent allowed in coda position (leaving aside loanwords, namely those borrowed from Latin and Greek). Concerning the variable role of /r/, I will assume here that it follows from its being a ‘true’ coda word-internally, as is syllable-final /s/ in all positions, while it actually behaves as an onset preceding an empty nucleus word-finally. Indeed, final /r/, unlike final /s/, currently triggers vowel epenthesis : cf. cantar[´] ‘to sing’. Nevertheless, final /Vr/-sequences will be seen as tautosyllabic in what follows.

160

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

both likely to undergo reduction, and generally unable to attract stress word-finally; the other shows the opposite behaviour. Following on from an idea originally formulated by Lüdtke (1953), Carvalho (1989) suggested that these properties characterize a type of syllabic weight, where the distinction between full and reduced vocalism plays the same role as vowel length in Classical Latin, syllables that can undergo the process in (1a) being ‘light’ while those that cannot are ‘heavy’. The accentual patterns of (2a,b) depend, thus, on whether the last syllable is light or heavy respectively. Hence, assuming, in the line of most research in generative phonology, that syllable weight can always be expressed in quantitative terms, stress can be said to fall in EP on the penultimate mora of the word. This naturally accounts for the long-recognised ‘unmarked’ character of paroxytones in Portuguese, which, as is shown in (3), are but a particular case of a more general pattern also comprising oxytones. (The stressed mora is in bold.): (3)

Unmarked stress pattern: /µ2 µ1/ a. µ2 µ1 g g …σ σ

b.

µ2 µ1 g1 …σ

However, EP differs from Latin in that the former shows many exceptions to this unified pattern. As illustrated in (4), such words are either proparoxytones, if their last syllable is light, or paroxytones, if their last syllable is heavy: (4)

2

a.

Proparoxytones: púcaro(s) ‘pot’ estômago(s) ‘stomach’ ótimo(s) ‘excellent’ pálpebra(s) ‘eyelid’ vínculo(s) ‘link’ histórico(s) ‘historical’ abóbora(s) ‘gourd’ cátedra(s) ‘chair’ mácula(s) ‘spot’ tráfego(s) ‘traffic’ súplica(s) ‘request’ hóspede(s) ‘host’

b.

Marked paroxytones: 2 açúcar ‘sugar’ alcácer ‘castle’ Vítor ‘Victor’ Setúbal possível álcol

(toponym) ‘possible’ ‘alcohol’

sótão órfão, órfã homem

‘attic’ ‘orphan’ ‘man’

The oral post-tonic vowels in (4b), which resist reduction, are realized as slightly open ([a E O]) in standard EP.

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb náufrago(s) âncora(s)

‘shipwrecked’ ‘anchor’

fáceis possíveis

161

‘esay’ (pl.) ‘possible’ (pl.)

Thus, stress may also, and exceptionally, fall on the antepenultimate mora:3 (5)

Marked stress pattern: /µ3 µ2 µ1/ a. µ3 µ2 µ1 g g g …σ σ σ

b.

µ3 g …σ

µ2 µ1 g1 σ

That the patterns in (2) are unmarked, in EP, vis-à-vis those in (4) follows firstly from statistics, paroxytones ending in /V(s)/ and oxytones undoubtedly representing the vast majority of the lexicon, though I am not aware of any existing study on that matter. Furthermore, there are numerous phenomena of dialectal and/or diachronic variation that affect only the marked patterns in (5a,b), and turn them into the unmarked pattern in (3a), while the converse case is not attested. Consider, for example, the facts in (6): (6)

3

a.

cântaro víbora abóbora córrego paciência família côdea tábua

> > > > > > > >

dial. cantro dial. vibra dial. abobra dial. corgo dial. paciença dial. familha dial. coida dial. tauba

‘pitcher’ ‘viper’ ‘gourd’ ‘gully’ ‘patience’ ‘family’ ‘crust’ ‘board’

truncation ” ” ” ” assimilation metathesis ”

b.

homem viagem órfã sótão

> > > >

dial. home dial. viage dial. orfa dial. soto

‘man’ denasalization ‘journey’ ” ‘orphan’ (fem.) ” ‘attic’ ”

fáceis possíveis

> >

dial. faces dial. possives

‘easy’ (pl.) ‘possible’ (pl.)

contraction ”

The few oxytonic words ending in /V(s)/ (most of which are loanwords), such as café, paxá, Pará, rapaz, cortês, etc., fall into the (2b)-category, and should be given the same explanation as the rare exceptions to reduction of pretonic /V(s)/-rhymes (Carvalho 1994): all components of their final vowel are lexically associated; thereby, the syllable cannot undergo vowel reduction, and is therefore heavy.

162

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO cadáver > condestável >

dial. cadavre ‘corpse’ arch. condestabre ‘counstable’

metathesis ”

Finally, the inflectional morphology of Portuguese brings a third piece of evidence for the existence of an unmarked bimoraic stress pattern, as is revealed by the mechanism of verbal metaphony. 3. The Ph-constraint: the bimoraic template 3.1. One striking feature of the Portuguese verbal morphology (Harris 1974, López 1979, Redenbarger 1981, Quicoli 1990, Wetzels 1995, Carvalho 2004) is that the last vowel of the root undergoes, in the 2nd and 3rd regular conjugations (cf., e.g., meter, comer and ferir, tossir), a metaphonic alternation which: (a) depends on the nature of the thematic vowels /e/ and /i/ respectively; and (b) affects the 1st person of the present indicative and all the present subjunctive forms. This is illustrated in (7), where the 1st conjugation (levar, morar) is added for comparative purposes:4 (7)

4

a.

levar ‘take away’ Present indicative l[E!]v[ú] l[E!]v[å]s l[E!]v[å] l[´]v[å!]mos l[´]v[á]is l[E!]v[å)w)]

meter ‘put’

ferir

m[é]t[ú] m[E!]t[´]s m[E!]t[´] m[´]t[é]mos m[´]t[é]is m[E!]t[e)y)]

f[í]r[ú] f[E!]r[´]s f[E!]r[´] f[´]r[í]mos f[´]r[í]s f[E!]r[e)y)]

Present subjunctive l[E!]v[´] l[E!]v[´]s l[E!]v[´] l[´]v[é]mos l[´]v[é]is l[E!]v[e)y)]

m[é]t[å] m[é]t[å]s m[é]t[å] m[´]t[å!]mos m[´]t[á]is m[é]t[å)w)]

f[í]r[å] f[í]r[å]s f[í]r[å] f[i]r[å!]mos f[i]r[á]is f[í]r[å)w)]

‘wound’

The hypothesis of a [low]-metaphony caused by the theme vowel a in the 1st conjugation is, at the best, trivial, since the mid underlying vowels are necessarily low within verbal roots in the other conjugations (see Carvalho 2004); at the worst, it is simply false, as suggested by the verb chegar ‘to arrive’, which shows [e] throughout its conjugation.

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb b.

morar ‘reside’ Present indicative m[O!]r[ú] m[O!]r[å]s m[O!]r[å] m[ú]r[å!]mos m[ú]r[á]is m[O!]r[å)w)]

comer ‘eat’

tossir ‘cough’

c[ó]m[ú] c[O!]m[´]s c[O!]m[´] c[ú]m[é]mos c[ú]m[é]is c[O!]m[e)y)]

t[ú]ss[ú] t[O!]ss[´]s t[O!]ss[´] t[ú]ss[í]mos t[ú]ss[í]s t[O!]ss[e)y)]

Present subjunctive m[O!]r[´] m[O!]r[´]s m[O!]r[´] m[ú]r[é]mos m[ú]r[é]is m[O!]r[e)y)]

c[ó]m[å] c[ó]m[å]s c[ó]m[å] c[ú]m[å!]mos c[ú]m[á]is c[ó]m[å)w)]

t[ú]ss[å] t[ú]ss[å]s t[ú]ss[å] t[ú]ss[å!]mos t[ú]ss[á]is t[ú]ss[å)w)]

163

The root vowels occurring in unstressed syllables follow from the process of vowel reduction in (1), which is totally independent from metaphony.5 The latter can be described as follows: the mid-open vowel of the root is assimilated to the theme vowel, if the latter is in prevocalic position, i.e. before 1st person -o or the subjunctive -a: (8)

a.

E+e → e O+e → o

b.

E+i O+i

→ i → u

/mEte/ + o → [mét]o /kOme/ + o → [kóm]o /fEri/ + o /tOsi/ + o

→ [fír]o → [tús]o

/mEte/ + a → [mét]a /kOme/ + a → [kóm]a /fEri/ + a /tOsi/ + a

→ [fír]a → [tús]a

As seen in Carvalho (2004), explanations based on vowel truncation are unable to provide a straightforward answer to the simple following question: why does the theme vowel ‘fall’ before the 1st p. (-o) and the subjunctive (-a)? Actually, either glide formation, as in fere-o ([fE!rjú]) ‘wound it!’, or stress placement, as in feriu ([f´ri !w]) ‘he wounded’, both with theme vowel preservation, are available solutions to the putative impossibility of unstressed hiatus. Now, another type of theory allows us to give a unified explanation to the (unmarked) paroxytonic and rhizotonic6 character of the basic forms exhibiting metaphony, such as meto, meta, firo, fira, etc.. 5 6

Also note that /a/ is normally realized as [å] before nasals. I.e. stressed on the (last syllable of the) root.

164

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

The theme vowels, the 1st p. -o and the subjunctive vowel suffix will be seen as floating melodies. The basic idea is that floating material is associated to the skeleton whenever, and only whenever, it can. Now, since it is the presence of either of two additional morphemes (the 1st p. -o or the subjunctive suffix) that prevents the realization of the theme vowel, it will be assumed that there is only one slot available for these additional morphemes and the theme vowel, so that there is ‘not enough place’ for two vowels to be linked and thus to be phonetically realized. In this case, and only in this case, the height feature of the floating theme vowels /e/ or /i/ spreads to the root vowel, yielding the observed alternations. On the other hand, assuming that this clearly templatic constraint is dictated by the unmarked bimoraic pattern in (3a), stress is naturally expected to fall on the last vowel of the root. Thus, if the suffixes in (9) are supposed to lack any skeletal basis of their own, and if roots are lexically associated to the template in (3a), there is only one syllable left for the two vowel sets in (9), which are, thus, in complementary distribution: (9)

a.

The thematic vowels a, e, i.

b.

The 1st p. suffix o, and the subjunctive suffixes e (1st conj.), a (2nd, 3rd conj.).

Vowel alternations become entirely predictable by means of a single parameter which can be formulated as follows: (10) Linking directionality parameter: Floating melodies associate from right to left.

As illustrated in (11, 12), the theme vowel is associated to the final syllable of the verbal template if, and only if, there is no (9b)-type morpheme in the verb; otherwise, the theme vowel’s height feature spreads onto the root vowel:7

7

The CV notation of the verbal template in (11, 12) may be viewed as a shorthand for a sequence of moraic slots associated to nuclei, as in (3a). Likewise, the melodies /e/ and /i/ represent either whole segments, as in (11a,b) and (12a,b), or only vowel height features, as in (11a’,b’) and (12a’,b’), which results from the constraints on segmental structure: since there are no front rounded vowels in EP, *["kPmu] and *["tysu] are disallowed, and only the theme vowel’s height feature is compatible with both root vowels. Finally, unstressed vowel reduction, which can be captured by floating segmental components (cf. Carvalho 1994), is not represented in (11, 12).

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb (11) a.

mete: ["mEt´] m t g g C V C V g ! E e

a’. meto / meta: ["metú/å] m t g g C V C V h) G E e o/a (12) a.

fere: ["fE|´] f g C V g E

b.

a’. firo / fira: ["fi|ú/å] f r g g C V C V h) G E i o/a

come: ["kOm´] k m g g C V C V g ! O e

b’. como / coma: ["komú/å] k m g g C V C V h) G O e o/a b.

r g C V ! i

165

tosse: ["tOs´] t s g g C V C V g ! O i

b’. tusso / tussa: ["tusú/å] t s g g C V C V h) G O i o/a

3.2. As was stated above, forms such as those in (11, 12) are both paroxytonic and rhizotonic. Indeed, given the bimoraic template in (3a), whose last syllable is open and hence light, this is exactly what we expect according to EP stress placement rules (cf. § 2). The adjunction of the suffixes in (9) does not affect stress placement, and levo, leve, meto, meta, etc., with two underlying suffixes, remain paroxytonic and rhizotonic, just like leva, mete, etc., with only one suffix. Clearly, assuming that stress is CVand not melody-sensitive, the claim that the suffixes in (9) lack any skeletal basis provides the simplest way to explain such a fact. But why, then, are certain suffixes able to attract stress, giving place to arhizotonic forms? In the line of the present approach, this raises no difficulty if two classes of affixes are assumed in EP: those in (13a), which do not affect stress

166

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

placement in the verb, do not involve a moraic slot of their own (‘CV-less affixes’); those in (13b), which affect stress placement, will be seen as lexically associated at least to a mora (‘CV affixes’). (13) a.

b.

CV-less affixes: o ‘1st person singular’ s ‘2nd person singular’ e ‘subjunctive’ (1st conj.) a ‘subjunctive’ (2nd, 3rd conj.) a thematic vowel (1st conj.) e thematic vowel (2nd conj.) i thematic vowel (3rd conj.) CV affixes: N mos is, des i s]te(s) u ram (v)a sse ra r r n]do

(+ s, N, mos, es) (+ s, N, mos, es) (+ s, N, all CV affixes) (+ s, N, all CV affixes) (+ s, N, all CV affixes)

‘3rd person plural’ ‘1st person plural’ ‘2nd person plural’ ‘1st person singular’ + ‘perfect’ ‘2nd person singular/plural’ + ‘perfect’ ‘3rd person singular’ + ‘perfect’ ‘3rd person plural’ + ‘perfect’ ‘imperfect’ (+ s, N, mos, es) ‘imperfect subjunctive’ (+ s, N, mos, es) ‘pluperfect’ (+ s, N, mos, es) ‘infinitive’ (+ s, N, mos, es) ‘future subjunctive’ (+ s, N, mos, es) ‘gerund’

Since the affixes in (13b) have their own skeletal basis, stress falls immediately after the last syllable of the root, according to the unmarked bimoraic pattern in (3a), whenever they are added to the stem. For the same reason, this stressed syllable is left available for the theme vowel. Hence the imperfect subjunctive forms in (14, 15) (where the underlined CV stands for the stressed syllable), but also the imperfect indicative (-va for the 1st conj., -a elsewhere), the pluperfect indicative (-ra), the gerund (-ndo), the future subjunctive and the infinitive (both with an -r followed by a final empty nucleus):

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb (14) a.

b.

(15) a.

b.

metesse: [m´"tes´] m t g g C V C V g G E e comesse: [kú"mes´] k m g g C V C V g G O e ferisse: f g C V g E

[f´"|is´] r g C V G i

tossisse: [tú"sis´] t s g g C V C V g G O i

+

s g C

V

+

s g C

V

+

s g C

V

+

s g C

V

167

4. A M-constraints: stress the root/stem A more detailed phonological argumentation for the templatic basis of EP verbal metaphony (and possibly of any lexical metaphony) is provided by Carvalho (2004). I shall now be concerned with the morphological aspect of the theory developed so far. It follows from the adjunction of a CV affix in (14, 15) that the verbal form is no longer rhizotonic while still being paroxytonic, i.e. preserving an unmarked bimoraic stress pattern. Conversely, forms such as levam, metem, ferem, etc., with a CV suffix (3rd p. plural present), remain rhizotonic while becoming marked trimoraic paroxytones. Finally, forms like levássemos, metêssemos, feríssemos, levaram, meteram, feriram, etc., with two CV-associated morphemes, are both arhizotonic and accentually marked. This amounts to saying that the templatic morphology exhibited by the EP

168

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

verb, and exposed in § 3, results from the conjunction of two independently motivated constraints: (16) a. b.

BIMOR:

Inflected forms obey a bimoraic pattern.

STRESS(S): Inflected forms are stressed on the root (strong version); STRESS(W): Inflected forms are stressed on the stem (weak version).

Both constraints in (16) are satisfied, by the recourse to CV-less affixes, whenever the verb is associated to the morphological content in (17). (Unless otherwise indicated, STRESS(S) is the violated constraint; ‘X!’ means ‘X violation’.) (17) a.

b.

Singular:

levo, levas, leva vs. levamos, levais, levam (BIMOR!) leve, leves, leve vs. levemos, leveis, levem (BIMOR!)

Present:

levo, levas, leva vs. levei, levaste, levou, levava, etc. leve, leves, leve vs. levasse, levasses, etc.

A further degree in markedness is reached by adding the 3rd person plural suffix /N/ to the unmarked paroxytonic pattern, whence levam, metem, ferem, etc.. Associated to a mora, but lacking any syllabic basis of its own, this suffix causes BIMOR violation, but still satisfies STRESS(S) and, trivially, STRESS(W): (18) µ g …σ

N ⏐ µ + µ g! σ

Conversely, such forms as levei, meti, feri, levou, meteu, feriu, levamos, metemos, ferimos, levava, metia, levasse, metesse, levar, meter, etc., violate STRESS(S), but satisfy both BIMOR and STRESS(W): cf. (14, 15).8 Going on along the markedness scale, in forms like levávamos, metíamos, feríamos, levássemos, metêssemos, feríssemos, levavam, metiam, feriam, levassem, metessem, ferissem, levaram, meteram, feriram, etc., both BIMOR and STRESS(S) are violated; only STRESS(W) is satisfied. Likewise, 8

Though the perfect suffixes -i and -u have an underlying syllabic basis (stress falling after the root vowel), their adjunction leads to vowel contraction.

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb

169

the future and conditional forms levarei, levará, levaremos, levarão, levaria, meterei, meterá, meteremos, meterão, meteria, etc. violate STRESS(W) and, trivially, STRESS(S); only BIMOR is satisfied. Finally, conditional plurals such as levaríamos, meteríamos, etc. involve violation of all constraints. Interestingly, future and conditional forms are perhaps the least frequent in terms of usage, and those that show the greatest propensity to suppletion (by present and imperfect forms respectively). Six classes of verbal forms can, thus, be defined thanks to the constraints in (16). Assuming for the sake of simplicity that each version of STRESS has the same weight as BIMOR, only four markedness degrees are sufficient to characterize all verbal inflections of EP, according to the ratio of violated / satisfied constraints. This is summarized in Figure 1 (where brackets stand for trivial violation or satisfaction): A BIMOR STRESS(S) STRESS(W)

0 1

1 B’ BIMOR STRESS(S)! STRESS(W) h C’ BIMOR [STRESS(S)!] STRESS(W)! 1

B 1

2

3

Figure 1. Class A: Class B: Class B’:

BIMOR! STRESS(S) [STRESS(W)] h C BIMOR! STRESS(S)! STRESS(W) 1 D BIMOR! [STRESS(S)!] STRESS(W)!

Markedness hierarchy of EP verbal forms (version 1). levo, levas, leva, leve, meto, metes, mete, meta, firo, feres, fere, fira… levam, levem, metem, metam, ferem, firam… levei, meti, feri, levou, meteu, feriu, levamos, metemos, ferimos, levava, metia, feria, levasse, metesse, ferisse, levar, meter, ferir… Class C: levávamos, metíamos, feríamos, levássemos, metêssemos, feríssemos, levavam, metiam, feriam, levassem, metessem, ferissem, levaram, meteram, feriram... Class C’: levarei, levará, levaremos, levarão, levaria, meterei, meterá, meteremos, meterão, meteria... Class D: levaríamos, meteríamos…

170

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

Let us explore for a moment the question of whether there is a hierarchy between these constraints. Two facts seem to suggest a complex interaction between both types of constraints. On the one hand, in dialectal and popular styles, (6b)-type phenomena lead to denasalization of the 3rd p. plural suffixes -am and -em, whence such forms as levaram, meteram, etc. pass from class C to the less marked class B’. Now, the preference for BIMOR instead of STRESS(S) satisfaction follows from phonology: the ill-formed *lévaram would be an impossible member of class B, since stress cannot go beyond the antepenultimate mora in EP. Thus, it should not be inferred from such changes that BIMOR dominates STRESS(S). Only cases of forms passing from class B to B’, or from B’ to B, would prove that these constraints are ranked. Now, interestingly, I am not aware of any example of such cases. If denasalization affects perfect forms like levaram (and perhaps even like levassem, though this leads to homophony with the singular levasse), it does never occur in rhizotonic forms such as levam, etc.. Likewise, stress shifts that would change levei, levamos (class B’) into *lévei, *lévamos (B), which, contrary to *lévaram above, would be phonologically well-formed, are not attested. A BIMOR STRESS(S) STRESS(W)

0 1

1

B 1

2

3

4

Figure 2.

B’ BIMOR STRESS(S)! STRESS(W) 1

BIMOR! STRESS(S) [STRESS(W)] 1 C BIMOR! STRESS(S)! STRESS(W) h C’ BIMOR [STRESS(S)!] STRESS(W)! h D BIMOR! [STRESS(S)!] STRESS(W)!

Markedness hierarchy of EP verbal forms (version 2).

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb

171

On the other hand, however, at a higher markedness level, there is a change that moved stress place in imperfect forms such as Old Port. (and Galician) levavamos (C’), and gave modern EP levávamos (C). Of course, this change is due to analogical pressure (levava); nevertheless, the fact that the product of leveling, unlike the original form, is accentually marked needs further explanation. Now, this seems to prove that constraints do not have equal weight, and that satisfaction of STRESS(W) is, ceteris paribus, more important than that of BIMOR, class C being less marked than C’, whence the hierarchy of verbal forms must be revised (see Figure 2 above). 5. Conclusion: the Ph/M-asymmetry BIMOR and STRESS seem to be rather different constraints: the former is based on phonological stress rules which apply to all EP words; the other is a purely morphological constraint, which requires grammatical information such as ‘root’ and ‘stem’. In both cases, however, phonology does not act as it is supposed to do according to the derivational views of classical generative theory, but also to most OT-based accounts. It does not work as a mere interpretative component of grammar, ‘translating’ morphosyntactic outputs into phonetic forms, and, therefore, being strongly constrained by the structure of the former, nor does it follow from a (potentially) symmetrical interaction between Ph-constraints proper (ONSET, NO-CODA, etc.) and M-constraints (based on Input/Output correspondences: ALIGN, FAITHFULNESS or MAX, DEP). Indeed, phonology and morphology seem to maintain an asymmetrical relationship, where the former behaves as a ‘provider’, and the latter much as a ‘client’. As was seen in § 2, stress and stress patterns are ‘products’ supplied by phonology. They are made, in EP, independently of any morphological influence, as is shown by BIMOR and/or STRESS violation in most verbal classes. Morphology plays here an opportunist part. It must choose phonological ‘clothes’ for its own patterns. EP verbs, for example, show the four following linearly-ordered morphological sites in (19), which constitute the signifié pattern: (19)

Stem[Root

1

+ Theme] 2

+

Tense/Aspect/Mood 3

+ Number/Person 4

For ‘dressing’ the sequences in (19), morphology just exploits phonology. In particular, it is not allowed to cause any true violation of phonological constraints, as would be the case, for example, if such forms as the above mentioned *lévaram were attested among verbs, but not elsewhere. Actually, STRESS uses prosodic prominence for enhancing the prosodic weight of the

172

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

lexical stem; in conjunction with STRESS, BIMOR uses the bimoraic unmarked pattern of EP as a verbal template serving for the signifiant of the underspecified forms of the verb, in which ‘present’ and ‘singular’ are but the unmarked states of sites 3 and 4 in (19). Hence the main feature of this asymmetrical relationship between phonology and morphology, which distinguishes the present thesis not only from classical generative views, but also from the mainstream of contemporary research in phonological theory: while, in the line of the neogrammarian conception of phonetic changes, phonology can be said to be generally ‘blind’ vis-à-vis morphology, morphology ‘sees’ phonological objects, structures and markedness, and this is the reason why it can exploit them. Though based on constraint interaction, OT remains under the influence of its generative ancestor in that it still operates with the same type of input, that is with underlying representations deduced from the comparison of allomorphs. Thus, [fíru] will be said to derive from /fE!r+i+o/, as is the case in a SPE-based approach. It will be added that the candidate [fíru] is preferred to, say, *[fE!ru] because the thematic vowel is (minimally) conserved in the former, but not in the latter. Furthermore, an additional constraint will be necessary for ruling out an output such as *[fE!rju], which is phonologically well-formed in EP. Now, the relationship suggested in this article is not between /fE!r+i+o/ and the set of surface candidates ; it is between the signifié pattern in (19), and the signifiant patterns provided by EP phonology in (20): (20) a. Stress unmarked patterns: /µ2 µ1/ µ2 µ1 g g …σ σ b. Stress marked patterns: /µ3 µ2 µ1/ µ3 µ2 µ1 g g g …σ σ σ

µ2 µ1 g1 …σ

µ3 g …σ

µ2 µ1 g1 σ

The ‘optimal’ solutions chosen by verbal morphology for its unmarked forms are of the (21)-type: multilinear representations which capture both the three specified morphemes of the word (cf. /fE!r+i+o/), and its dissyllabic shape ([fíru]), and thus conciliate the former with the latter through metaphony:9 9

Note that this divergence is not a matter of formalism: most OT-based research is actually agnostic with respect to representations, and the linear form /fE!r+i+o/ might as well be replaced with the multi-tiered structure in (21); my point is that, far from being a possible input, (21) is the winning candidate.

Markedness Gradient in the Portuguese Verb (21)

firo ["fi|ú]

f g C

r g V C h) E i

173

V G o

In sum, the present proposal diverges from OT in at least two ways: (a) there are no Input/Output correspondences, but only relationships between inputs,10 since lexical entries are necessarily twofold, and comprise both types of patterns in (19) and (20); (b) the set of candidates might not be infinite; ill-formed structures, i.e. those that do not obey the morphological and/or the phonological patterns in (19, 20), are irrelevant to linguistic analysis. References Carvalho, J.B. de. 1989. “Phonological conditions on Portuguese clitic placement: on syntactic evidence for stress and rhythmical patterns”. Linguistics 27.405-436. . 1994. “What are vowels made of? The ‘no-rule’ approach and particle phonology”. Studia linguistica 48.1-27. . 2004. “Templatic morphology in the Portuguese verb.” Nouveaux départs en phonologie: les conceptions sub- et suprasegmentales, Meisenburg & Selig 2004. 13-32. Harris, J.W. 1974. “Evidence from Portuguese for the ‘Elsewhere condition’ in phonology”. Linguistic inquiry 5.61-80. López, B. 1979. The sound pattern of Brazilian Portuguese. Doctoral diss., University of California. Los Angeles. Lüdtke, H. 1953. “Fonemática portuguesa: II-Vocalismo”. Boletim de filologia 14.197-217. McCarthy, J.J. 1981: “A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology”. Linguistic inquiry 12.373-418. McCarthy, J.J. & A. Prince. 1994. “The emergence of the unmarked: Optimality in prosodic morphology”. Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 24. Amherst, MA: GLSA. Meisenburg, T. & M. Selig (eds.). 2004. Nouveaux départs en phonologie: les conceptions sub- et suprasegmentales. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Quicoli, C. 1990. “Harmony, lowering and nasalization in Brazilian 10

As well as relationships between outputs, giving place to analogical phenomena that have long been neglected within the generative tradition.

174

Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO

Portuguese”. Lingua 80.295-331. Redenbarger, W. 1981. Articulator features and Portuguese vowel height. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University. Wetzels, L. 1995. “Mid-vowel alternations in the Brazilian Portuguese verb”. Phonology 12.281-304.

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives — Phonetic Analyses and Phonological Interpretations — Yosuke IGARASHI 1. Introduction This article is devoted to empirical and theoretical examinations of intonational patterns which appear in two types of Russian interrogative sentences, wh questions (WHQ) and yes-no questions (YNQ) 1 . In the previous studies, there has been fairly general agreement that the pattern in WHQ and the pattern in YNQ are two categorically different intonational patterns (Bryzgunova 1980; Kodzasov 1996; Svetozarova 1998). It seems, therefore, reasonable to expect that two intonational patterns are phonetically realized as clearly different fundamental frequency (F0) contours. However, visual inspection of the F0 contours, corresponding to the two patterns, reveals that their phonetic differences are by no means obvious. We can

WHQ

Kogó nanjalá Lamánova? ‘Who did Lamanova hire?’

Figure 1.

1

YNQ Egó nanjalá Lamánova? ‘Is it him that Lamanova hired?’

Waveform and F0 contour for WHQ (left) and YNQ (right), from test sentences of Dataset B in Experiment II, showing the segmental and F0 points measured (see Section 4).

Preliminary discussion on the subject of the present article is presented in Igarashi (2004a; 2004b)

176

Yosuke IGARASHI

notice from Figure 1 that both patterns are realized as strikingly similar contours: they both have a rise-fall configuration in which the rise takes place near the stressed syllable -gó in kogó ‘whom” and egó ‘him’, respectively, and the fall immediately follows the rise. Curiously enough, there is no reference in literature on the absence of obvious phonetic differences between these two patterns and correspondingly there has been little attempt to examine how they phonetically differ from each other. This leads us to conduct more detailed experimental investigations in order to explore the phonetic differences. This is the first goal of this article. In fact, most of the previous descriptions about the patterns in WHQ and YNQ are quite simple: the patterns have been described, for example, as ‘Fall’ for WHQ and ‘Rise’ for YNQ (Bryzgunova 1980; Kodzasov 1999). Obviously, descriptions of this sort do not reflect phonetic properties of the patterns. It would thus be natural to consider them as ‘phonological’ descriptions of the patterns in which redundant phonetic features are factored out and solely linguistically relevant features are reflected. However, in these studies division of labor between the phonetics and the phonology of intonation is quite confused. In this article, we will propose a new phonological interpretation of the intonational patterns in WHQ and YNQ, based on the results of the experiments. This is the second goal of the present article. The present article is divided into six sections. Chapter 2 will outline the past descriptions on intonational patterns in WHQ and YNQ. In Section 3 and Section 4 two experiments will be performed for the first goal of this article. Section 5 will be for the second goal of the present article: here we will propose a new phonological interpretation of the two patterns on the basis of the experimental results. In Section 6, we will summarize the discussion and raise issues for further research. 2. Description of the pattern in WHQ and YNQ in the previous studies In this section, we will review how these patterns have been described in the past studies. Before that, a few remarks should be made concerning the fact that some of the previous researchers identified two different patterns for WHQ. We will first discuss the patterns for WHQ and define one of them as the subject of the investigation. After that, we will outline the previous description of the patterns for YNQ and WHQ. 2.1. ‘Hat pattern’ and ‘peak pattern’ in WHQ In some of the past works, at least two intonational patterns are reported to appear in WHQ. In what follows, we will refer to them as a ‘hat pattern’

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

177

and a ‘peak pattern’. The description of a hat pattern can be found in the works by e.g. Sevetozarova (1998), Nikolaeva (1977) and Kodzasov (1999). This pattern is characterized by the F0 rise in a question word, the F0 fall in the phrase-final word and the high F0 level between the rise and the fall. A peak pattern is described in the studies by e.g. Sevetozarova (1998), Kodzasov (1999) and Bryzgunova (1980). This pattern was illustrated in Figure 1 (left): F0 goes up in a question word and then immediately falls down. The existence of two types of pattern for WHQ brings us to wonder which of them is more typical, or less marked. In fact, opinions are divided among researchers on this issue. Svetozarova regards the peak pattern as a more marked pattern for WHQ, saying that a peak pattern is a ‘rarer’ one for WHQ (Svetozarova 1998: 269). Kodzasov agrees with markedness of a peak pattern, arguing that ‘a pitch fall on the question word usually occurs only in the case when the following part of the content has already been actualized’ (Kodzasov 1996: 96). That is, he claims not only that a peak pattern is marked for WHQ, but also that the choice of each of the two patterns is dependent on the informational structure of WHQ. Bryzgunova (1980), by contrast, appears to regard a peak pattern as almost the only pattern which can be used in WHQ. In Bryzgunova’s framework, what we refer to as a hat pattern, accompanied by specific characteristics in duration and pitch range, is classified into the pattern for an exclamation sentence. While question as to which of the patterns is marked for WHQ and what semantic/ pragmatic differences are distinguished by the two patterns is of theoretical interest, it goes far beyond the scope of the present study. Leaving this question aside, we define a peak pattern as the subject of the investigation. We have theoretical and practical reasons for it. First, because our subjects had produced only peak patterns in the experiments, it was impossible for us to examine a hat pattern. Second, since a hat pattern is realized as an obviously distinct F0 contour, it is no use to compare it with the pattern in YNQ. 2.2. Phonetic differences between the patterns in WHQ and in YNQ The important point in the past descriptions for our discussion is that there has been no mention of the striking similarity in F0 contours between the pattern in WHQ and the pattern in YNQ, and thus little experimental investigation has been made on the phonetic differences between the two patterns. In addition, detailed descriptions of a peak pattern are not presented in most of the past studies. In this respect the Bryzgunova’s study, where the peak pattern in WHQ is extensively described, can be seen as an exception. It would therefore be worth while reviewing Bryzgunova’s description first.

178

Yosuke IGARASHI

In Bryzgunova’s framework the patterns for WHQ and YNQ are called ‘IK-2’ and ‘IK-3’, respectively.2 As a first approximation, Bryzgunova’s characterization of IK-2 and IK-3 can be summarized as following. IK-2 has an F0 fall in the accented syllable, while IK-3 has an F0 rise in the syllable3. For the F0 movement before and after the accented syllable, in her description, there are no significant differences: the F0 is mid-level before the stressed syllable and low-level after it (see Figure 2). According to Bryzgunova, the phonetic difference between the two patterns thus lies in the F0 shape in the stressed syllable: ‘Fall’ for WHQ and ‘Rise’ for YNQ. Obviously, the phonetic differences between the two patterns are not as simple as in Bryzgunova’s description. This makes it clear that Bryzgunova’s description is inadequate as a phonetic description of the two intonational patterns.

IK-2 Vy na kakóm fakul’téte účites’? ‘What faculty are you studying at?’ Figure 2.

K-3 Vy býli v kinó? ‘Were you in a theater?

F0 contours for two types of intonational pattern, IK-2 (the pattern for WHQ) and IK-3 (the pattern for YNQ), schematically represented by Bryzgunova (1980: 190, 111).

It might appear that Bryzgunova’s description is not phonetic but phonological: a description of the two patterns as a ‘Fall’ and ‘Rise’ might have resulted from removing all the redundant features from the description. It seems, however, not to be the case. We should not overlook the fact that we can find descriptions in Bryzgunova’s work (Bryzgunova 1980: 98, 111), in which the F0 configuration in the stressed syllable of IK-2 is defined not only as ‘Fall’ but also as ‘Flat’ (rovnoe dviženie). This means that Bryzgunova offers two different phonological representations to a single intonational pattern. It is obviously a theoretical drawback providing that her description is phonological. Of course, it is not a problem if we see the ‘Fall’ and the ‘Flat’ as phonetic variations of a single phonological category. But again, it seems not to be the case. 2 3

She identified seven types of IK in Russian. ‘IK’ is the abbreviation of intonacionnye konstrukcii. IK-2 is accompanied by an additional feature ‘usilenie slovesnogo udarenija’, which serves as a distinction from IK-1, another falling pattern. This feature will not be discussed in this article.

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

179

We can not find a clear division in Bryzgunova’s work between the level of description where phonological categories are defined and the level where phonetic variations of these categories are defined. In fact both IK-2 and IK-3 contain a variation that has a fall-rise-fall contour and in this case, steepness of the rise is claimed to serve as a distinction between the two patterns: when the rise of the fall-rise-fall contour is steep, then it is classified as IK-3. Here, a ‘Fall’ vs. ‘Rise’ contrast shown in Figure 2 plays no role at all. After all, it is not clear what ‘distinctive feature’ differentiates IK-2 from IK-3, and how a set of phonetic realizations is derived from a single phonological category. It seems that, using an analogy of segmental phonology, Bryzgunova offers solely a list of ‘allophones’ but provides no description about ‘phonemes’. In effect, there are considerable discrepancies between the identified patterns and the F0 contours in her description, as have been criticized by a number of researchers (e.g. Keijsper 1992; Odé 1992; Yokoyama 2003). It can be concluded, from what is said above, that a description of the patterns for WHQ and YNQ as ‘Fall’ vs. ‘Rise’ is not adequate either as a phonetic or as a phonological one. We need to make more detailed examinations into the difference. As noted above, there is little investigation of the phonetic differences between the patterns for WHQ and YNQ. However, there is a good deal of discussion in the previous works on the comparison of the pattern for YNQ with the pattern for declarative sentences. It is useful to review these works for understanding of the pattern for YNQ. Makarova (2002) constructed a set of speech stimuli with a rise-fall F0 contour, which varied in alignment and height of the F0 peak, and conducted a perceptual experiment to investigate how the stimuli are semantically interpreted (declaratives, interrogatives and exclamations). One of the relevant points of her findings is that the stimuli with the lower F0 peak (270 Hz) yielded less interrogative judgments than stimuli with the higher F0 peak (320 Hz). This result suggests that the pattern for YNQ is characterized by the high F0 peak. Meyer and Mleinek (forthcoming) studied interactions of intonation with focus structure and pragmatic force (declarative vs. YNQ), and found, among other things, that the F0 peak was scaled higher in YNQ than in declarative sentences irrespective of focus structure. High F0 peaks in the pattern for YNQ have apparently been reported in more traditional works in terms of a ‘steep’ rise in the accented syllable (Bryzgunova 1980; Svetozarova 1998; Fougeron 1999). In the abovementioned study of Makarova (2002), it was also found that the stimuli with the later alignment of the F0 peak were judged as interrogatives while those with the earlier alignment were judged as declaratives. The later alignment of the F0 peak in

180

Yosuke IGARASHI

YNQ than in declaratives is also reported in the study of Meyer and Mleinek (forthcoming) cited above. Although the previous descriptions just outlined were comparisons of the pattern for YNQ with the pattern for declaratives, high scaling and late alignment of the F0 peak can be regarded as ones of the characteristics of the pattern for YNQ. In fact, the F0 contours in Figure 1 suggest that the peak is aligned later and scaled higher in YNQ than WHQ. It is fairly possible that the alignment and scaling of the peak are one of the phonetic differences between the two patterns. 3. Experiment I Experiment I was aimed at a brief understanding of the phonetic differences between the WHQ pattern and the YNQ pattern. 3.1. Methods Our basic approach in this experiment was to measure the specific points of the F0 contour in prepared short sentences (WHQ and YNQ), read aloud by native speakers of Russian. The points measured were 1) the F0 value of the beginning of the utterance, 2) the F0 value of the end of the utterance, 3) the F0 value of the peak at the end of the F0 rise and 4) the alignment of the peak at the end of the F0 rise. We expected that there should be a significant difference between WHQ and YNQ in some of these points. 3.1.1. Speech materials Six sentences were designed, three for WHQ and three for YNQ4. They are presented and underlined in Table 1. The test sentences had identical texts except that the WHQ were given a question word kakój ‘what (kind of)’ and the YNQ were given a pronoun takój ‘this (kind of)’. All the test sentences were provided with corresponding answers. The answer sentences for YNQ were given, so that the focus should be put on the pronoun. We expected that contexts like these would make speakers put a pitch accent on the stressed syllable of kakój for WHQ and of takój for YNQ. While the question and answer sentences were both recorded, only the question sentences were measured and analyzed. In order to avoid microprosodic effects on the F0 around the accented syllable and the end of the utterance, we used as many sonorants as possible for consonants after the stressed syllable of the question word or the pronoun.

4

Though they can not be considered as ‘sentences’ in a strict syntactic sense, we may be safe in assuming that it will cause no problems for the purpose of the present study.

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

181

Table 1. Test sentences for Experiment I. The sentences that were measured and analyzed are the underlined question sentences. WHQ – Kakój nómer? ‘What number?’ – Dvenádcatyj. ‘Twelveth.’ – Kakój limón? ‘What lemon?’ – Vot ėto, pažalyjsta. ‘This one, please.’ – Kakój limonád? ‘What lemonade?’ – Sládkij. ‘Sweet one.’

YNQ – Takój nómer? – Da, takój. – Takój limón? – Da, takój. – Takój limonád? – Da, takój.

‘This number?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘This lemonade?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘This lemonade?’ ‘Yes, it is.’

3.1.2. Speakers The materials were read by four female native speakers of Russian. In what follows, the speakers are identified as A, M, T and Z. M and Z were nineteen years old, and A and M were in their early twenties. They all had been studying at an institute or university in Tokyo at the time of recording. The speakers had no known speech or hearing problems and were naïve as to the purpose of the experiment. 3.1.3. Recording and analysis procedures The recordings were made on Digital Audio Tape (DAT) in a quiet room at the speakers’ home. Speakers read the sentences ten times from a set of cards, each of which had a question sentence (=test sentence) and an answer sentence typed on it. The order of the sentences was random. Speakers were asked to read sentences as naturally as possible. The recorded materials were digitized at a sampling rate of 16 kHz and were analyzed using ESPS Waves+ software. All measurements were performed manually in a simultaneous display of the waveform, wide-band spectrogram, and F0 track. The utterance beginning and end were measured at corresponding points in the F0 contour and were marked as ‘L1’ and ‘L2’, respectively. The peak at the end of the F0 rise was measured at the highest F0 point around the offset of the accented syllable, and was marked as ‘H’. The four segmental points measured were the onset of the accented syllable, the onset of the accented vowel, the offset of the accented vowel, and the onset of the following unstressed vowel. These points were marked as ‘C0’, ‘V0’, ‘C1’ and ‘V1’ respectively (see Figure 3).

182

Yosuke IGARASHI

WHQ

Kakój limonád? ‘What lemonade?’ YNQ

Figure 3.

Takój limonád?

‘This lemonade?’

Waveform and F0 contour for WHQ (left) and YNQ (right), from test sentences of Experiment I, showing the segmental and F0 points measured.

3.2. Results and discussion All the data were analyzed on the basis of t-tests for each speaker separately, with sentence type (WHQ vs. YNQ) as the independent variable. The dependent variables for each t-test were the alignment of the peak (H), the F0 value of the peak (H), the F0 value of the beginning of the utterance (L1) and the end of the utterance (L2). The alignment of the peak was measured by calculating the temporal distance between the onset of the stressed syllable (C0) and the peak (H), divided by the syllable duration (the duration between C0 and C1). Tables 2-5 demonstrate means, standard deviations (SD), t-ratios and p-values for each point that we measured. Below we will discuss the results in detail. Table 2. Alignment of H. Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=58. Values lower than 1 indicate H is aligned inside the accented syllable. WHQ

YNQ

t

p

Table 3. F0 value of H (in Hz). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=58.

WHQ

YNQ

t

p

A

0.19 (0.3)

1.40 (0.2)

-16.70

<0.001

A

276.86 (9.2)

315.05 (9.7)

-15.50

<0.001

M

0.39 (0.3)

0.90 (0.1)

-7.46

<0.001

M

332.25 (20.5)

361.88 (11.4)

-6.90

<0.001

T

0.31 (0.3)

0.84 (0.1)

-6.87

<0.001

T

321.26 (13.5)

389.10 (21.4)

-14.66

<0.001

Z

0.44 (0.3)

1.15 (0.2)

-9.39

<0.001

Z

267.55 (12.9)

316.22 (21.8)

-10.49

<0.001

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives Table 4. F0 value of L1 (in Hz). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=58.

183

Table 5. F0 value of L2 (in Hz). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=58.

WHQ

YNQ

t

p

WHQ

YNQ

t

p

A

245.32 (10.0)

218.78 (8.1)

11.22

<0.001

A

176.34 (8.7)

182.83 (5.8)

-3.38

=0.001

M

266.80 (10.0)

258.17 (9.1)

3.47

<0.001

M

215.16 (6.2)

215.75 (8.7)

-0.30

=0.764

T

251.36 (19.5)

221.39 (12.4)

7.09

<0.001

T

155.23 (8.5)

163.50 (8.6)

-3.71

<0.001

Z

235.83 (10.2)

222.30 (8.5)

5.54

<0.001

Z

179.84 (10.6)

184.02 (7.3)

-1.77

=0.082

The peak (H) was aligned significantly later in YNQ than in WHQ for all speakers (see Table 2). Although the mean varied considerably across speakers, the general relation was consistent. The peak was aligned around (just before) the middle of the accented syllable for WHQ, while it was aligned around the offset of the accented syllable for YNQ. There was a significant difference in the F0 value of the peak (H) as well (see Table 3). For all speakers, it was scaled higher in YNQ than in WHQ. Individual differences in F0 values should be due to the differences in a speaker-specific pitch range. A significant difference was found in the F0 value in the utterance beginning (L1) for all speakers: it was higher in WHQ than in YNQ (see Table 4). Again, individual differences in F0 values should be a reflection of a speaker-specific pitch range. The results for the F0 value of the utterance end (L2) were rather difficult to interpret. Table 5 shows that the F0 tends to be higher in YNQ than in WHQ for all the speakers. The difference, however, is significant only for speakers A and T. At the present stage, we conclude that it is not clear whether there is a phonetic difference between the two types of pattern in the F0 value of the end of the utterance. 3.3. Summary of Experiment I and its perspectives The results of Experiment I can be summarized as follows. First, the alignment of the peak at the end of the F0 rise was significantly later in YNQ than in WHQ. It was aligned around the middle of the accented syllable in WHQ and around the offset of the accented syllable in YNQ. Second, the F0 value of the peak was significantly higher in YNQ than in WHQ. Third, the F0 value of the beginning of the utterance was significantly higher in WHQ than in YNQ. Finally, the F0 value of the end of the utterance tended to be higher in YNQ than in WHQ but the difference was significant only for two of four speakers. From these results, therefore, it was suggested that the phonetic differences between two types of pattern lay in the three points, which are presented in Figure 4. A question as to whether one of the differences lies in

184

Yosuke IGARASHI

the F0 value of the utterance end is still unclear at this stage. Having summarized the results, we can turn to consideration of what points should be analyzed for further understanding of phonetic differences. We should notice that the following questions remained unanswered in Experiment I, because speech materials that we used were all short utterances. First, since the test sentences had only one syllable before the accented syllable, it was impossible to observe the F0 movement in a region before the accented syllable (‘pre-accentual part’, henceforth). It is therefore necessary to make an inquiry into whether there are differences in the pre-accentual part between WHQ and YNQ. 1) Alignment of the F0 peak 2) F0 value of the peak

WHQ YNQ

3) F0 value of the beginning of the utterance

Figure 4.

Phonetic differences between the two types of pattern, suggested by the results of Experiment I. Solid and dotted lines represent schematized F0 contours in WHQ and YNQ, respectively. The shaded space indicates the interval of the accented syllable.

Second, the number of syllable following the accented syllable was too small to examine the F0 movement in a region after the accented syllable (‘post-accentual part’, henceforth). In this part, as we can observe from Figure 1, there is a low turning point at the end of the F0 fall, which the previous researchers have made no close investigation. It is thus feasible to speculate that there are phonetic differences in this point. In the following section, an experiment will be preformed, in which we will make more detailed examinations of the phonetic differences between the WHQ and YNQ patterns, using speech materials with longer segmental composition, so that the F0 movements in the pre-accentual and post-accentual parts can be satisfactory observed. 4. Experiment II Experiment II was aimed at examination of the points, which could not be satisfactorily investigated in Experiment I. To be more specific, we investigated whether phonetic differences between the WHQ and YNQ

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

185

patterns could be found in the F0 movement in the pre-accentual part (interval before the accented syllable) and in the post-accentual part (interval after the accented syllable). 4.1. Methods Our basic approach in Experiment II was the same as in Experiment I. We asked speakers to read prepared sentences and measured the specific points in the F0 contour. 4.1.1. Speech materials and speakers We designed two sets of speech materials, one set for the pre-accentual part (Dataset A) and another for the post-accentual part (Dataset B), each of which contained one WHQ and one YNQ. Dataset A is illustrated in Table 6. The test sentences had the identical texts except that the WHQ was given a question word kogó ‘whom’ and the YNQ was given a pronoun negó ‘him’. Note that the question word and pronoun, both having the lexical stress on the second syllable, were followed by the unstressed preposition na ‘on’, and thus two unstressed syllables preceded the stressed syllable. We expected that this condition allowed us to fully observe the F0 movement in the pre-accentual part. Table 6. Dataset A. Test sentences are underlined.

WHQ

YNQ

– Na kogó ty smótriš'? ‘Who are you looking at?’ – Ja smotrjú na Marínu. ‘I’m looking at Marina.’

– Na negó ty smótriš'? ‘Are you looking at him?’ – Da, ja smotrjú na negó. ‘Yes, I’m looking at him.’

Table 7 illustrates Dataset B. Again, the test sentences had the identical texts except that the WHQ had a question word and the YNQ had a pronoun. The question word or the pronoun was followed by a three-syllable verb nanjalá ‘hired’ and a four-syllable subject Lamánova (woman’s surname), so that F0 movement on the post-accentual part could be fully observed. Except one voiced fricative for the final syllable we used sonorant consonants for the syllables following the accented syllable in order to avoid possible microposodic effects. For both Dataset A and Dataset B, answer sentences were given so that focus would be put on the pronoun in the YNQ. As in Experiment I, question and answer sentences were both recorded, but only the question sentences were measured and analyzed.

186

Yosuke IGARASHI

Table 7. Dataset B. Test sentences are underlined

WHQ

YNQ

– Kogó nanjalá Lamánova? – Egó nanjalá Lamánova? ‘Who did Lamanova hire?’ ‘Is it him that Lamanova hired?’ – Marínu ‘Marina.’ – Da, egó. ‘Yes, (it’s) him.’

The speakers were two female native speakers of Russian, A and M, who took part in Experiment I. 4.1.2. Measurement and analysis procedure Figure 5 shows F0 contours for the test sentences in Dataset A. We can notice that there seems to be a difference in the way in which F0 moves in the pre-accentual part. Thus, for Dataset A, we measured the relatively stable F0 point in the first syllable (L1) and the second syllable (L2). Also, the peak at the end of the rise (H) was measured.

WHQ

Na kogó ty smótriš'? ‘Who are you looking at?’

Figure 5.

YNQ

Na negó ty smótriš'? ‘Are you looking at him?’

Waveform and F0 contour for WHQ (left) and YNQ (right), from test sentences of Dataset A in Experiment II, showing the segmental and F0 points measured. For circles emphasizes possible difference in the F0 movement in the pre-accentual part.

For Dataset B, we measured the valley at the end of the F0 fall, which can be observed between the F0 peak and the utterance end. For the measurement of this point, we first measured the F0 peak and the utterance end and marked them as ‘P’ and ‘F’, respectively (see Figure 1). Second, two straight lines were fitted to the F0 contour going from P to F. The parameters of the two linear models were estimated by means of the linear least-squares method. To estimate the F0 valley, i.e., the intersection of the two fitted lines, two linear regressions were computed for each possible location (from 1 to n,

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

187

where n is the number of samples within the F0 contour). The location eventually selected as the F0 valley (marked as ‘Elbow’) was the one leading to the smallest total modeling error (see Figure 6). To investigate the alignment of the valley, the boundary between the first and second words and the boundary between the second and the third words were also measured and were marked as ‘WB1’ and ‘WB2’, respectively (see Figure 1). (Hz) 320 300 280 260 240 220 200 180 160

elbow 0 ↓ 100

Figure 6.

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900 (msec)

The F0 valley at the end of the fall (Elbow) measured by the least-squares method.

4.2. Results and discussion First, we will discuss the results of the analyses of the pre-accentual part. Figure 7 illustrates means for F0 values of the first syllable (L1), the second syllable (L2) and the peak (H). We can see that there is an obvious difference in how F0 moves from the utterance beginning to the accented syllable. In WHQ F0 simply rises towards the peak, while in YNQ it remains relatively flat in the first and second syllable and then sharply rises towards the peak. (Hz)

A

(Hz)

320

M

380 360

300

340

280

320

260

300

WHQ

280

YNQ

240

260

220

240

L1

Figure 7.

L2

H

L1

L2

H

Means for F0 value (in Hz) of L1, L2 and H.

In Experiment I, we found that the F0 value of the utterance beginning was significantly higher in WHQ than in YNQ, and we interpreted this result

188

Yosuke IGARASHI

as indicating one of the phonetic differences in the two intonational patterns. A more detailed examination of the pre-accentual part, however, suggests that it is not true. The F0 height difference found in Experiment I might not be the property of the utterance beginning per se. As Figure 7 reveals, the F0 value of the first syllable (L1) presents an inconsistent tendency: for speaker M, L1 is higher in YNQ than in WHQ, while for speaker A, there is almost no difference. The t-tests with the F0 value of L1 as the dependent variable revealed a significant effect only for speaker M [df=18 t=-4.31 p<0.001]. The tendency of the F0 value of the second syllable (L2), on the other hand, is consistent across both speakers. L2 is scaled higher in WHQ than in YNQ and the difference was significant for both of the speakers [df=18: A t=2.95 p=0.009; M A t=2.86 p=0.010]. What is noteworthy is that the point measured in Experiment I as the ‘utterance beginning’ was at the same time the point at the syllable immediately preceding the accented syllable (the point measured as ‘L2’ in the present experiment). It is thus plausible to assume that the higher F0 value at the ‘utterance beginning’ of WHQ found in Experiment I was actually the F0 value at the syllable immediately preceding the accented syllable. We further assume that the difference in the F0 value at the syllable preceding the accented syllable is a reflection of the difference in the way in which F0 moves in the pre-accentual part. To be more specific, we assume the difference to be the presence (YNQ) or absence (WHQ) of the low turning point at the onset of the accented syllable. In YNQ, F0 moves through the low turning point at the onset of the accented syllable, towards the accented syllable, and thus the resultant F0 configuration becomes a combination of the low plateau in the pre-accentual part and the sharp rise in the accented syllable. In WHQ, on the other hand, since there is no low turning point, F0 simply rises towards the accented syllable. If this assumption is correct, there should be a significant difference in the F0 excursion in the pre-accentual part: the excursion should be much larger in WHQ than in YNQ. In order to examine this, we conducted t-tests for each speaker separately, with the F0 difference in Hz between L1 and L2 as the dependent variable. The results were shown in Table 8. Although F0 rises in the pre-accentual part in both types of sentences, the excursion is very small for WHQ, while it is much larger in YNQ, and the difference was significant for both speakers. In sum, it was suggested that one of the phonetic differences between the two patterns lay not in the F0 value of the utterance beginning, but in the presence (YNQ) or absence (WHQ) of the low turning point at the onset of the accented syllable.

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

189

Now let us turn to the discussion on the results of the analyses of the post-accentual part. In order to examine whether there is a difference in the alignment of the F0 valley at the end of the fall (Elbow), we conducted t-tests with the temporal distance between the peak (P) and the valley (Elbow) as the independent variable. The results of the analyses are presented in Table 9. We can notice that there is no significant difference for both speakers. It is thus suggested that the valley is aligned by a given distance from the peak and there is no difference in the distance between the two patterns. The result, however, should be treated with caution, because the standard deviations are large. This may imply variability, rather than stability, of the alignment of the valley. We also measured the interval between the end of the first word (WB1) and the valley (Elbow) as well as the interval between the end of the second word (WB2) and the valley (Elbow), but we could not find a consistent tendency in the alignment of the valley. To examine whether the two patterns differ in F0 height of the valley (Elbow), we conducted t-tests with the F0 value of the valley (Elbow) as the independent variable. Table 10 shows the results of the analyses. Again, the tendency is inconsistent. The F0 value was larger in the YNQ for speaker A, while it was larger in the WHQ for speaker M. Deference was not significant for both speakers. Obliviously, further research is necessary on the alignment and scaling of the F0 valley. At the present stage, we conclude that evidence, showing that there is a phonetic difference in the alignment and scaling of the valley, failed to be found. Finally, we examined whether there is a phonetic difference in the F0 value of the end of the utterance (F). Table 11 shows the results of the analyses. It can be seen that there is no significant difference for both speakers. We can thus confirm that the phonetic differences between the WHQ and YNQ patterns are not found in the F0 value of the utterance end. Table 8. Excursion from L1 to L2 (in Hz). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=18. Positive values mean that F0 rises in the pre-accentual part. WHQ

YNQ

t

Table 9. Temporal distance between P and Elbow (in msec). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=18.

p

WHQ

YNQ

t

t

A

26.14 (5.6)

15.54 (6.5)

3.87

=0.001

A

241.07 (41.0) 218.09 (33.7)

1.36

=0.189

M

31.02 (8.7)

6.84 (7.1)

6.76

<0.001

M

291.74 (43.8) 273.85 (38.0)

0.97

=0.343

190

Yosuke IGARASHI

Table 10. F0 value of Elbow (in Hz). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=18. WHQ

YNQ

Table 11. F0 value of F (in Hz). Means (SD) and individual analyses. df=18.

t

p

WHQ

YNQ

t

p

A

198.4

(4.9)

203.88 (6.3)

-2.14

=0.047

A

176.82 (5.4)

175.10 (8.7)

0.52

=0.607

M

250.83 (11.4)

241.30 (7.3)

2.21

=0.042

M

208.14 (6.1)

208.33 (5.9)

-0.06

=0.947

4.3. Summary of the experiments The results of Experiment II can be summarized as follows. First, there was a significant difference in the way in which F0 moves in the pre-accentual part: in the WHQ F0 simply rises towards the peak, while in YNQ it remains relatively flat until the onset of the accented syllable and then sharply rises towards the peak. Second, we have not found evidence, indicating a possible difference in the alignment and scaling of the F0 valley at the end of the fall. 1) Alignment of the F0 peak 2) Height of the F0 peak

WHQ YNQ

3) Presence or absence of the low turning point at the onset of the accented syllable

Figure 8.

Phonetic differences between the two types of pattern, suggested by the results of Experiment I and Experiment II. Solid and dotted lines represent schematized F0 contours in WHQ and YNQ, respectively. The shaded space indicates the interval of the accented syllable.

From the results of two experiments conducted in the present study, it can be concluded that the phonetic differences between the two patterns are found in 1) the alignment of the peak, 2) the height of the peak, 3) the presence or absence of the low turning point at the onset of the accented syllable (see also Figure 8). Let us now look at relevant descriptions in the previous works and see how they differ from the results of our experiments. First, the result of Experiment I, showing that the F0 peak in the YNQ pattern was aligned around the end of the accented syllable, is compatible with the studies by Makarova (2002) and Meyer and Mleinek (forthcoming), in which it was shown that the F0 peak was aligned later in YNQ than in declaratives.

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

191

The result of Experiment I, concerning the height of the F0 peak in the YNQ pattern also confirms the two studies cited above (Makarova 2002; Meyer and Mleinek forthcoming), where higher scaling of the F0 peak in YNQ than declaratives was reported. In addition, the high peak scaling in the YNQ pattern would give justification to the traditional works (Bryzgunova 1980; Svetozarova 1998; Fougeron 1999), where the F0 rise at the accents syllable is described as ‘sharp’. Finally, we should notice that the results of Experiment II do not bear out Bryzgunova’s description about the pre-accentual part. While Bryzgunova (1980) claims that the F0 movement in the pre-accentual part is the same for WHQ and YNQ, our experiments revealed that there was a significant difference in this part. Our results concerning the pre-accentual part should be regarded as a new finding, which could not be accomplished by describing the patterns simply as ‘Fall’ vs. ‘Rise’. 5. Phonological interpretation of the patterns In the present section, we will propose a phonological interpretation of the WHQ pattern and the YNQ pattern on the basis of the results of the experiments. First, we assume that an intonational contour is a string of phonological level tones, Highs (H), and Lows (L), occurring at a specific point in the utterance. This is the assumption that underlies the theoretical frameworks in recent phonological research of intonation (e.g. Pierrehumbert 1980; Ladd 1996; Gussenhoven 2004). In this theory (often called Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) theory), movements such as rises and falls per se are regarded not as the intonational primitives but merely as transitions from one tone to another. The rise, for example, is taken to be a transition from L to H. The tonal string involves ‘pitch accents’, ‘phrase tone’ and ‘boundary tone’. Pitch accents are tones that appear at the stressed syllables. Phrase tone is a tone that spreads over the entire region from the phrase-final pitch accent to the end of the phrase5. Boundary tone is a tone that appears at the edge of the phrase. Pitch accent can consist of a single tone (‘monotonal’) or of a sequence of two different tones (‘bitonal’), whereas phrase tone and boundary tone are always monotonal. Following a conventional notation in the standard AM theory, a tone forming a pitch accent is marked by an asterisk or a star ‘*’ (e.g. ‘H*’) and a boundary tone is marked by a percent sign ‘%’ (e.g. ‘H%’). When a pitch accent is bitonal, i.e. composed of a HL or LH sequence, then the tones are 5

What we call ‘phrase tone’ is referred to as ‘phrase accent’ in Pierrehumbert (1980) and as ‘phrasal tone’ in some of the AM literature.

192

Yosuke IGARASHI

connected by a plus sign “+”, and one of them is marked by a star (e.g., ‘H*+L’). Here, the star notation indicates timing difference of the tones: a tone marked by a star (‘starred tone’) represents temporal co-occurrence, or association of the tone with the stressed syllable. A tone without a star (‘unstarred tone’) is not associated with any syllable, but it appears by a given time interval before or after the starred tone. The notation ‘H*+L’, for example, indicates that the H is associated with the stressed syllable and the L appears later by a given time than the H. Naturally enough, the definition of these phonological tones requires a phonetic basis. Although various sorts of conceptualization of tones have been proposed in the AM literature, we will consider turning points in the F0 contour as phonetic realization of tones: the F0 peak and F0 valley are regarded as a reflection of H and L, respectively. The equation of tone with an F0 turning point might be considered as the most clear and simple way of abstraction of phonological tones (see Ladd 1996: 103-107). Having outlined the framework that will be applied, we will now turn to propose phonological representations of the WHQ pattern and the YNQ. Boundary tones. The F0 point at the end of the utterance can be taken as a phonetic realization of a boundary tone. Since the results of the experiments showed that there was no significant difference between the WHQ pattern and the YNQ pattern in the F0 height of the end of the utterance, we propose that both patterns have the same boundary tone, that is, L%6. Phrase tones. Readers might recall that for both patterns, we could observe the low F0 region between the F0 peak and the end of the utterance. Insofar as phrase tone is a tone spreading over the entire region from the final pitch accent to the end of the phrase, we can regard this F0 region as a reflection of a phrase tone. Since the F0 value of this region was fairly low, 6

As far as we know, there are no published studies that explicitly show that the Russian intonational system has pitch movements localized at the right edge of the phrase (for example, the pitch rise at the phrase-final syllable observable in the yes-no question in English (see e.g. Pierrehumbert 1980). If Russian did not have local pitch movements characterizing the edge of the phrase, then we should not define boundary tones for this language. (In fact, we have not introduced boundary tones to Russian in our previous study (Igarashi 2002). However, in the recording of Russian speech, we often observe intonational patterns with the pitch rise precisely localized at the phrase-final syllable. According to the intuition of our Russian informants, these patterns are “fairly natural”. Although we can not exclude the possibility that the patterns with the final rise are specific for a given group of speakers (generation, gender, for instance), we believe that it is necessary to take into account these patterns as well for the comprehensive description of Russian intonation. The definition of boundary tones allows us to represent, for example, a pattern with the final rise, which appear in Russian YNQ, as L+H* L H%.

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

193

we can propose that both patterns have a phrase tone consisting of L. Moreover, we measured the alignment and scaling of the valley at the beginning of the low F0 region, and we failed to find evidence that they significantly differed between the two patterns. As noted in 2.2, much work remains to be done on the scaling and alignment of this point, but if further evidence for the identical behaviors of this turning point between WHQ and YNQ is found, then it will give strong support for the claim that both patterns have the same phrase tone, that is, L. Pitch accents. The F0 peak and valley in the vicinity of the stressed syllable can be regarded as a reflection of a pitch accent. We will first consider the pitch accent in the YNQ pattern. The experimental results showed that for the YNQ pattern, the peak at the end of the F0 rise was aligned near the offset of the accented syllable, and that there was a low turning point at the onset of the accented syllable. Considering the peak and the valley appearing near the accented syllable as a realization of the H tone and L tone, respectively, we propose that the YNQ pattern has a bitonal pitch accent, consisting of a LH tonal sequence. A problem arises as to the star notation that indicates the timing difference of the tones. Since the valley and peak are aligned in the periphery of the stressed syllable (near the onset and offset, respectively), it is difficult to decide which of the two tones (L or H) is associated with the syllable7. More research is necessary to make a crucial decision over star notation. Specifically, we should examine whether Russian has two rising pitch accents (L+H* vs. L*+H) which contrast in the timing difference of the tones8. Acknowledging that there is likely to be some dissatisfaction, we propose that the H tone is the starred tone and that the pitch accent in the YNQ pattern is L+H*. Let us now move onto a consideration of the pitch accent in the WHQ pattern. One alternative would be H*, a monotonal high pitch accent. Interpretation of H as a starred tone is justified by the results showing that the F0 peak, a reflection of H, is aligned around the middle of the accented syllable. Also it is entirely fair to say that the pitch accent does not consist of the LH tonal sequence albeit the F0 contour in WHQ presents a rising 7

8

The same problem was addressed firstly in Arvaniti et al. (1998) for the study of rising prenuclear pitch accents in Modern Greek. In this language, the rising pitch accent is characterized by a clear F0 valley and peak, both of which are aligned well outside of the stressed syllable. The theoretical problems of the treatment of this phenomenon within the AM theory are exhaustively discussed in Arvaniti et al. (2000). We proposed elsewhere (Igarashi 2002) that Russian had a L+H* vs. L*+H contrast, but without empirical evidence for it. In that work we also proposed that Russian has two falling pitch accents H+L* and H*+L. The timing contrast for Russian falling pitch accents was firstly proposed by Odé (1989) and was confirmed in our experimental study (Igarashi 2005).

194

Yosuke IGARASHI

configuration near the accented syllable, because the results revealed that the WHQ pattern lacks a low turning point, a reflection of L, at the onset of the accented syllable. Note that in the H* representation, the F0 fall after the accented syllable is regarded as a transition between H* pitch accent and L phrase tone. Support for the H* representation might be found in Bryzgunova’s description of the F0 at the accented syllable being ‘flat’ (Bryzgunova 1980: 98, 111). Another alternative for the pitch accent in WHQ would be H*+L, a bitonal falling pitch accent. This representation would receive plausibility from the ‘orthodox’ description in the previous works in which distinction between the WHQ and YNQ patterns are described as ‘Fall’ vs. ‘Rise’ (Bryzgunova 1980; Kodzasov 1999). What has to be noticed, however, is that there is no phonetic evidence for L of a HL tonal sequence. If the WHQ pattern is represented as H*+L L L%, then there will be one more L tone than in the representation of the YNQ pattern, i.e. L+H* L L%. Evidence for the existence of the ‘additional’ L would be, for example, that the F0 valley after the F0 peak were aligned earlier or scaled lower in WHQ than in YNQ. Such evidence, however, has not been found in the present study. More evidence and discussion are necessary to establish the representation of the pitch accent in WHQ. One could imagine further findings about the F0 valley after the F0 peak might be used to decide which of the alternatives is valid. At this stage, H* would be preferred to H*+L, because of the lack of phonetic evidence for L of H*+L, though the possibility of H*+L should not be completely ruled out. In sum, the phonological representations for the WHQ and YNQ patterns proposed in the present study are as follows. WHQ H* L L% YNQ L+H* L L% In the representations proposed here, two patterns contrast in the shape of the pitch accent, one has a monotonal high pitch accent and the other has a bitonal rising pitch accent. One might notice that parts of the phonetic differences found in the experiments, namely alignment and scaling of the F0 peak are not reflected in the representations. Insofar as the differences are phonologically interpreted as the shape of the pitch accent, we might be safe in assuming that alignment and scaling are redundant features, assigned in phonetic implementation. 6. Conclusion In the present study, experiments were performed to investigate phonetic differences between the pattern for WHQ and the pattern for YNQ, both of which are realized as similar rise-fall F0 contours. Since in the

Intonational Patterns in Russian Interrogatives

195

previous works on Russian intonation there has been little attempt to examine the phonetic properties of the two intonational patterns, we believe that our findings will contribute to Russian intonational research in general. More research is needed to investigate the F0 valley at the end of the fall, which would give empirical and theoretical implications for the study of Russian intonational patterns. Also, the experimental results were phonologically interpreted, and phonological representation of the patterns was proposed, applying the autosegmental-phonological theory. A question remained as to whether pitch accent in the WHQ pattern should be H* or H*+L. One of the issues for further research would be whether differences in F0 alignment and scaling, which we considered as redundant features, function as a distinction for Russian pitch accents in light of other intonational patterns. We hope the present study would stipulate research on the phonology of Russian intonation. References Arvaniti, A., D.R. Ladd and I. Mennen 1998. “Stability of tonal alignment: the case of Greek prenuclear accents”. Journal of phonetics 26. 3-25. Arvaniti, A., D.R. Ladd and I. Mennen 2000. “What is a starred tone? Evidence from Greek”. Papers in laboratory phonology V. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 119-131. Bryzgunova, E.A. 1980. “Intonation (in Russian)”. Russkaja grammatika, Tom I. 96-122. Moscow: Akademija Nauk SSSR. Fougeron, Irina 1999. “Intonation and unity of text (In Russian)”. Problemy fonetiki III. Moscow. 216-227. Gussenhoven, Carlos 2004. The Phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Igarashi, Y. 2002. “So-called “neutralization of intonation” –Phonological description of Russian intonation (In Russian)”. Bulletin of the Japanese Association of Russian Scholars 34. 15-21. Igarashi, Y. 2004a. “Phonetics and phonology of intonation in interrogative sentences in Russian (in Russian)”. Bulletin of the Japanese Association of Russian Scholars 36. 85-92. Igarashi, Y. 2004b. “Experimental Phonological studies on Russian question intonation (In Japanese)”. Gengo johogaku kenkyu hokoku 4. 255-276. Igarashi, Y. 2005. “How many falling intonation patterns in Russian?: categories of F0 alignment”. Programme & Book of Abstracts: Between and Stress and Tone: 32-33. Keijsper, C.E. 1992. “Recent intonation research and its implications for teaching Russian”. Studies in Slavic and general linguistics 19.

196

Yosuke IGARASHI

Amsterdam: Rodopi. 151-212. Kodzasov, S.V. 1996. “Combinational model of phrasal prosody (In Russian)”. Prosodičeskij stroj russkoj reči. Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk. 85-123. Ladd, D.R. 1996 Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Makarova, V. 2002. “Perception of F0 peak alignment differences by Japanese and Russian subjects”. Proceedings of the 16th General Meeting of the Phonetic Society of Japan. 181-186. Meyer, R. and I. Mleinek forthcommig. “How prosody signals force and focus - a study of pitch accents in Russian yes-no questions”. To appear in: Journal of Pragmatics. Nikolaeva, T.M. Phrasal intonation of Slavic languages (In Russian). Moscow. Odé, C. 1989. Russian Intonation: A perceptual description. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Odé, C. 1992. “Perceptual equivalence of realization of types of intonational constructions of E.A. Bryzgunova (In Russian)”. Studies in Slavic and general linguistics 19, Amsterdam: Rodopi. 227-284. Pierrehumbert, J. 1980. The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Svetozarova N.D. 1998. “Intonation in Russian”. Intonation Systems. A Survey of Twenty Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 261-274. Yokoyama, O.T. 2003. “Neutral and non-neutral intonation in Russian: A reinterpretation of the system of intonational constructions (In Russian). Voprosy jazykoznanija 5. 99-122.

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation Fumio INOUE 0. Sociolinguistics of Intonation In this paper, intonation will be dealt with from a viewpoint of sociolinguistics on the basis of phenomena called “rise-fall intonation” (or bottom-up intonation, uptalk) and related intonations. Social or sociopsychological characteristics of users of “rise-fall intonation” and the function of the intonation within discourse will be examined. Furthermore, the “rise-fall intonation” will be viewed as an example of the on-going linguistic changes, and a universal problem of whether or not there are intermediate stages in the course of the linguistic changes will be studied. Lastly, the viewpoint presented in this paper will be extended to include examples of intonations in other languages. 1. Multiple meanings of “intonation” First, the position of intonation in the field of linguistic research will be surveyed. Intonation is an element of language prosody. Prosody is also known as suprasegmental phenomena. Prosody consists of pitch, stress and length of linguistic sound, and they correspond to frequency, amplitude and time of sound waves, respectively. Intonation is a phenomenon of pitch that corresponds to frequency of sound waves. Pitch of language sound is related to almost all areas and levels of linguistic phenomena. Intonation is a phenomenon connected with sentences. In practice, intonation is a technical term that is polysemic and used broadly in both wider and narrower meanings even in the fields of linguistics and phonetics. First, a distinction between accent and intonation will be clarified because they are frequently confused. The terms have common characteristics in that they are phenomena related to acoustic pitch and they are not usually represented orthographically in Japanese Kana syllabary or Latin alphabet. The distinction between them is that accent governs a word and intonation governs a sentence. Accent which governs a word is divided into two types: stress accent as in English and pitch accent as in Japanese common language. Tone, such as four tones in Chinese, can be classified as a subcategory or subspecies of pitch accent. Japanese accent is a typical case of pitch accent in which words are distinguished by the relative pitch of neighboring syllables (beat or mora).

198

Fumio INOUE

As for intonation and accent, their usage is indeed very complicated in Japanese language. Since pitch accent of a Japanese word makes use of pitch, and intonation also makes use of pitch, intonation overlaps with accent (Hattori 1960). Moreover, as stated later in this paper, this is further overlapped by intonations of sentence-final, phrase-final and sentence-all as multiple strata. Usually, intonation is omitted in transcription and description of a survey on Japanese pitch accent; however, in some cases, it is difficult to separate accent and intonation. On the other hand, in dialects with no pitch accent, sentence intonation is expected to be realized in a pure or extreme manner because there is no influence of word accent (Maekawa 1990). The so-called “bottom-up” (shiriagari) intonation in northern Kanto area is categorized as this type of intonation. In general, pitch of intonation appears at various levels of sentences and utterances. 1. Intonation with grammatical function appears at the end of a sentence. Grammatical intonation at the end of a sentence represents declaration, question, or interruption of a sentence (Sugitoo 1990). The falling or rising pattern of the intonation is often described as if it is universal to all languages, but there are actually differences among languages (Mizutani, Ayusawa & Maekawa 1991, 1992). On the other hand, intonation that indicates “non-finality” of a sentence indicates “continuity”, and can be used as “phrase-final” intonation. The “bottom-up intonation” here corresponds to this type of intonation, and there are sociolinguistic differences among the users. 2a. There is another prosodic phenomenon with a grammatical function. Intonation that governs a whole sentence indicates, firstly, a sentence structure. Isomorphic sentences (which correspond to “synonyms” of lexical level) are sentences that look identical when written down. However, most isomorphic sentences become non-isomorphic when appropriate intonation is assigned in spoken language (Fujisaki 1989, Sugitoo 1990, Azuma 1992, Kori 1992). For example, a Japanese sentence “Kuroi me no kireina onna no ko” can be interpreted in at least eight ways (Nakajima 1987: p.103); however, they can be distinguished by applying appropriate sentence intonation. However, an isomorphic sentence like “Hajimete no ko wa umi o kowagatta” cannot be distinguished by applying different intonation. The sentence can be read in two ways: “The first child was scared of ocean.” and “The child who saw the ocean for the first time was scared.” They are generated from two different deep structures but are realized in the same way on the surface structure by coincidence. 2b. Prominence, contrastive emphasis, focus of discourse are also indicated by pitch, as in phrases “ani no amagu o” and “ane no enogu o”

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

199

(Fujisaki 1989). 2c. Furthermore, intonation also means change of pitch of a whole sentence or utterance of a discourse. That is to say, intonation even includes paralanguage. Intonation, as a paralinguistic phenomenon that governs a whole discourse, represents the mental attitude, emotion, politeness and psychological distance of the speaker. Intonation is also a subject of study in pragmatics and sociolinguistics, and especially in discourse analysis. Though there are linguistic and ethnological differences as to pitch of voice, in general, higher pitch is observed when the speaker is talking to babies, or trying to show womanliness, vitality, or politeness. Thus, the variation in intonation generated by the speaker’s situation or psychology also has a sociolinguistic function (Kori 1992). 2. Sociolinguistics and Prosody Table 1. Four fields of sociolinguistics I simplex I structures and rules --------------------- I---------------------------------competence I Field One (langue) I language and society I --------------------- I---------------------------------performance I Field Three (parole) I discourse analysis I syntagmatic --------------------- I----------------------------------

I complex I I variation I I------------------------------------------ I I Field Two I I language variation I I paradigmatic I I------------------------------------------ I I Field Four I I performance of variation I I integrative I I------------------------------------------ I

2.1 Four fields of sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics today can be subdivided into four fields as shown in Table 1 (Inoue 1988). Field One focuses and captures statically the correspondence relations between language and society. Linguistic relativism theory (hypothesis of Sapir and Whorf) is a typical study of this field, where reciprocal influence and mutual dependence between language and culture are studied. As to intonation, a study on whether or not phenomena studied in ethology, such as crying voice, are also common to human beings, can be treated as a topic in Field One. Field Two focuses on the diversity and variation of language as main topics. Linguistic variation covers differences such as among languages,

200

Fumio INOUE

dialects, groups, individuals and situations. These can be arranged by geographical sizes on the earth-surface. Social class differences of phonetics and phonology are often popular topics of study, and linguistic differences are sometimes interpreted as a reflection of the linguistic changes in progress. Users and situations under which intonation is used are the main subjects of the study in this field. Field Three focuses on the domain of discourse analysis. The study in this field began and developed when people realized that conversations are governed by various rules. Interests also grew in the function of intonation used in discourse. This field also examines how intonation reflects the situation under which intonation is used as well as the speaker’s attitude. Field Four is a field that integrates the studies in Field Two and Field Three and it focuses on the principles of usage of linguistic variation in the course of discourse. The main theme of this field is the function of intonation in an overall flow of discourse. Key concepts such as accommodation and politeness can be applied in this field. Here, an approach to psycholinguistics is observed. 2.2 Sociolinguistic significance of intonation Prosody has been discussed frequently within the framework of linguistics (phonology and grammar), phonetics, and acoustics. Consequently, studies on its linguistic functions and phonetic characteristics have advanced. However, a sociolinguistic study of intonation has become popular only in recent years. As a result of the recent trend in the studies of sociolinguistics, intonation is attracting new interests. It was found that intonation patterns have certain relations with social class, gender or age of the users. It may be possible to explain the psychology of usage by the accommodation theory (Giles et al. 1979). Interests are growing in the function of intonation used in discourse, and contrastive studies with foreign languages on intonation, politeness and honorifics are in progress (Ogino et al 1992). Around the time (in 1990’s) the large scale joint scientific study of “Japanese phonology”, funded by the Ministry of Education was initiated, sociolinguistic study on intonation, such as the bottom-up (rise-fall) intonation, began to attract attention. New studies were conducted from the viewpoint of sociolinguistics. The works were reviewed in Inoue (1994.2). In this paper, intonation will be examined from a broader standpoint taking into account other related phenomena.

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

201

3. Sociolinguistic characteristics of the bottom-up intonation 3.1 The term “bottom-up” (rise-fall) intonation The “bottom-up” intonation is a popular phenomenon of speech and has become almost a commonsense among contemporary Japanese people. It is widespread among young Japanese so that foreign students are swayed to believe that it is the usual way of speaking Japanese. Notations to indicate this intonation are almost established; Kana characters showing lengthened vowels such as “sore de-e” and “atashi ga-a, ittara-a” are added. Terms are not stable yet partly because readers and listeners can understand by the notations or imitative pronunciations.

1.

2.

3.

4.

｢庭ニィ馬ノォ鼻ガァ見えるんデェ｡｣の各文節の高さの曲線カタカナ表記の部分の始点(垂直の破線)をそろえて示したもの

Figure 1. Pitch variation of the bottom-up intonation (Sugitoo 1983)

In adopting the term “bottom-up (rise-fall) intonation”, data published in the past were collected and analyzed. It was found that most of the terms and explanations used by the general public focus only on “rise” of the pitch of voice (for the collection of terms, see Inoue 1994.2.), even though the pitch of voice is characterized by a fall after a rise, as shown in the acoustic analysis in Figure 1 by Sugitoo (1983). It is speculated that people do not pay attention to a fall in the pitch of voice at the sentence-final or phrase-final since it is natural, as figures below show. Moreover, this expression may be widely used because there is an old Japanese saying “bottom-up” (shiriagari) which means that something gets better as it gets closer to the end. Since no adequate technical term has been developed yet, “bottom-up”, the popular term among the general public, will be adopted in this paper. Furthermore, the term “rise-fall” intonation will be co-used in this paper in order to signify the acoustic substance of this intonation. It is noteworthy that those who paid attention to the fall of pitch are mostly

202

Fumio INOUE

experts of phonetics. Asada (1992) is another example of the term “bottom-down”. The author is a former Japanese language teacher who is good at playing music. There are conflicts with scholars who insist that the term “bottom-up” is inappropriate (Yamaguchi 1993, Kawakami 1993). They do not seem to comprehend the intention behind adopting this term, which values the term’s popularity and recognition of the general public. 3.2 Origin of the bottom-up intonation As to the origin of this intonation or place of origin, there are several hypotheses or theories as described below (Inoue 1994.2). 0. Speech trait of Hanako Muraoka. Muraoka was a popular radio announcer of children’s program after the Second World War. 1. Agitation speech pattern. A speech pattern that was used in agitation by student groups of Zenkyoto (the All-Campus Joint Struggle Committee) in 1970s is said to be connected with this intonation. 2. Non-accent dialects. Dialects without phonemic distinction of pitch accent in the northern part of Kanto area (Tochigi, Ibaraki and nearby prefectures located north of Tokyo) are said to have a peculiar intonation pattern called the “bottom-up” pattern. This intonation is said to have retrogradely invaded Tokyo. 3. “Ne Sa Yo” prohibition movement. Sentence-final particles “Ne Sa Yo” were forbidden to be used in the 1960s in some schools near Tokyo, because these particles were thought to be too colloquial. According to one theory, pupils prolonged sentence-final vowels instead and applied the rising intonation pattern of the sentence-final particles “Ne Sa Yo”. 4. Intonation system. A theory which states that a rise-fall intonation pattern was adopted as an intonation to indicate suspension or continuation of sentences, because the pattern is clearly distinguished from declarative or interrogative sentences. Elongation of final vowels of sentences is used for suspension or continuation of sentences in Japanese; however, this “ah-uh” pattern is unpopular among young female speakers because it is considered as a pattern used by middle-aged male speakers. Another mean for suspension or continuation of sentences is fillers such as “eh”, “ehto”, and “sonoh” (used without relation to previous vowels). Again, fillers are used mostly by male speakers and rarely by young female speakers. Thus, female speakers are led to use the “bottom-up” intonation as an alternative. Moreover, the intonation has an advantage over fillers because it takes less time to transmit. Among the factors described above, Factors 0, 1, and 2 are not convincing because of differences in their actual acoustic patterns and differences in social stratum of users. Factors 3 and 4 are more persuasive.

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

203

3.3 Spread of the bottom-up intonation There are two types of conceivable processes for the spreading of the “bottom-up” intonation. One conceivable process of the spreading is by users who adopt the intonation in their babyhood or childhood and use it continuously throughout their adulthood. In this case, the intonation spreads as time passes and the populations of younger generations increase. However, if one discards the use of the intonation based on the notion that it is inappropriate for grown-ups, increase in the number of users will terminate. The other conceivable process of the spreading is by those who adopt the intonation in their adulthood through influence of young speakers. This is a process similar to an adoption of mini-skirts by middle-aged women when mini-skirts become popular among young women. The psychological mechanisms of adoption by users in their adulthood are twofold. For adults who have frequent interactions with young people, not only the bottom-up intonation sounds young but also fillers such as “ah” and “uh” sound old-fashioned and outdated. This mechanism works in many cases of linguistic changes. Since the bottom-up intonation is a linguistic change in progress and is observable by anyone, the psychological mechanism can be pointed out even more clearly. As to the pattern of spread, it is effective to enlarge the sphere of considerations. If it is similar to other new linguistic phenomena such as trendy words and new dialect forms, the same mechanisms of peer group consciousness and enforcement of a sense of belonging can be taken into account. As to social and psychological characteristics of users, it is possible to connect them with extroversion, progressiveness and group-oriented inclination, as confirmed in studies of new dialect forms, new terms, and trendy words (Inoue 1985) and “experts’ accent” (Inoue 1992.2). It is also possible to connect them with concepts such as social network (Milroy 1980, 1987) and accommodation (Giles et al. 1979). This is a topic of study that can be defined as a new domain of socio-psycholinguistics which transcends the classic framework of sociolinguistics. A further connection can be found with a general theory in “study of diffusion” (Rogers 1971). Only one phenomenon of intonation is examined in this paper, but it is possible to further broaden the range of considerations. 3.4 Functions of the bottom-up intonation A framework of the function of the bottom-up intonation (the rise-fall pattern) can be defined. Theoretically, the bottom-up intonation can be placed at any final part of a phrase. As it is different from a sentence-final intonation that shows assertion, interrogation or counter question, it can be

204

Fumio INOUE

grasped as another kind of sentence-final intonation in the negative sense. It has the function of continuation of discourse just like other intonations of interruption or continuation. By the way, the unit of application where the intonation is adopted is considered as “mora” and not as a syllable, because a rise and a fall within one “special mora” (mora phonemes of /N/ /R/, or double consonants and double vowels) are observed, as “zeNzeN-N”,and “soRtoR-R” for “zeNzeN” ‘at all’ and “soRtoR” ‘fairly’. However, the bottom-up intonation is not used in double (voiceless) consonants (sokuon), partly because the double (voiceless) consonants cannot carry high pitch acoustically nor there are words ending with those consonants except exclamatory words like “et” “at” ([e?][a?], ‘e!’ ‘a!’). The interpersonal function in discourse is a key to understand the essence of the spread of this intonation. It includes functions which are effective in discourse such as showing assurance in taking turns to speak and appealing to the interlocutor. 4. Sociolinguistic study of the bottom-up intonation Researches and experiments on the so-called bottom-up intonation have been conducted in the cooperative study of “Japanese phonology” under the auspice of Ministry of Education. Inoue (1994.2) is a compilation of reports that were published at the meetings during this study. In this paper, the main points will be summarized and points that have not been discussed will be supplemented. 4.1 Discourse function and psychological facet An observation study was conducted on the usage and image of the bottom-up intonation in modern Japan. The intonation has spread in the last quarter of 20th century mainly among young females and its first observation report dates back to the 1970s (Sibata 1977). Females who want “to be seen young and cute” tend to use the intonation frequently. The use of the intonation is prominent “when one speaks formally in a formal setting”, but it is also used “among close associates”. It conveys womanliness but does not convey a sense of intelligence. Sociolinguistically, this intonation is perceived negatively because it is considered inappropriate to be used to boss at workplace or in business conversations. Those who are well-trained in language, conscious about the use of appropriate language, or have high consciousness of norms do not use this intonation even if they are young. It seems that many of its users belong to middle or lower-middle classes in social strata. In other words, this intonation is considered as a socially “low” speech.

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

205

Functions of the intonation in discourse were also analyzed. TV and radio programs (discussions among high-school students, consultations by young mothers about child-rearing and education) were recorded and transcriptions were used to analyze the intonation. The following tendency was observed. The intonation had the function of creating a common psychological situation among the participants during the discourse, and it also had the function of “continuation of conversation”. There was a tendency to use the intonation in the conjunctive words such as “because”, “then”, “but”, and “that is to say” as well as in parataxis such as “and” and “then”. The intonation did not appear in greetings such as “good-bye” or in imperative sentences. Also, it did not appear when filler such as “well” was used. Those who use the bottom-up intonation tend to use it first at the beginning of a sentence. This can be interpreted as a strategy of securing their turn of speech. The intonation also appears at the end of a breath group which induces nodding of the interlocutor (Henmi 1992, Inoue 1994.2). These phenomena of the intonation can be interpreted as having the function to demand an attention or consent of the interlocutor. In short, the intonation has the function to secure turns in discourse. On the basis of the above observation, the linguistic changes and psychology of reception can be explained as follows. The intonation is perceived negatively by the elderly partly because it sounds unfamiliar and mainly because it has a positive discourse function. Many seniors assume that they have the right to interrupt and take their turn to speak in discourse due to the implicit social rule; however, this intonation has the function to interfere with their right. Because this intonation goes against the general rule of discourse, it gives pushy, impudent and obtrusive impressions that are quite on the contrary of cuteness. 4.2 Intermediate stages of the bottom-up intonation When examples of the usage of the bottom-up intonation were recorded and analyzed, it was found that some of them were difficult to be judged phonetically as having the bottom-up intonation or not, or were categorized as borderline cases. As there are individual differences in the use and non-use and degrees of this intonation, a theoretical question of discreteness emerged, i.e., whether or not the intonation can exist as acoustically intermediate and if the listeners can reach a unanimous judgment on it. An experimental technique was applied in order to confirm whether or not a borderline between existence and non-existence of the bottom-up intonation can be drawn and what kind of impression will be given by this intonation. There is a possibility that the perception of the bottom-up intonation is not

206

Fumio INOUE

completely discrete or binary. 4.3 Perception experiment on a small number of utterances First, the result of perception experiment by listening to tape-recorded utterances is reiterated. Two kinds of experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, the subjects were presented with a small number of utterances (eleven recorded utterances). Then each subject was asked to fill out eleven identical questionnaires on his/her perception of the intonation and impression on each utterance. The result showed that the intonation interfered with the subjects’ impression on the utterances and that the utterances with and without this intonation gave different impressions even if they were uttered by the same speaker. It was confirmed that the intonation generally gives a negative impression to the listeners. The result is shown in graphs. This is the result of multivariate analysis of “Hayashi’s Quantificational Theory Type 3”, and the two graphs can be interpreted as two sides of the same coin.

Figure 2. Hayashi’s Quantificational Theory Type 3 Average values for 11 recorded cases

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

207

Figure 3. Hayashi’s Quantificational Theory Type 3 values of expressions for the recorded utterances free check response for “very —“

Figure 2 shows that the eleven recordings were classified into three groups according to the degrees of the bottom-up intonation. By comparing Figure 2 with Figure 3, the utterances with the bottom-up intonation were connected with impressions such as “childish”, “frivolous”, “flippant”, “cute”, and “pretty”. In contrast, the utterances without the bottom-up intonation were connected with impressions such as “polite”, “intellectual”, “persuasive” and “favorable”. Intermediate answers were concentrated in the center of the graph. They have the tendency to be connected with an impression of “impudent”. When ages of the speakers were asked, the utterances with the intonation were judged to be by young speakers even though utterances without this intonation were by the same speakers. 4.4 Judgment experiment on a large number of utterances Another experiment on the so-called bottom-up intonation was conducted by listening to recorded tapes. In this experiment, the subjects listened to a large number of examples including borderline cases, and borderlines and fluctuations in judgments were investigated based on the data collected. After listening to various recordings selected from TV and

208

Fumio INOUE

radio programs in which ordinary people talked, the subjects were asked whether or not they thought there was the bottom-up intonation at each phrase final. They were asked to write down if they thought there was the bottom-up intonation or an intermediate intonation. As to the minutiae of the experiment, Inoue (1992.10) should be referred. As a reference material, a portion of the tested sentences will be shown with the results. The final vowel with the bottom-up intonation is pronounced longer and it is appropriate to transcribe it by longer vowels with Kana showing elongation; however, it was not transcribed in the questionnaire in order to avoid presupposition by the subjects. The figures in the parentheses such as (79/1) are the numbers of the judgments: (○ =bottom-up intonation / △= difficult to judge). In this example of (79/1), 79 subjects perceived a typical bottom-up intonation and 1 subject judged that it is difficult to judge. As data of 84 subjects were collected, 4 subjects (i.e. 84 subjects – 79 subjects – 1 subject) judged that no bottom-up intonation was perceived. In the transcription below, figures of phrases which more than 60 subjects (71%) agreed that the bottom-up intonation exists are bolded. As shown below, only some phrases were marked positively by more than 60 subjects. Indeed, intermediate judgments were given more frequently. Of all the 37 utterances, 4 representative utterances are shown here. An acoustic analysis on some of these utterances will be shown later in Figure 5. No. 2, 7, and 25 are sentences in which either less than half of the subjects perceived the bottom-up intonation or many subjects judged the intonation to be intermediate. The above judgments were prominent in the recordings of male high-school students in a discussion program. No.26 is a typical utterance with the bottom-up intonation used by a former “Miss Funabashi City” in a discussion program. The bottom-up intonation appeared frequently in her speech. Transcription was written in accordance with a spelling system used in Japanese dialectology.

2. Koohai ga(18/23) tatoeba(3/7) senpai yori(0/0) sonkei(0/0) surubekida to(0/0) omoimasu(0/1)．

tsuyoi to(0/0)

shite mo(46/25)

7. yappari(32/28) ano(8/6) minaraeru(0/0) tokoro desu(0/1)． 25. eeto(59/7) noo-gawa no(0/0) hito wa(68/6) hara o(0/0) watte(11/18) hanashiau toka(0/2) itteta kedo(71/5) keigo o(0/0) tsukawana(0/0) tsukawanai de(52/13) a(1/0) nanda(3/6) keigo o(0/0) tsukawanai de (41/11) keigo o (0/0) tsukatte mo(53/10) hara o(0/0) watte(13/10) hanaseru n ja(0/0) naika to(0/1) omoimasu(0/1)．

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

209

26. to(9/0) atashi wa(39/6) ano(0/0) misu funabashi de(65/5) imashita keredomo(73/2) motto(1/1) ano(0/0) kaijoo demo(65/2) kireina(0/0) hito wa(1/0) ita shi(75/2) sutairu no(0/1) ii(0/0) hito mo(1/0) imashita keredomo(78/2) yappari(0/1) watashi ga(65/4) funabashi ni(0/0) sunde te(73/2) funabashi ni(0/1) kanshite(4/3) iina to(3/0) omou(0/0) koto toka ga(75/2) sugoku(0/0) tsuyoku(0/0) omotte(6/0) ite(65/4) sore o(23/1) umaku(1/1) piiaaru shite(77/1) sore de(6/7) ano(0/2) shiyakusho no(0/1) kata toka(71/7) shichoo-san toka ga(75/2) a(0/0) kono(0/0) ko ni nara(68/0) ichinenkan(0/0) piiaaru o(11/4) makaserareru to(1/1) omotte(67/5) makasete kuretanda to (0/0) omoimasu shi(68/3)．

Figure 4.

Judgment on the bottom-up intonation

To review the overall result of the experiment, the numbers of ○ (=bottom-up intonation) and △ (= difficult to judge) are shown in Figure 4. ○ in Figure 4 indicates that the typical bottom-up intonation was perceived,

210

Fumio INOUE

and △ indicates that the intonation was either perceived as intermediate or difficult to be judged. The horizontal axis shows the number of phrases and the vertical axis shows the number of the subjects. As shown in the leftmost side of the graph, it was judged that most phrases do not include the bottom-up intonation. (As shown in the transcripts, since the bottom-up intonation rarely appears successively in one utterance, phrases without the bottom-up intonation increase in utterances when presented in a coherent content.) Phrases which most of the subjects agreed that the bottom-up intonations were perceived (right-hand side of the graph) are few in numbers but they do exist. There were phrases with many △ symbols in the center of the graph. It indicates that there were many intermediate judgments. If the bottom-up intonation has the same characteristic with the grammatical intonation at the end of a sentence, a discrete judgment of 1 or 0, or existence or non-existence should be given. It is expected that the judgment will be as discrete as that of consonants of synthesized sounds. Even though an actual sound is acoustically continuous, human perception is discrete. As for the discreteness of perception of intonation, a difference between declarative and interrogative sentences was acoustically proved by Tanaka (1992). With regards to Figure 4, it is expected that the peaks on the right-hand side and the left-hand side will become higher and the peak in the middle of the graph will become lower. However, it should be noted that individuals who had phonetic training can perceive not only synthesized vowels and synthesized consonants non-discretely but also the intermediate stages. Discreteness of the bottom-up intonation is also discussed in Inoue (1992.10). Various causes can be speculated for fluctuations in judgment and intermediate responses of the subjects. The result of this experiment displayed no coincidence in the individual’s judgments as to the sphere of the bottom-up intonation. Are there intermediate bottom-up intonations? Some subjects argued on the basis of introspection that there are intermediate cases. Do they appear in the course of linguistic changes? Theoretically, the question is whether or not there is discreteness in listening and perception. 5. Acoustic characteristics of the bottom-up intonation Hereafter, the bottom-up intonation will be analyzed acoustically in order to examine the basis of the intermediate judgment. As shown above, the recordings which were thought to have included the bottom-up intonation were not always judged by the subjects to have or not have the intonation, nor were the degrees of usage divided into two. Thus, it may be more probable that intermediate stages exist. As one of the measures to find the

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

211

reason, pitch of each recording was extracted by using a computer program of “Onsei Rokubunken” for acoustic analysis.

Figure 5. Pitch pattern of the bottom-up intonation (1) recognized as most typical (Female 20)

Figure 6. Pitch pattern of the bottom-up intonation (2) recognized as most typical (Female 20)

Figures 5 and 6 show the result of acoustic analysis of the recordings which were judged to have the typical bottom-up intonation (by miss Funabashi City) based on perception experiments. It is the first portion of Example 26 described above. The portion with the bottom-up intonation

212

Fumio INOUE

will be mainly presented. The bottom-up intonation corresponds to the portion where vertical lines that intersect with the lines of amplitude are drawn and where numerical values of pitch are indicated. A rise and a fall are observed on a pitch curve on that portion. The maximum and minimum values of frequency that correspond with the bottom-up intonation are also measured and shown under two vertical lines in the lower half of Figures 5 and 6. The differences and ratios of the values were calculated but they did not necessarily correspond with the values of the perception experiments shown above such as (65/8). Even in the cases of intermediate stages of perception, large changes were observed in the pitch curve. Absolute pitch (or differences or ratios of the pitch) does not directly influence the perception. Application of the so-called “Fujisaki-model” of intonation seems to be appropriate to explain perception (Fujisaki 1989). According to Fujisakimodel, the pitch of voice is considered to rise rapidly at first then gradually falls afterwards like a sound of a siren. On the acoustic analysis figure, this “natural fall (decline)” draws a curve that resembles a surface of an aircraft wing with a rapid rise and a gradual fall. The minute observation of Figures 5 and 6 suggests that the bottom-up intonation sounds extremely clear when the pitch towards the end of a phrase that is expected to fall based on the “natural fall” pattern rises. After a rise, when the pitch is intended to fall to its original level of fall, it becomes a steep fall, causing acoustically large rise and fall. In short, the typical bottom-up intonation is perceived when the pitch rises (and falls) at the level where a fall of pitch is expected. Hara (1994) processed differences of perception by utilizing differences of the actual intonation patterns. Hara also conducted perception experiments in which the actual intonation patterns were artificially changed by synthetic sounds. Hara’s experiments showed that the degrees of fall are particularly important for perception. This is the reason why the term “rise-fall” is used concurrently with the term “bottom-up intonation”. It should be noted, however, that there are cases in which perception of the bottom-up intonation is judged difficult and cases in which intermediate judgments on the impression of the intonation such as “impudent” and “lively” are found. The reason of these cases must be examined. 6. Linguistic changes in progress, discreteness, and intermediate cases The bottom-up intonation prevailed steadily in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and it continues to spread nationwide. The spreading of the intonation can be regarded as a linguistic change in progress. It is often recognized, however, that there are intermediate stages in a linguistic change from the

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

213

perspectives of perception and acoustic phonetics. It is observed that for a linguistic change to progress with minimal resistance, it takes on various intermediate forms (such as intermediate dialect) (Inoue 1994.12, Jinnouchi 1992, Long 1989). In case of intonation, it adopted pronunciation that is phonetically intermediate. Phonetically intermediate forms were observed in the process of non-nasalization of g-sound in modern Japanese. Pronunciation with less nasalization and use of fricative were observed. Also in the process of standardization of local dialects in northern Japan, intermediate sounds between dialect sounds and standard sounds (such as vocalization of intervocalic -k- and- t- rows, and palatalization of “se” and “ze”) were observed (Inoue1994.12). These are the intermediate pronunciations of segmental sounds (consonants and vowels). Concurrent phenomena can be conceived in intonation or supra-segmental phenomenon. Sociolinguistic and stylistic switching is considered possible even in a supra-segmental phenomenon. Also, in the study of intonation, the classic distinction between phonemic and phonetic levels is necessary and useful. That is to say, the phrase-final (sentence-final) intonation can be grasped as phonemically discrete, though phonetically continuous. The intonation can be classified into declaration, interrogation, interruption, and counter question. As for counter question, degrees of doubt can be expressed by phonetic variation and the degrees are continuous. Degrees of confidence in assertion can also be expressed phonetically. Appropriate use of these phonetic differences is considered important for acting in dramas, for example. In the case of the bottom-up intonation, it is thought that various degrees exist to realize phonetically the functions of interruption and continuation for intonation that is phonemically the same. When simplified, changes in a linguistic sound are created as phonetic and continuous variation in the form of endogenous change in the beginning of appearance; and the changes spread phonemically and discretely in the form of exogenous diffusion. It is possible to say that the bottom-up intonation is spreading and diffusing while maintaining the characteristic of continuous phonetic variation (that gives the impressions of cuteness and impudence). Phonemically, however, it is conceived as a completely binary and discrete unit in which the intonation exists or does not exist. Even if the bottom-up intonation implies intermediate stages and appears non-discrete and continuous; they are not the real substance. When compared with other intonation patterns which have the grammatical function at the end of a sentence, the bottom-up intonation clearly shows the discrete and binary function of existence and non-existence.

214

Fumio INOUE

7. Sociolinguistic variations of intonation So far, sociolinguistic considerations have been presented with a focus on the bottom-up intonation. There are other examples of intonation phenomena which have sociolinguistic significance. Hereafter, other examples of intonation in abroad and Japan will be presented. 7.1 A new intonation in English: uptalk and others Spreading of new intonation is also observed in countries abroad. In English, diffusion of an acoustically different but sociolinguistically common phenomenon with similar discourse function is observed. Firstly, change of intonation is observed in Australia (Guy et al. 1986, Pulvers 1988). This is called “Australian Questioning Intonation” which is used in declarative sentences. It has phonetically HRT, or High Rising Terminal contour, which corresponds to English intonation type 2 of Halliday (1967). At least a 40% rise of F0 (basic frequency) is observed acoustically. This is said to be identical with the intonation used in interrogative sentences in English. It has the function of ascertaining degrees of understanding of the interlocutor and also the function of turn-taking in conversation. Actual examples are as follows. Rising intonation is indicated by “/ ”. “It’s sort of game, right, you play with a tennis ball / And you’re supposed to - um, it’s four squares / Right ? And you have a king / He’s in charge, he serves / And the queen and the rich and poor.”

This intonation is reported to have been widespread long before in New Zealand (Allan 1990, Ainsworth 1994). There are also reports that this intonation was used in dialects in England (Pellowe et al. 1978) as well as in Irish accent. In America too, a rising intonation called “uptalk” is spreading mainly among females in their teens (Gorman 1993). It is thought to have spread from “Valley Girl talk”, a speech pattern used by Californian young girls. The actual examples are as follows: “We're having a bake sale / On the west mall / On Sunday / ” “I got a letter / Addressed to Mrs. Smith / Returned today / ”

Even though the original sentence is one sentence, many risings are observed (rise is shown here by “/ ”). Since each of these examples are one-sentence long, it is easier to understand if an uppercase letter is not used for the first letter of a word after “/ ”. However, these examples are not

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

215

interrogative sentences. It is argued that risings are used in order to attract attention of the interlocutor and with a sense of fellowship. This seems to be in common with the phenomena reported in Australia. Evasion of a phrase-final fall suggests its relation with the language universal discussion on the usage of rise and fall of intonation (Sinclair & Brazil 1982). There are discussions as to the time of dissemination, sociolinguistic function and social characteristics of users (gender and social stratum) as well as whether or not this is a linguistic change in progress and not an ephemeral fad. The changes of Japanese intonation should also be placed in this worldwide discussion. 7.2 Pseudo-questioning intonation in Japanese The phenomena of Australian Questioning Intonation and uptalk are similar to the phenomenon that is observed recently in Japan, as described below, in terms of the users, domains of usage and patterns of diffusion. Unfortunately, since the results of acoustic analysis are not disclosed publicly, the degree of similarity in acoustics and phonetics cannot be made clear. The intonation observed in Japan is called “pseudo-questioning intonation” or “half question” (Ihara 1994). People working in the media began to use this intonation around in 1992, and the use became prevalent among young girls (“ko-gyaru”) by 1994. Rising intonation which is similar to the one used in an interrogative sentence is applied to the last syllable of the last word in a segment, and after a short pause, the rest of the sentence is continued. Rise is indicated by “/ ” in the following example. “kinoo Shinjuku no haruku / ni itte ne” (yesterday I went to ‘Hulk’ in Shinjuku and …)

It is characteristic that the speaker looks in the eyes of the interlocutor while his/her speech. The interlocutor nods, or, if he /she has not been accustomed to the speech pattern of the speaker yet, vocally assents.

216

Fumio INOUE

Figure 7. Pitch pattern of the pseudo-questioning intonation (1)

Figure 8. Pitch pattern of the pseudo-questioning intonation (2)

Results of acoustic analysis are shown in Figures 7 and 8. Figure 7 shows the intonation that was spontaneously uttered during free conversations between girl students in an experimental setting. Figure 8 shows the intonation that was pronounced clearly in high pitch as a mimic of her friend who frequently uses this intonation. In “foreigner talk” for conversations with foreigners, rising intonation has been used for some time to ascertain if the intention or meaning of one’s speech is conveyed to the interlocutor. There is an observation report that this intonation was frequently heard in Tokyo Metropolitan Kokusai (‘international’) High School among students who returned from abroad. There is another report that this intonation is commonly used among Japanese living in Canada, as well as an observation that Japanese language

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

217

teachers who have taught many years abroad use it frequently in their conversations in Japanese. The use of foreigner talk technique can be considered universal across many languages; however, increase in users among the younger generation is prominent in recent years. This is speculated to be the result of a change in usage of the intonation to attract attention of the interlocutor. Although the issue of acoustic identity among the intonation changes in Australia, New Zealand, USA and Japan remains questionable, a miraculous coincidence is found among them in terms of their sociolinguistic situations. Firstly, all of them have the function of continuing discourse and keeping turns to inhibit interruption. Secondly, they all ascertain whether or not the interlocutor is following the content as well as the degree of understanding. Thirdly, the users share a common social characteristic; they are first adopted by young females whose social strata are not very high and who are psychologically extraverted and willing to accept new things. The exact year of adoption and diffusion of the intonation are different among countries, but it is said that they were most common in the 1970s or in the 1980s. It is not yet clear whether or not these diffusions are related internationally. There is a possibility that identical phenomena were created separately in remote areas from a theoretical possibility of the intonation system or psychological universals of intonation. The report on the frequent use of the intonation by the Japanese returnee students from abroad and the reports that this has been in use in some languages from the remote past are worthy of further analysis. An international comparative study in the future is valuable and indispensable.

Figure 9. Pitch pattern of the “jumping intonation”

218

Fumio INOUE

7.3 Other variations of Japanese intonation Spreading of other examples of Japanese intonation has also been reported. One phenomenon that is currently spreading is named “jumping intonation” (Tanaka 1993). Example is shown in Figure 9. This is a phenomenon in which young females who reside near Tokyo pronounce sentences such as “kawaikunai?” (Isn’t it cute?) with a monotonous rising intonation. In the past, “kawaiku nai?” (Isn’t it cute?) was pronounced in two separate accent units with a falling pitch after “i” of “-iku” and a rising intonation at the last vowel of “nai”. Actually, the new intonation is a result of an overlapping of two phenomena in relation to accent which have occurred at the same time. The first phenomenon is the disappearance of a distinction of pitch accent of adjectives between the flat type (akai ‘red’) and the up-down type (shiroi ‘white’) in recent years. The second phenomenon is the unification of a unit for pitch accent. Due to the long term change in the direction of unifying longer units into one unit, an adjective and its negative particle nai are beginning to be pronounced as one accent unit. This is a change of intonation in a broader sense, but its level of theoretical range is different from that of the bottom-up intonation and the pseudo-questioning intonation. However, this could be interpreted as a sign of change in the unit of the rising intonation from the last mora to a longer sentence-final phrase. This is observed in dialects without pitch accent in the northern Kanto area; however, it may be too early to draw a conclusion at this point. As for Japanese intonation, there are further reports on its diverse phenomena. Phenomena that may show geographical and social variation will be mentioned. First, in Tohoku area in northern Japan, interrogative sentences are pronounced with falling intonation. It has been reported that the same is true for Ainu language in northern Japan. Another type of intonation has also been reported (Onishi 1987). In Kagoshima, a prefecture in southern Japan, it has been reported that a different pattern of rise-fall intonation is used among young people (Kibe et al. 1993). However, it seems that the speakers are not conscious of this intonation when they use it. 8. Tasks in the future Up to the present, intonation has been perceived as a universal language phenomenon in most studies (Sibata 1998). Variations within a language were not paid proper attention and sociolinguistic analyses have been rarely applied. However, if examined carefully, new phenomena of intonation are observed in various languages and dialects. There are still many issues and

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

219

tasks to be considered in the study of the bottom-up intonation alone. The psychological mechanism of usage has not been uncovered yet. Recording of natural conversations by the users are essential for this purpose. The technique of follow-up interview (Neustupny 1994) is useful in investigating and analyzing the psychology and consciousness associated with the usage. Communality and relationships of diffusion among different languages are also interesting topics of studies. These studies will be useful to enlarge the sphere of objects of study of linguistic changes in progress. They are also expected to contribute to the development of intonation theory. Acknowledgments This is an English translation of Inoue, Fumio (1997.7) “Intonation no shakaisei” in Sugito Miyoko (ed.) Accent, Intonation, Rhythm and Pause —Japanese Phonetics 2 — (Sanseido) Following postgraduate students conducted the perception experiments: Akiko Nagamine, Mariko Karatsu, Seiko Yamaguchi, Chikako Ariga, Wipa Gamchantaikhon. Computer analysis was conducted by Inoue using GLAPS and PPSS II. Acoustic analysis was performed using “Onsei Rokubunken” V.4.0 with the cooperation of Kaori Hara. References Ainsworth, Helen (1994) “The emergence of the high rising terminal contour in the speech of New Zealand children” Te Reo 37 Allan, Scott (1990) “The rise of New Zealand intonation”, (A. Bell & J. Holmes (eds.) New Zealand Ways of Speaking English, Multilingual Matters) Asada, Hideko (1992) Nihongo no Hosekibako (Kodansha) Azuma, Junichi (1992) “Syntactic structure and prosody of Japanese (Nihongo no togo-kozo to inritsu)”, Gengo 21-9 Fujisaki, Hiroya (1989) “Modeling the analysis of prosody of Japanese — relations between word-accent, syntactic structure, discourse structure and prodody (Nihongo no oncho no bunseki to moderu-ka — go-accent togo-kozo danwa-kozo to oncho no kankei)”, Koza nihongo to nihongo kyoiku 2 (Meiji shoin) Giles, H. & R. N. St. Clair (eds.) (1979) Language and Social Psychology (Oxford & Baltimore) Gorman, James (1993) “Uptalk Is, Like, on the Rise?” New York times Weekly Magazine 8/15 Guy, G., B. Horvath, J. Vonwiller, E. Daisley & I. Rogers (1986) “An intonational change in progress in Australian English”, Language in

220

Fumio INOUE

Society 15: 23-52. Halliday, M. A. K. (1967) Intonation and Grammar in British English, Mouton. Hara, Kaori (1994) “On so-called bottom-up intonation and bottom-up talk in northern Kanto area (Iwayuru shiriagari intonation to kitakanto no shiriagari-cho ni tsuite)”, Nihon hogen kenkyu-kai Dai 58 kai happyo genko shu Hattori, Shiro (1960) Gengogaku no Hoho (Iwanami shoten) Henmi, Yukiko (1992) “On the relation between bottom-up intonation and nodding”, Postgraduate Seminar Report of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Ihara, Keiko (1994) “Atmosphere is half-question (Kibun wa han-question)” AERA 1994.7.4 Inoue, Fumio (1985) The Changing Japanese Language —Distribution and Change of New Dialect Forms — (Atarashii Nihongo) (Meiji Shoin) Inoue, Fumio (1988) “Summary of discussion (Toron no matome)” Gengo Kenkyu 93 pp.180-184. Inoue, Fumio (1992.2) “Accent in specialized fields — Characteristics of expert accent — (Senmonka akusento no seikaku)”, Gengo 21-2 Inoue, Fumio (1992.10) “Discreteness of intonation and change in progress (Intoneshon no risansei to shinko-chu no henka)”

Studies in Japanese Phonetics and Japanese Language Education (International Symposium) pp.71-80.

Inoue, Fumio (1994.2) “Sociolinguistics of bottom-up intonation (Shiriagari intoneshon no shakaigengogaku)” Kokugo Ronkyu 4 Gendaigo Hogen no Kenkyu (Meiji Shoin) pp.1-29. Inoue, Fumio (1994.12) “Intermediate stages of phonetic standardization — Yamazoe survey in the suburbs of Tsuruoka city — (Onin kyotsugoka no chukan dankai — Tsuruoka-shi kinko Yamazoe chosa — ” Kotoba no Sekai (Hokkaido Hogen Kenkyukai) pp.333-340. also in Inoue (2000.2), Chapter 24 Inoue, Fumio (1998.3) “Sociolinguistics of intonation change in progress in Tokyo” Area and Culture Studies 56 pp.11-24 Inoue, Fumio (2000.2) Transitions of the Tohoku Dialect (Tohoku Hogen no Hensen) (Akiyama Shoten) pp.1-612 Jinnouchi, Masataka (1992) “Language change (Gengo henka)” in Sanada et al. Shakaigengogaku (Sociolinguistics) (Oufuu) Kawakami, Shin (1993) “About lengthening falling intonation (Nobashi-sage oncho o megutte)” Onsei gakkai kaiho 203

Sociolinguistic Characteristics of Intonation

221

Kibe, Nobuko & Daisuke Kumiki (1993) “About questioning intonation in Kagoshima dialect (Kagoshima-shi hogen no shitsumon no intonation ni tsuite)” Jinbun Gakka Ronshu 38 Kori, Shiro (1992) “Topics of study in sentence intonation in Japanese (Nihongo bun-oncho no kenkyu kadai)” Studies in Japanese Phonetics and Japanese Language Education (International Symposium) Long, D. (1989) “Interdialectal negation systems in Japanese” NWAVE-XVIII Maekawa, Kikuo (1990) “Intonation in non-accent dialects (an essay) (Mu-accent hogen no intonation)” Onsei Gengo IV Mizutani, Osamu, Shigeo Kawamoto, Oki Hayashi et al. (1980) “In search for beautiful and fruitful speech (Utsukushiku yutakana hanashikotoba o motomete)” Hanashikotoba (Bunkacho) Mizutani, Osamu, Takako Ayusawa & Kikuo Maekawa (1991,1992) Interference of Mother Tongues in Japanese Prosody (Nihongo no inritsu ni mirareru bogo no kansho) (1)(2) Report of Japanese Phonetics Milroy, Lesley (1980) Language and Social Networks (Blackwell) Milroy, Lesley (1987) Observing and Analyzing Natural Language (Blackwell) Nakajima, Fumio (1987) Nihongo no Kozo (Iwanami Shinsho) Neustupny, J. (1994) “Methodology for Japanese studies — steps of data collecting — (Nihonkenkyu no hohoron — deta shushu no dankai)” Machikaneyama Ronso 28 Nihongaku Ogino, Tsunao et al. (1992) “A study on politeness of Japanese sounds (Nihongo onsei no teineisa ni kansuru kenkyu)” Nihongo Intonation no Jittai to Bunseki Report of Japanese Phonetics Onishi, Takuichiro (1987) “On two types of bottom-up intonation in Sendai dialect (Sendai-shi hogen ni okeru 2 shurui no shiriagari oncho ni tsuite)” Kokugogaku Kenkyu 27 Pellowe, John & Val Jones (1978) “On intonational variability in Tyneside speech” (Peter Trudgill (ed,) Sociolinguistic Patterns in British Speech (Edward Arnold) Pulvers, Roger (1988) “The Australians and the Japanese (Osutoraria-jin to Nihon-jin)” Gengo 17-12 Rogers E.M, translated by Zenko Uno (1971) Inobeshon Fukyugaku Nyumon (Sangyo Noritsu Daigaku) Sanada et al. (1992) Sociolinguistics (Shakai gengogaku) (Oufuu) Sibata, Takeshi (1977) “Contempoary intonation (Gendai intonation)” Gengo Seikatsu 304 Sibata, Takesi (1998) Sibata Takesi, Sociolinguistics in Japanese Contexts. Edited by Tetsuya Kunihiro, Fumio Inoue & Daniel Long (Mouton de Gruyter)

222

Fumio INOUE

Sinclair, J. McH. & D. Brazil (1982) Teacher Talk (Oxford Univ. Press) Sugitoo, Miyoko (1983) “Accent and intonation in Japanese (Nihongo no accent to intonation)” Kotoba to Onsei (Bunkacho) Sugitoo, Miyoko (1990) “Accent and intonation in Japanese and English (Nihongo to Eigo no accent to intonation)” Koza Nihongo to Nihongo Kyoiku 3 (Meiji Shoin) Tanaka, Akira (1992) “Perception of sentence-final intonation (Bunmatsu intonation no chikaku)” in Ogino Tsunao Nihongo no Onsei no Kozo 3 Tanaka, Yukari (1993) “Usage and image of jumping intonation (Tobihane intonation no shiyo to image)” Nihon Hogen Kenkyukai Genkoshu 56 Yamaguchi, Yukihiro (1993) “On jump-fall intonation (Hane-sagari intonation ni tsuite)” Onsei Gakkai Kaiho 202

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement in Japanese Family Names Hirokazu SATO 1. Introduction The segmental and prosodic features of words can, generally speaking, be treated as separate and independent aspects of lexical items. In Japanese, word accent is also a lexical feature that is independent of the Chinese character reading. For example, the three words “hashi”(0) (端) [edge], “hashi”(1) (箸) [chopstick] and “hashi”(2) (橋) [bridge] share the same reading, but differ in terms of accent (the bracketed numbers indicate the position of the accented mora1; with (0), (1) and (2) denoting unaccented, initial-accented and final-accented respectively. As an unaccented word does not have an accent nucleus on any syllable, it is also called a flat accent). Each accent serves to convey the meaning of the word and, thus, to differentiate each word from the others. This kind of semantic role is one of several functions of word accent in Japanese. On the other hand, there are also examples where accent does not contribute to the transmission of meaning. Two-mora native Japanese words that form a descending diphthong usually have initial accent, with the accent being placed on the dominant mora, such as “koi”(1) (鯉) [carp], “koi”(1) (恋) [love], and “kai”(1) (貝) [shellfish]. This simple example suggests that accent is determined by phonemic alignment. Moreover, large numbers of foreign loanwords, mainly from English, are used in all areas of Japanese society, especially in science and technology, entertainment, and fashion. Because the stock of foreign words is in constant flux, their accent placement is closely related to their phonotactic characteristics (Sato 1988, 1992). With Japanese proper nouns, especially family names, there is an interaction between kanji (Chinese character) reading and accent placement. For instance, the character “田”, which means “rice field”, is one of the most frequent characters appearing in Japanese family names. While the standard, or default reading of the character is /ta/, it is often pronounced 1

Mora is a metrical unit in Japanese, by which accent placement is counted. Japanese morae consist of (CV) syllables, lengthened vowels, the syllabic nasal /N/ and long consonants.

224 Hirokazu SATO

with voicing becoming /da/. In addition to kanji reading, accent is related to voiced/unvoiced pronunciations. When the reading is the unvoiced /ta/, initial-accents are dominant, but when the reading is the voiced /da/, then the word is unaccented. Some typical examples of this are: ・ unvoiced reading /ta/ and initial-accented “fujita”(1) (藤田), “narita”(1) (成田), “hayata”(1) (早田), “okita”(1) (沖田), “atsuta”(1) (熱田) ・ voiced reading /da/ and unaccented “yoshida”(0) (吉田), “sawada”(0) (沢田), “sunada”(0) (砂田), “fukuda”(0) (福田), “okada”(0) (岡田)

However, other family names that do not conform to this rule, displaying the opposite characteristics, are just as frequent, such as: ・ unvoiced reading /ta/ and unaccented “murata”(0) (村田), “numata”(0) (沼田), ・ voiced reading /da/ and initial-accented “kaneda”(1) (金田), “nishida”(1) (西田),

“iwata”(0) (岩田) “hamada”(1) (浜田)

How can these phenomena be explained? Proper nouns do not convey meanings in the same way that ordinary nouns do, which would naturally lead us to believe that accent placement for family names is determined on the phonetic or phonological characteristics of the name. This paper describes the mutual relationship between Chinese character reading (pronunciation) and word accent, which is observed in Japanese family names that include the character “田”. The author will argue that Japanese suprasegmental features are so closely linked to segmental features that they cannot be separated. 2. Previous research and research issues In 1964, Miyoko Sugito (1982) first studied, in detail, the problem of pronunciations and accent placement of family names including the character “田”. The study was conducted not only for the Tokyo dialect, or standard Japanese, but also for the Osaka dialect. Clarifying some fundamental aspects related to the problem, Sugito’s conclusions can be summarized as follows: [1] Selection between the readings /ta/ and /da/, on the one hand, is directly related to the preceding mora (the second), and, on the other hand, to the word’s accent type.

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

225

[2] For words with initial accents, the character is most frequently pronounced as /ta/, while for unaccented words, the pronunciation is usually /da/. However, there are also cases where two accent placements are possible and the names may be pronounced as either /ta/ or /da/. [3] The character “田” in family names tends to be read as /ta/, when the consonant in the second mora is a voiced stop or fricative, or when the second mora is a long consonant, or either /ki/, /tsu/, /ri/ or /mi/. The character tends to be read as /da/, when the consonant in the second position is an unvoiced stop or fricative, or it is the syllabic nasal, long vowel, or either /ka/, /ta/, /ra/ or /ma/. While the reasons underlying these tendencies remain unclear, some of the important questions that undoubtedly need to be addressed are as follows: [1] Why does accent placement tend to be initial when the character “田” is read as an unvoiced consonant, and unaccented when it is read as a voiced consonant? [2] How can exceptions to this be explained? [3] What determines whether the character is pronounced as the unvoiced /ta/ or the voiced /da/? [4] Is the vocalic feature (unvoiced/voiced) the only one governing word accent? [5] Does phonemic information dominate over word accent type? Are there cases, in contrast, where accent placement determines the reading of the character? In addition to discussing these questions, the following sections describe the conditions that influence the pronunciation of this character and accent placement. 3. The voicing contrast and sequential voicing in Japanese Before turning to focus on the interaction between the reading of the Chinese character “田” and word accent, it will be beneficial for subsequent discussion to briefly outline the voicing contrast (“seion”/“dakuon”) and the sequential voicing phenomena in Japanese (for a more detailed account, see, for example, Shibatani, 1990: 158-184). In standard Japanese, there are five unvoiced consonantal groups in the Japanese syllabary: (k-, t(ch, ts)-, p-, s(sh)- and h(f)-groups). Syllables

226 Hirokazu SATO

including these consonants, such as /ka/, /te/, /so/ or /ha/, are called “seion” (清音), which means “clear sound” or “pure sound”. On the other hand, there are also four voiced consonantal groups: (g-, d-, z- and b-groups). Syllables with these voiced consonants, such as /ga/, /de/, /zi/ or /ba/, are called “dakuon” (濁音), a peculiar Japanese expression that means “dull sound”. Syllables with the unvoiced consonants /k/, /t/ and /s/ (except /h/ and /p/) contrast with syllables with the voiced consonant /g/, /d/ and /z/, respectively. In the Japanese syllabary writing system, the dakuon set of syllables are written by adding a double-dot to the corresponding seion kana characters, such as “ が ” (/ga/) and “ で ” (/de/). However, syllables involving the h-sound contrast with syllables consisting of the b-sound in the Japanese syllabary system. There is an additional contrast for the h-sound syllables with p-sound syllables, which are called “han-dakuon” (半濁音) [semi-dull sounds]. An unvoiced consonant syllable often changes to its corresponding voiced consonant syllable, when two words or Sino-Japanese morphemes are combined to form a compound word. This is called “sequential voicing” (“rendaku” (連濁)), and is a typical phonotactic characteristics of Japanese. (Kindaichi 1976, Sato 1989) [Ex.] “oshiroi” (白粉) [powder] + “hana” (花) [flower] → “oshiroibana” (白粉花) [four o’clock] “hato” (鳩) [pigeon] + “tokei” (時計) [clock] → “hatodokei” (鳩時計) [cuckoo clock] “hiki” (引き) [subtract] + “saN” (算) [arithmetic] → “hikizaN” (引き算) [subtraction]

In a sense, sequential voicing can be regarded as a barometer of the concatenating strength between two elements. As a combination becomes lexicalized, sequential voicing tends to occur. However, if the union is a weaker juxtaposition of the elements, the subsequent consonant retains its unvoiced feature. The voiced pronunciation of the standard unvoiced sounds in Japanese family names with the character “田” is a kind of sequential voicing phenomena. However, sequential voicing does not always occur in all phonological environments. One of the aims of this article is to clarify what conditions determine the voiced/unvoiced pronunciations of Japanese family names. 4. The preceding consonant: Voiced cases The dominant factor determining the reading of “田” and the word accent is the feature of the second syllable, immediately preceding the

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

227

character “ 田 ”. The relation between reading and word accent is investigated in the following sections, taking in turn each consonant group as the preceding syllable. At the outset of this discussion, we shall assume, as a basic rule, that initial accents occur with the reading /ta/ and that there is no accent with the reading /da/ (the basic assumption concerning the reading-accentuation relation). The reasons for this assumption are examined in section 6. 4.1. Voiced stops and fricatives (/b/, /d/, /g/, /z/) (dakuon) As a characteristic of Japanese phonotactics, syllable repetitions with voiced stops and fricatives tend to be avoided. It is well-known in sequential voicing that, if the following word consists of an initial unvoiced consonant followed by a dakuon, then the initial unvoiced consonant remains an unvoiced sound (seion). [Ex.] “tori” (鳥) + “kago” (籠) → “torikago” (鳥籠) [bird cage], *“torigago” [cf.] “mizu” (水) + “kame” (瓶) → “mizugame” (水瓶) [water jar]

Similarly, when the character “田” is preceded by a syllable with a voiced stop or fricative, it remains an unvoiced sound. The accent is then placed on the first syllable according to the reading-accentuation assumption. [Ex.] “shibata”(1) (柴田), “kubota”(1) (久保田), “tobita”(1) (飛田), “kadota”(1) (門田) “hagita”(1) (萩田), “fujita”(1) (藤田), “mizuta”(1) (水田)

The tone pattern of an initial-accented word is H-L-L, and matches the manner of articulation for the second-syllable consonant, due to the micro-prosodic characteristics of lowered pitch heights in the vicinity of a voiced stop or fricative (Sato 1990). 4.2. Flap (/r/) The sound [r] is not a dakuon, but is vocalic, and so the pronunciation of “田” parallels the pronunciation in the case of voiced stops and fricatives; that is, the reading of “田” remains as the unvoiced sound /ta/, and the accent is located on the initial syllable. [Ex.] “hirota”(1) (広田), “murota”(1) (室田), “morita”(1) (森田), “arita”(1) (有田) “narita”(1) (成田), “tsuruta”(1) (鶴田), “furuta”(1) (古田)

However, it should be noted that these examples only involve the vowels /i/, /u/, /e/ and /o/ in the second syllable, and when it includes the vowel /a/, the word has no accent.

228 Hirokazu SATO [Ex.] “hirata”(0) (平田), “urata”(0) (浦田), “murata”(0) (村田)

“kurata”(0) (倉田),

The first syllables of these words have either /u/ or /i/ as the vowel. Thus, the articulatory movement across the first two syllables is from a close vowel to an open vowel /a/. The resultant increase in terms of the openness of the mouth leads to an increase in pitch frequency, due to the greater articulatory effort. The shift in mouth openness, from close to open, may parallel the change in tone dynamics from Low to High. Thus, in this case, the word accent pattern is due to the articulatory movements of the word. 4.3. Semivowels (/y/, /w/) Although semivowels are similar to the /r/ flap in phonetic features, the character “田” does not always remain as an unvoiced sound /ta/, and accent is therefore dependent on the reading of “田”. When close vowels are included in the initial syllable, the articulatory movement to an open mouth leads to an unaccented word. However, the reading of “田” does not change to the voiced sound. [Ex.] “miyata”(0) (宮田), “iwata”(0) (岩田), “kuwata”(0) (桑田), “niwata”(0) (庭田)

When the first syllable is a non-close vowel preceded by an unvoiced stop, the accent is placed on the first mora (initial-accent). Then, the reading of “田” changes to the voiced sound. [Ex.] “kawada”(1) (川田), “tawada”(1) (多和田),

“toyoda”(1) (豊田)

These examples are all exceptions to the reading-accentuation assumption. It is not clear why these initial-accented words change to the voiced sound for the character reading. One possibility is that if the first syllable is initially an unvoiced syllable (seion), the reading of “田” as the third syllable may change to a voiced sound (dakuon). 4.4. Nasals (/m/, /n/) It is thought that voiced stops in old Japanese accompanied a brief nasal in the initial position, such as /mba/ or /nda/. However, while there are no initial nasals preceding voiced stops in modern Japanese, an affinity is often observed between voiced sounds and nasals in the pronunciation of Chinese characters. For example, the initial unvoiced stop /k/ in the Sino-Japanese morpheme (国) (“koku”, [country]) becomes voiced, when the syllabic nasal /N/ directly precedes the morpheme.

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

229

[Ex.] “hongoku” (本国) [mother country], “ringoku” (隣国) [neighboring country], “tengoku” (天国) [Heaven], “nangoku” (南国) [southern country] [cf.] “tekikoku” (敵国) [enemy country], “gaikoku” (外国) [foreign country]

For family names including the character “田”, the pronunciation of the character is strongly influenced by preceding nasals. That is, the pronunciation of the character “田” changes to the voiced sound /da/ as a general rule, when the preceding syllable involves a nasal. [Ex.] “haneda”(1) (羽田), “kaneda”(1) (金田), “shimada”(0) (島田), “hanada”(1) (花田)

However, even though the character “田” is pronounced as a voiced sound, a name will not always be without accent. This is not consistent with the reading-accentuation assumption. Accentuation depends on the phonetic types in the first and the second syllables, as follows: (4.4.1) Initial-accented, if the second syllable does not include the vowel /a/ [Ex.] “tomoda”(1) (友田), “kaneda”(1) (金田), “haneda”(1) (羽田), “shinoda”(1) (篠田), “sonoda”(1) (園田), “kameda”(1) (亀田), “yoneda”(1) (米田)

When a syllable involving a nasal but not the vowel /a/ is subordinated relative to a non-nasal first syllable, because it would create an imbalanced sequence of syllables, the accent is placed on the principal first syllables. In contrast, when the vowel of the second syllable is /a/, the syllable is more independent than syllables consisting of other vowels, and accentuation is dependent on three conditions relating to the phonetic features of the first syllable. (4.4.2) Without accent, if the second syllable includes the vowel /a/, and the vowel of the first syllable is not /a/. [Ex.] “shimada”(0) (島田), “funada”(0) (船田),

“murata”(0) (沼田)

As seen in the case of the r-sound, the articulatory movement from close to wide open mouth results in words without accent. That also applies to the following cases: [Ex.] “yamada”(0) (山田), “umeda”(0) (梅田)

The name “yamada” starts from a close position for the semi-vowel /y/.

230 Hirokazu SATO

(4.4.3) Initial accent, if the second syllable includes the vowel /a/, and the first syllable vowel also includes /a/, and, further, if the initial consonant is an unvoiced stop or the /h/ sound. [Ex.] “tamada”(1) (玉田), “hanada”(1) (花田),

“hamada”(1) (浜田)

In this case, the first syllable is pronounced in a forceful articulatory manner, and is therefore pronounced independently of the following syllable. As accent tends to be placed on forceful syllables, the accent of the word is placed on the first syllable. (4.4.4) Without accent, even if the first and the second syllables include the vowel /a/, and if the first syllable begins with a sustained consonant like an unvoiced fricative, or starts with just the vowel /a/. [Ex.] “anada”(0) (穴田), “sanada”(0) (真田)

The gradual beginning of the word initial tends to mean that the word is without accent. At the beginning of this section, it was stated that the default pronunciation /ta/ for “田” changes to the voiced sound /da/ after syllables with a nasal. There are, however, certain exceptions that do not obey this rule. One such exception is when the first syllable also consists of a nasal. [Ex.] “numata”(0) (沼田), “momota”(1) (百田),

“mineta”(1) (峰田)

Such nasal repetitions may prevent the vocalization of /ta/ in a kind of dissimilation. 5. The preceding consonant: Unvoiced cases The character “田”, in principle, may not be pronounced as a voiced sound /da/ following non-nasal and voiced consonants, because a sequence of voiced consonants is not permissible in Japanese. Following an unvoiced consonant, one may expect the character “田” to be pronounced as the voiced sound /da/, and generally that is the case, if the second syllable does not involve a close vowel /i/ or /u/. However, when the medial syllable consists of an unvoiced consonant (Cuv) and the close vowels of /i/ or /u/, the vowel before the character “田” is in an environment where vowel devocalization occurs, as follows. Cuv + i + ta Cuv + u + ta

Vowel devocalization is a typical phonetic characteristic of Japanese, where the close vowels of /i/ or /u/ lose their vocalic feature when surrounded by unvoiced consonants (stops, fricatives or affricates). In such

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

231

cases, two pronunciation strategies are possible. One is that the character “田” is pronounced as the unvoiced sound /t/, and the preceding close vowel is consequently devocalized (strategy 1). The second is that the character is pronounced as the voiced sound /d/, and the close vowel retains its vocalic vowel (strategy 2). Which strategy is used depends on the syllable preceding the character “田”. In the following sub-sections, the relation between pronunciation and accent placement for family names with an unvoiced consonant in the second syllable are described in detail. 5.1. The second syllable: Unvoiced consonant + non-close vowel This is the typical case of the unvoiced consonant condition. The character “田” is pronounced with the voiced sound /da/ because of its unvoiced consonant neighbor, and accordingly the word is unaccented. [Ex.] “takada”(0) (高田), “asada”(0) (浅田), “takeda”(0) (武田)

“ikeda”(0) (池田),

It would seem that this tendency is even stronger when the first syllable is also devocalized. The accent nucleus is not normally placed on a devocalized syllable, which leads to the unaccented tone pattern. [Ex.] “fukada”(0) (深田), “kitada”(0) (北田), “tsukada”(0) (塚田), “hatada”(0) (畑田) (The devocalization of the word initial /a/ in “hatada” is another special case of vowel devocalization in Japanese)

As noted in the previous section, there are cases where the open vowel /a/ in the second syllable contributes to the realization of an unaccented tone, as the following examples also demonstrate in addition to the examples above of first-syllable devocalization. [Ex.] “okada”(0) (岡田), “osada”(0) (長田)

5.2. The second syllable: Unvoiced fricative + close vowel (/shi/, /su/) The character “田” following an unvoiced fricative is pronounced as the voiced sound /da/, and the word becomes unaccented. This is following vocalization strategy 2. [Ex.] “ashida”(0) (芦田), “yoshida”(0) (吉田), “oshida”(0) (押田), “kushida”(0) (串田), “yasuda”(0) (安田), “hasuda”(0) (蓮田), “masuda”(0) (増田), “kusuda”(0) (楠田)

However, when the first syllable consists of an unvoiced consonant and a non-close vowel, the accent is placed on the initial syllable, as follows: [Ex.] “hoshida”(1) (星田),

“koshida”(1) (越田)

232 Hirokazu SATO

5.3. The second syllable: Unvoiced stop /k/ + close vowel /i/ (/ki/) In the case of /ki/ as the second syllable, the character “田” retains its unvoiced stop /t/, and /ki/ is therefore devocalized (Strategy 1). Accent placement is initial according to the phone-accentuation assumption. [Ex.] “akita”(1) (秋田), “okita”(1) (沖田), “kakita”(1)(柿田), “takita”(1) (時田) “wakita”(1) (脇田), “tokita”(1) (時田), “makita”(1) (牧田)

5.4. The second syllable: Unvoiced stop /k/ + close vowel /u/ (/ku/) In cases where the second syllable is /ku/, the phonetic properties can be classified under two sets of sub-conditions, depending on the vowel value of the first syllable. (5.4.1) If the vowel in the first syllable is one of the non-opened back vowels, /u/ and /o/, then /ku/ is not devocalized, and the character “田” is therefore vocalized (Strategy 2). The word is unaccented. [Ex.] “fukuda”(0) (福田), “okuda”(0) (奥田), “tokuda”(0) (徳田)

(5.4.2) If the vowel in the first syllable is either the open vowel /a/ or the front vowel /i/, then /ku/ is devocalized and the character “田” retains its unvoiced sound /ta/ (Strategy 1). The word is initial-accented. [Ex.] “sakuta”(1) (作田), “kakuta”(1) (角田) “kikuta”(1) (菊田), “ikuta”(1) (生田)

It is difficult to clearly state why the strategy used with the vowels /a/ and /i/ differs from that used for the vowels /u/ and /o/. Some vowel quality like “clearness” might be related to the choice of pronunciation and accent placement strategies. The two examples of “fukuda(0)” and “kikuta(1)” simultaneously have the potential for both the first and second syllables to be devocalized. In Japanese, successive vowel devocalization is often avoided, because the resultant repetition of three unvoiced consonants creates both pronunciation and perception problems for Japanese. In the case of “fukuda(0)”, the /ku/ is not subject to devoicing because “田” is voiced, and the first syllable /fu/ is accordingly devocalized. As the accent cannot be placed on the devocalized syllable, the tone pattern is inevitably unaccented. In the case of “kikuta(1)”, the character “田” remains an unvoiced stop /t/, and /ku/ is devocalized. As the first syllable /ki/ cannot be devocalized, it can carry the accent nucleus for the word.

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

233

5.5. The second syllable: Unvoiced affricate + close vowels (/chi/, /tsu/) The cases of /chi/ and /tsu/ parallel those of /ki/ and /ku/. (5.5.1) When the second syllable is /chi/, the stop consonant in “田” is voiced, and /chi/ is not devocalized. The word is unaccented. [Ex.] “uchida”(0) (内田), “tsuchida”(0) (土田),

“machida”(0) (町田)

(5.5.2) When the second syllable is /tsu/, the consonant in “田” remains an unvoiced stop /t/, and the /tsu/ is accordingly devocalized. The accent is placed on the first syllable. [Ex.] “atsuta”(1) (厚田), “katsuta”(1) (勝田), “mitsuta”(1) (光田)

6. The pronunciation-accentuation assumption As already mentioned, there is a tendency for family names including the character “ 田 ” to be unaccented when the consonant of “ 田 ” is pronounced as a voiced sound and for the name to have an initial accent when the consonant is unvoiced. This section provides an explanation of why phonemic features are related to accent placement (Sato 1997). Japanese accent is usually represented as a sequence of low (L) or high (H) tones on the mora. For example, the tone pattern of the 4-mora Japanese city name “fukuoka” (福岡) is L-H-L-L, with the accent placed on the last high-pitched mora. In addition to mora tones, it is possible to recognize another kind of tone, called segmental tone. Syllables beginning with an unvoiced stop or a fricative tend to be pronounced with a higher tone, while syllables with voiced stops or a fricative tend to have a lower syllable tone, because the unvoiced-voiced consonant contrast is related to the micro-prosodies that are associated with pronunciation tenseness-laxness. That is, while an unvoiced stop or fricative conveys a high-pitched segmental tone (h), a voiced one conveys a low-pitched segmental tone (l) (the segmental tones are indicated with lower-case letters to distinguish them from mora tones) (Sato 1990). A typical characteristic of Japanese accent patterns is for the initial mora tone to be an L tone, except when the word is initial–accented. The initial low-pitched characteristic is not phonologically distinctive. For example, the tone of the unaccented word “yorokobi” (喜び) [joy] is L-H-H-H. When the second mora is either a syllabic nasal or a lengthened vowel, the initial syllable is pronounced with a high-pitched tone, such as H-H-H-H ([ex.] “koofuku” (幸福) [happy]). This phenomenon can be accounted for by the fact that the first two morae fuse into one syllable, and moreover, the high segmental tone (h) for the word initial position raises the low mora tone to a high-pitched one. The concepts of accentual mora tone and segmental tone for consonants

234 Hirokazu SATO

can be applied in explaining the relationship between unvoiced or voiced pronunciation and word accent in the following manner. The family name “fujita” (藤田) is an example of an unvoiced “田” and initial accent, with a tone pattern of H-L-L. The tone of the final mora is L, and the segmental tone is h. While the family name “yoshida” (吉田) is an example of a voiced stop for the final mora and unaccented, with a tone pattern of L-H-H. In contrast to “fujita”, however, the final tone of “yoshida” is H, and the segmental tone is l. Thus, in both family names, the tone value of the final mora is the opposite of the segmental tone value. If “fujita” (藤田) were pronounced as “fujida”, as a voiced sound with an initial accent, then the mora tone would coincide with the segmental low-pitched tone on the word final. However, much greater effort would be required to realize the final pitch of the pronunciation, because the final L mora tone would need to be even lower. On the other hand, if the final consonant of “yoshida” (吉田) were pronounced as an unvoiced sound, as “yoshita”, the final H tone would overlap with the h segmental tone. As in the case of “fujita”, the much higher tone and greater phonatory efforts at the final mora will seem conspicuous, due to duplication of the two high tones. The relationship between word accent and the voiced/unvoiced pronunciation may be seen as a kind of tonal neutralization process. That is to say, the phenomenon where high-tone pronunciations are likely to be voiced while low-tone pronunciations tend to be unvoiced, is closely related with the ease of production. The fact that segmental high tones (h) at the beginning of a word with an unvoiced consonant, particularly a plosive one, tend to be initial-accented is also another example of these tonal effects. 7. Summary and discussion The voiced/unvoiced reading of “ 田 ” has been described in the proceeding sections in terms of the consonant classes of the neighboring syllables. The main points may be summarized as follows: [1] The syllable directly preceding the character “田” is dominant in determining the pronunciation of the character. The change from an unvoiced to a voiced sound is a kind of assimilation, while the retention of the unvoiced sound functions in a form of dissimilation in order to maintain phonetic contrasts. Roughly speaking, if the preceding syllable contains an unvoiced consonant, the character is read as dakuon /da/ with the voiced consonant. If the relevant syllable contains a voiced consonant, the character is read as the seion of /ta/. That is to say, because dakuon repetitions are not permissible, the default unvoiced syllable

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

235

(seion) will only be vocalized when the preceding syllable is not a dakuon sound. The phenomenon shows a tendency for the seion and dakuon to alternate with each other. [2] If the preceding syllable is dakuon, that is, if the consonant of the syllable is voiced (i.e., /b/, /d/, /g/ or /z/), the default unvoiced pronunciation of the character “田” remains unchanged. In the cases of nasal consonants, however, the character “田” is, in principle, pronounced as a voiced sound due to phonetic assimilation with the preceding nasal. When other voiced sounds, such as the /r/ flap, precede the character, the reading remains an unvoiced sound in a similar manner to cases of dakuon sounds. However, in some examples where the first syllable consists of an unvoiced consonant and a non-close vowel, the character “田” is often read as a voiced sound. [3] If the consonant of the preceding syllable is unvoiced, the character “田” is read as a voiced sound, as a general rule. If the vowel in the second syllable is in an environment where devocalization occurs, then there are two possible strategies to choose between. The first is for the second syllable to be devocalized and for the character “田” to retain its unvoiced value. With the second strategy, on the other hand, the second syllable is not devocalized and the character pronunciation changes to the voiced sound. The choice of strategy depends on the characteristics of the second syllable. [4] It has been basically confirmed that names with the final syllable /ta/ are initial-accented, and that those with the voiced /da/ are unaccented. However, several counter-examples to this relation between pronunciation and accent placement were noted, which are due to the following phonotactic considerations and articulatory movements. a) The mouth-opening movement, from close to wide, across the first and second syllables does not generate an accent (unaccented). b) The opposite mouth movement, from wide to close, across the first and second syllables results in accent being placed on the first syllable (initial-accented). c) A wide and well-formed mouth, such as for the vowel /a/, for the first syllable combined with a consonant as an unvoiced plosive tend to result in an accent being placed (initial-accented). d) When the first syllable is likely to be involved in vowel devocalization, or vowel reduction, the word tends to be

236 Hirokazu SATO

unaccented. [5] What is the dominant factor in the relation between pronunciation and accent placement, the pronunciation of “田” or word accent? That is, is the placement of accent determined after the pronunciation of the “ 田 ” is fixed? Or, does word accent determine the pronunciation of the character? Throughout the examination of many examples of family names, it has been assumed that the reading of the character and the phonotactics of the word are almost always predominant and control the word accent. However, in cases where the second syllable is subject to devocalization, one could argue that the pronunciation and accent placement are determined simultaneously. The choice of reading between /ta/ or /da/ is rather fuzzy, depending on whether the second syllable is devoiced. In this case, the selection of pronunciation parallels the selection of word accent type. [6] An affinity has been observed between the voiced/unvoiced contrast and the opposition between unaccented/accented names. The source of this affinity can be explained as a kind of neutralization between two types of tones. The pronunciationaccentuation assumption may indicate that the high pitched mora tone H compensates for the segmental tone (l), at the word-final voiced syllable /da/, so as not to impose extra burdens on production. A high mora tone H at the end of the word leads directly to unaccented type. Similarly, a low-pitched tone, L, compensates for the unvoiced segmental tone (h) at the word final. A low mora tone at the word final implies that the accent is placed on the anterior syllable. However, these tendencies are sometimes outweighed by other influential phonotactic properties of the word. 8. Conclusion This paper has considered how pronunciation and accent placement for Japanese family names including the character “田” are determined. The reading of “田” is primarily determined by the immediately preceding syllable, and also by the word-initial syllable. Accent placement is not only chosen according to the reading of “田”, but by the constituent phonemes and their sequence within the word. Thus, accent is supplied based on suprasegmental characteristics of the segmental phonemes or on the overall movements of the articulatory and phonatory organs. These characteristics of voiced/unvoiced pronunciations and accent indicate a close interaction

Interaction between Phonetic Features and Accent-Placement

237

between segmentals and suprasegmentals in spoken Japanese. There is no evidence that accent unilaterally determines the reading of the character “田”, but cases involving simultaneous choices for these two features are observed. The reciprocal relation between accent placement and pronunciation can be regarded as a neutralization phenomenon for accentual and segmental tones, and represents a kind of effortlessness in terms of production. As described in this paper, prosodic information like word accent is closely related with segmental phonemes and their arrangement. Further investigations will be required to clarify the roles and effects of each phoneme to the prosodic properties of spoken language. Acknowledgement The investigation was conducted in part in collaboration with Miho Kudo and Yukie Masuko (Kudo et al. 1997) of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. The author would like to thank them for their cooperation. This work was done as part of the 21st Century COE Program “Framework for Systematization and Application of Large-scale Knowledge Resources” (Project leader: Prof. Sadaoki Furui) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. References Kindaichi, H. 1976. “Solution of sequential voicing”. Sophia Linguistica No.2. 1-22 (in Japanese) Kudo, M., Sato, H. and Masuko, Y. 1997. “Study on relation between accent and phone in family names”. The 296th Regular Meeting of the Phonetic Society of Japan (at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) Sato, H. 1988. “Accent placement of Japanese loanwords”. The Second Symposium on Advanced Man-Machine Interface Through Spoken Language. (2-1)-(2-2) Sato, H. 1989. “Accentuation rule and sequential voicing rule in compounds”. Japanese and Japanese Education Vol. 2, Tokyo: Meiji-shoin. 233-265 (in Japanese) Sato, H. 1990. “Pitch frequency Characteristics in Japanese words related to phonemes”. Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Speech Synthesis. 19-22 Sato, H. 1992. “Decomposition into syllable complexes and the accenting of Japanese loanwords”. Proceedings of International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 92). 1319-1322 Sato, H. 1997. “Roles of segmental and prosodic information on Japanese accent”. Proceedings of Autumn Meeting of Acoustical Society of Japan.

238 Hirokazu SATO

385-388 (in Japanese) Shibatani, M. 1990. The languages of Japan, Cambridge Language Surveys, New York: Cambridge University Press Sugito, M. 1982. Study on Japanese accent, Tokyo: Sanseidou. 297-309 (in Japanese) The same article is also contained in the following book: Sugito, M. 1998. Study on spoken Japanese Vol. 6, “Shibata-san and Imada-san”, Osaka: Izumi-shoin. 3-15 (in Japanese)

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances in the Japanese Dialogs — Analysis of the “TUFS Language Module” — Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA 1. Introduction The “TUFS Language Modules” are just one of the accomplishments made by the “21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Program Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics” of the Graduate School of Area and Culture Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Based on the “TUFS Language Modules”, an e-learning system for various languages have been developped. This report describes the intonation used in Japanese interrogative utterances in the speech of the dialogs in the “Dialog Module” of the “TUFS Language Modules” (Japanese version). Intonation is the generic name for pitch pattern functioning on the sentence and phrase level as a suprasegmental feature. In this report a focus will be on the pitch patterns realized at the end of utterances, that is utterance-final intonation. The data used in this report comes from role-playing dialogs that are written as teaching materials for learners of Japanese. The types of intonation that are used in these kinds of special situations should prove to be of interest and have implications for future research on Japanese intonation. 2. Position of this report in relation to previous studies on intonation of Japanese This chapter presents the definition of intonation, a survey on previous studies that discussed the functions and types of Japanese intonation, and evaluation of this report. 2.1. Definition of intonation Intonation as a prosodic element is realized by a rise or a fall in pitch. Sugitoo (1997: 4; English translation by Takada) claimed that intonation is used “not only to distinguish between interrogative and declarative sentences, but if relates to grammar and meaning, and displays emphasis and focus. Furthermore, intonation can be used to express personal relations, irony, one’s real intention, emotion, and other information that cannot be shown in

240

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

the transcription”. In addition, Japanese has pitch accent which is also realized by a rise and fall in pitch. However, while accent is associated with a word unit, intonation is “a pitch change realized on a phrase or sentence unit” (Tanaka & Kubozono, 1999: 95; English translation by Takada). 2.2. Intonation pattern and function in previous studies Kori (1997: 169; English translation by Takada) proposed three semantic functions for Japanese intonation: “grammatical function”, “emotional function” and “social function”. Among these, he claimed that “the ‘grammatical function’ is the most important for making the utterance sound like natural Japanese”, and proposed the following four sub-functions: 1) a function to show the focus, 2) a function to express the semantic restriction relations and semantic units among words, 3) a function to express the modality (mood) of questions, etc., and 4) a function to express large semantic units and to indicate the continuation of the utterance. Sub-functions 1) and 2) are expressed by emphasizing or controlling the change in pitch accent, sub-function 3) with change in pitch at the end of sentence, and sub-function 4) by raising the pitch at the end of the phrase. This report focuses on sub-function 3) the grammatical function to express modality and utterance-final intonation. Kori (1997) also proposed five types of sentence-final intonation: questioning rising, emphasizing rising, falling, rising-falling, and flat. Among these, he claimed that questioning rising is the type typically observed at the end of interrogative sentences. In one study of the connection between sentence-final particles and sentence-final intonations, and their meanings and functions, Koyama (1997) proposed four types of sentence-final intonation: falling-rising, rising, falling, and rising-falling. He also proposed that the meaning-functions for each are questioning, attention arousal or vocative, affirmation, and attention arousal or vocative, and emotional display, respectively. In a study of the sentence-final rising intonation of interrogative sentences, Ayusawa (1992) analyzed differences related to the type of interrogative sentence (echo questions which repeat a previous word, wh-questions, yes/no questions), length of interrogative sentences, and location of the accent nucleus of the last word. Ayusawa concluded that the pitch pattern of rising intonation in sentence end has features that: 1) each speaker has a characteristic pattern, 2) the sentence-final rising pitch pattern of questions is an independent character and is not related to the type and length of the question, 3) when due to the location of the accent nucleus the falling (accent) and the rising (sentence-final intonation) of pitch occur on

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

241

the same final mora1, the final mora is lengthened about twice as long with the first half falling and the latter half rising, and 4) in echo questions which repeat a previous word, there is a rise in pitch in the middle of the sentence and it influences the amount of sentence-final rise when the last word has a Heiban-gata accent pattern or an Odaka-gata accent pattern2. There are other intonations besides rising sentence-final intonation that accompany interrogative sentences. The National Language Research Institute (NLRI) (1963) classified utterances in dialogue according to the speaker’s expressive intention. The range of expressions included as interrogatives varies with the approach. Although the NLRI (1963) included “confirmation requests” as interrogative expressions, Ayusawa (1992) excluded them from her analysis. As a result, while the NLRI (1963) analyzed rising and the other types of intonation, Ayusawa (1992) focused on rising intonation. Masuoka & Takubo (1992: 135; English translation by Takada) divided interrogative sentences into “Question types which request information for the listener” and “self-questioning types which question oneself”, and correlated the former with rising intonation, and the latter with falling intonation. In analysis of the sentence-final suppositional modality forms daroo and deshoo, Masuoka & Takubo (1992) and Adachi (1999) divided their sentence-final intonation into falling and rising, and explained how their functions differed depending on the intonation. In this report, the NLRI’s classification is adopted, and a question is defined more broadly than Ayusawa’s definition. Therefore, the intonation patterns that are analyzed in this report may not be limited to rising, but also other types of intonation. The situation in which each intonation pattern occurs should be focused. 2.3. Questions addressed in this report In this report, the following four questions are addressed: 1) What kinds of utterance-final intonation types are observed in the data? 2) How do the types of utterance-final intonation correlate with the type and function of the interrogative utterance and with the utterance-final form? 3) Are there differences in the amount of rise in utterance-final intonation correlated with the speaker in the dialog? 1 2

“Mora” is a rhythmic unit of Japanese. Heiban-gata and Odaka-gata are alike in that the point where the pitch falls does not occur within the word form. These two types can be distinguished when a particle is added.

242

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

4)

Are there differences in the amount of rise in utterance-final intonation correlated with the location of the accent nucleus at the utterance-final form? In the following sections of this report “utterance-final intonation” is simply stated as “intonation” if there is no necessity to state in full term. 3. Methodology In this chapter the assumptions of the analysis are outlined and defined. Specifically, it presents the unit of analysis and the concept of interrogative utterances, the data used in this report and the methodology for acoustic analysis. 3.1. Unit of analysis: utterance The data used in this report was derived from dialog teaching materials and the utterances used in the dialog were analyzed. Among the utterances contained in the dialogs there were many utterances that may be regarded incomplete according to the grammatical concept of a sentence in previous studies. Based on the units delineated in the dialog script, the following utterances were included as units in the present analysis: utterances ending with continuing forms, utterances lacking a main clause predicate or sentence-final forms, single-word sentence, etc. In the present analysis, these units were referred as utterances and were used as the basic units of analysis. 3.2. Definition of interrogative utterances Adachi (1999: 11-13; English translating by Takada) established the following two conditions for interrogative sentences: a) b)

The speaker lacks a part of the information regarding the truth judgment of the proposition of content, or proposition itself. The speaker intends to fulfill the lack by questioning the listener for information.

Adachi refered to condition a) as the “uncertainty condition of the propositional content”, and condition b) as the “condition of questioning the listener for information”. What Adachi refered to as interrogative sentences and what is refered as interrogative utterances in this report are considered to basically have the same functions, and interrogative utterances are identified based on whether or not they meet Adachi’s conditions. Utterances such as ~shimasen ka? ‘Won’t you ~?’, and Onegai dekimasu ka? ‘Can I request that you do (it)?’ are considered as interrogative utterances because they take the forms of asking the listener if they will do something. The NLRI (1963) is referenced in determining the types and functions

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

243

or interrogative utterances, and classify interrogative utterances are classified as follows: Types Yes/No question

Functions Confirmation Request (Conf) Judgment Request (Judg)

Wh-question

Selection Request (Sel) Explanation Request (Expl)

Interrogative utterance

More details about the types and functions of interrogative utterances are stated below. Yes/No question：Interrogative utterances which can be answered with a yes or no. Confirmation Request (Conf)： Interrogative utterances about which the speaker already has some prediction of the what answer will be. Judgment Request (Judg)： Interrogative utterances about which the speaker does not have a prediction about the answer. In other words, a non-confirmation request Yes/No question. Wh-question：Questions which request an explanation. Selection Request (Sel)： Interrogative utterances in which the speaker gives choices for the answer. Explanation Request (Expl)： Interrogative utterances in which the speaker does not give choices for the answer. In other words, a non-selection request Wh-question.

3.3. Data The data used in this report was derived from the speech and script for the “Dialog Module (Japanese version)” of the “TUFS Language Modules”. This “Dialog Module” consists of teaching materials that are open to the public on the internet. It is provided for Japanese learners to learn functional expressions through dialogs in concrete scenes. There are 40 scenes, for example, “Greeting someone”, “Thanking”, and so on. Each scenes contains about 7 to 16 utterances by 2 to 3 speakers. The data consisted of a total of 430 utterances, including 102 interrogative utterances. In this report, only 96 of these Interrogative utterances were analyzed because some were unsuitable for pitch analysis due to voice quality (e.g., creaky voice). The breakdown of the interrogative utterances is indicated in Table 1. Table 1 also shows an unequal distribution of the functions of interrogative

244

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

utterances. While there are many Judgment Requests (Judg) and Explanation Requests (Expl), there are few Confirmation Requests (Conf) and Selection Requests (Sel). This is taken into account in the analysis. As mentioned earlier, the data used in this report was derived from role-playing dialog teaching materials for Japanese learners. The dialog scripts were originally written for teaching materials. It is important to distinguish the dialog scripts clearly from natural utterances in an analysis. More specifically, because the speakers (performers) knew that their dialogs were video-taped and recorded, they were probably nervous to some degree. And because they knew that the recordings will be used as teaching materials, they probably made a conscious effort to offer model utterances. At the same time, although it may seem contradictory, since they are eveloped as teaching materials, the utterances can be considered as appropriate Japanese utterances. Therefore they are suitable for the analysis of utterance-final intonation. Table 1.

Breakdown of interrogative utterances.*

Speaker

Role

Ms.Suzuki

Junior student Junior student Senior student Senior student Senior student Senior student Professor Professor Clerk Clerk Waitress Passing stranger Shop assistant Library officer Student's mother -

Mr.Yamada Ms.Tamura Ms.Yoshida Mr.Nomura Mr.Watanab e Ms.Saito Mr.Tanaka Clerk1 Clerk2 Waitress Passing stranger Shop assistant Library officer Nomura's mother TOTAL

Scene No. that included interrogative utterances

Gender Sex

female 9，11，12，14，19，30，31，32， 36，39 male 1，8，10，16，17，18，23，24， 29，35，37 female 7，22，31，33，38 female 10，13，23，24，27，34，35

Number Number of question questions Yes/No Q Wh-Q TOTAL Conf Judg Sel Expl 1 12 5 18 -

4 (2) 4

1 (1) -

8 (2) 4

13 (5) 8

1

7

-

6

14 9 (1) 2

male

19，20，36，39

-

4

1

male

9，11

-

-

-

4 (1) 2

1，15，26 2，4，5，6，14，25，27，34 3，21 29 28

1 2 -

3 8 1 1

-

2 6 2 1 2

6 16 3 0 1 3

1

-

-

1

2

-

-

-

1

1

-

-

-

-

0

female male female male female female

female 8 male

13

female -

-

6

44 2 44 96 (2) (1) (3) (6) * Numbers in ( ) indicate the number of utternces that were excluded from the analysis due to poor voice quality.

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

245

Taking this into consideration, the results of observations are reported and analysis of the intonation of interrogative utterances used in this data was analyzed. 3.4. Methodology for the acoustic analysis The acoustic data from the “Dialog Module” were entered into the computer (48 KHz sampling rate, 16 bit quantization rate), and this data was analyzed with the acoustic software Wave Surfer version 1.7.4. In the analysis of the utterance-final intonation, the patterns of the rising and falling pitch, and the amount of the pitch rise will be observed. The patterns of the utterance-final intonation were classified by two steps; First, the pitch patterns were divided according to whether a rise was observed or not, and second, according to whether a next-fall was observed or not. There may be other patterns which have more rises and falls. But actually there were not such patterns. There were following three patterns in this data: 1) without rising, 2) only with rising, and 3) with rising and next-falling pattern. These three types of utterance-final intonations will be named as; 1) falling intonation, 2) rising intonation, and 3) rising-falling intonation. This classification can be showed as following. types of utterancefinal intonation

pitch patterns in utterance-final

falling intonation

no rise rise

no fall

rising intonation

fall

rising-falling intonation

When the utterance-final intonation has a pitch rise, the amount of rise were measured. Rising pitch may be considered as marked against falling pitch. Pitch fall may be explained with physiological necessity, as “expiration from lung reduces along with time, and it is reflected to the falling of pitch pattern” (Ueno 1989: 300; English translation by Takada). So it can be thought that pitch fall is unmarked for intonation. In other words, because of this unmarkedness, amount of the pitch fall was not measured in this study.3 Previous researchers have found that when pitch rising occurs 3

Falling intonation in the present report includes Kori’s (1997) “Heichoo” ‘flat intonation’ and “Kakoochoo” ‘falling intonation’. According to Kori (1997: 190; English translation by Takada), the “Heichoo” is “the intonation which is not accompanied by a special movement” of pitch and lacks a “special transmission function”, and “Kakoochoo” is “used as a response to unexpected information.” However, since Kori’s (1997) “Kakoochoo” is not included in the data the focus of the present research is Kori’s (1997) “Heichoo”. In other words, because “Heichoo” is not accompanied by a special movement, it is not meaningful to measure the amount of that movement.

246

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

on the final mora of a phrase (sentence/utterance), the pitch rises from the beginning or from the middle of the final mora (Wada 1975, Ayusawa 1992). However, because in actuality the preparation for the rise begins before the final mora (on the penultimate mora), in the present research, the mora preceding the final mora was included in the measurement of the amount of rise, and the point of lowest pitch in these two morae (the point where the fundamental frequency (F0) reaches the lowest value) was used as the reference point for this measurement. However, when devoicing of the penultimate mora made it impossible to extract the pitch, the reference point was moved back to the antepenultimate mora. For rising intonation and rising-falling intonation, the point where the pitch reached the highest point were used as the Highest Point in the measurement. (Figures 1-3 illustrate typical examples of the three types of utterance-final intonation and their

reference point

highest point

reference point

Figure 1. Falling Intonation Hai, nan desyoo? ’Yes, what might it be (that I can do for you) ? ’ (Situation No.3 Clerk1)

highest point reference point

Figure 3. Rising-Falling Intonation Tai e ikaremashita yo ne? ’(You) went to Thailand, didn’t you?’ (Situation No.11 Ms. Suzuki)

Figure 2. Rising Intonation Yamada-kun wa? ’(And you?,) Mr.Yamada’ (Situation No.1 Peofeccer Saito)

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

247

points of measurement.4) 4. Results This section reports on the results of the analysis of the three types of utterance-final intonation and the amount of rise in cases where a rise in intonation was observed.

0 Conf Judg Sel Expl Req Req Req Req

rising

Yes/No Q

Wh- Q

falling

rising-falling

Figure 4. Breakdown of the types of intonation in each utterance-final form 4

10 0

desu

-masu

Plain Verb Plain Adjective Interrogative word Incomplete ending

10

20

no

20

rising-falling falling rising

deshoo ka

30

30

desu ne deshita yo ne -masu ka -mashita (ka) -mashita (yo) ne -masen ka

40

desu ka

Number of utterances

Number of utterances

4.1. Types of utterance-final intonation The types of utterance-final intonation observed in the present data were falling intonation, rising intonation, and rising-falling intonation. The breakdown of the type of utterance-final intonation in each function of interrogative utterances is given in Figure 4, and the breakdown of utterance-final forms and each intonation is given in Figure 5. The utterance-final intonation types occurred in order of high frequency to low frequency as follows: rising>falling> rising-falling. Rising, the most frequently observed intonation type, was associated with every interrogative utterance function and every utterance-final form. As in previous research on interrogative sentences, where rising sentence-final intonation received the most attention, results of the present research showed that rising intonation was the most typical intonation type for interrogative utterances. Figure 4 shows that rising-falling intonation appeared only in confirmation requesting interrogative utterances (Conf), and confirmation requests never had falling intonation. This suggests that the intonation of confirmation requests is different to some extent from that of interrogative utterances with other functions.

deshoo

Polite (desu/-masu) form forms

Plain forms form Other

Figure 5. Breakdown of the types of utterance-final intonation in each utterance-final forms of interrogative utterances

In the translation of dialogs words that are unnecessary in Japanese but necessary in English are represented in ( ). This notation is adopted throughout the report.

248

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

The type of intonation of interrogative utterances correlated strongly with utterance-final forms. Figure 5 shows that while rising intonation occurred in interrogative utterances with all of the utterance-final forms, the use of falling and rising-falling intonation tended to be limited to certain utterance-final forms. In particular, falling intonation correlated strongly with incomplete utterances (utterances that lacked conclusive grammatical forms, e.g. Yamada-kun wa? ‘(And you?) Mr. Yamada.’) and deshoo, and rising-falling intonation with the utterance-final form (yo) ne. But the type of intonation did not seem to be related to differences in the honorific forms (polite desu/-masu versus plain forms), tense, or polarity of negative versus affirmative interrogative forms. The next section describes a detailed examination on the relation between falling intonation and rising-falling intonation, and the utterance-final forms and utterance function. 4.1.1. Falling intonation and utterance-final forms As observed in Figure 5, falling intonation correlates with certain utterance-final forms. Its use is concentrated in utterances ending with deshoo (ka). Its occurrence with each utterance-final form is investigared in the following section. 4.1.1.1. Deshoo (ka) The most common utterance-final form with falling intonation was deshoo (ka). Table 2 shows the specific utterances ending with deshoo (ka). The form deshoo is the polite form of daroo. Although daroo typically expresses suppositional modality, when it is used in an interrogative sentence it does not simply express supposition. Masuoka & Takubo (1992:137; translation by Takada) claimed that interrogative sentences with suppositional modal forms (daroo, deshoo) are “basically interrogative sentences with a self-questioning form”, and in cases where the final interrogative particle ka is added “it is possible to use the self-questioning form to request the listener’s opinion indirectly”. Adachi (1999) analyzed the functions of sentences with daroo (including deshoo). He pointed out that daroo functions as a confirmation request when it is pronounced with rising intonation, and when it is pronounced with falling intonation, it functions as an interrogative sentence with heightened politeness towards the listener rather than expressing supposition or confirmation.

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

249

Table 2. The interrogative utterances with deshoo (ka) ending with Falling Intonation Utterance Scene No. No. 1 2

3

Speaker

Listener Hearer

Clerk1 (f)

Mr.Yamada

3

Clerk1 (f)

3

8

Shop assistant

4

8

Mr.Yamada Mr.Yamada

Utterance

Hai, nan desyoo? 'Yes, what might it be (that can I do for you) ?'

Hai, nan desyoo? 'Yes, what might it be (that can I do for you) ?'

Hai, nan no hon desyoo?

'Yes, what book might it be (that you want) ?' Shop Ikura desyoo ka? Mr.Yamada assistant (f) 'How much might it be?'

Watashi, eigo ni amari jishin ga nai n desu kedo, daijoobu deshoo ka?

5

9

Ms.Suzuki Mr.Watanabe

6

13

Nan desyoo? Library Ms.Yoshida 'What might it be (that can I do for you) ?' officer (m)

7

16

Mr.Yamada

Clerk1 (f) Professor Saito (f)

8

18

Mr.Yamada

9

24

Mr.Yamada Ms.Yoshida

10

27

Ms.Yoshida

11

27

Ms.Yoshida

12

33

Ms.Tamura

13

34

'It's that I do not have much confidence in (my) English but do you suppose (it) will be alright?'

Kaikeeka wa doko deshoo ka? 'Where might the accounting section be?'

Request function Expl Expl Expl Expl Judg Expl Expl

Ano, ketsuron wa kore de ii deshoo ka?

'Uhm, do you suppose is the conclusion okay like this?'

Raishuu no nomikai, Shinjuku to, Kichijooji to, Ikebukuro no naka de, doko ga ichiban ii deshoo ka? 'Which do you suppose is the best place for next week's party, Shinjuku, Kichijoji or Ikebukuro?'

Judg

Sel

Sore de, sensei ni suisensho wo kaite itadakitai no Professor desu ga, yoroshii deshoo ka? Tanaka (m) 'So it's that (I) would like to have you write a reference letter (for me) but, would it be alright?'

Judg

Raishuu no kinyoobi made ni onegai dekinai

Professor deshoo ka? Tanaka (m) 'Do you suppose (I) could request (you do it) by next Friday?' Clerk2 (m)

Jaa, doko ni tomereba ii deshoo ka?

'Then, where might it be that I can park my bicycle?' Professor Hai, nan desyoo ka? Ms.Yoshida Tanaka (m) 'Yes, what might it be (that can I do for you) ?'

Judg Expl Expl

Combining Masuoka & Takubo’s (1992) and Adachi’s (1999) explanations, deshoo (ka) with falling intonation uses a self-questioning form to request the listener’s opinion indirectly, and it is an interrogative utterance with heightened politeness towards the listener. This analysis is applicable to the data of this report. The interrogative utterances with deshoo (ka) ending with falling intonation in Table 2 are interrogative utterances that request information for the listener. In this sense, they are similar to other interrogative utterances with rising intonation. In addition, in regard to the relationship between the speaker and the listener in the dialog, the listener was of higher status than or in a distant relationship with the speaker, that is, in a relationship where the speaker is required to use the polite (desu/-masu) style. When the utterance-final form deshoo was used with other intonation types it became possible for it to function as a confirmation request. In the data of this report there was only one utterance where the utterance-final

250

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

form deshoo was pronounced with rising intonation, that is, Yamada-kun, kyoo no renshuu, deru deshoo? ‘Mr. Yamada, you will attend today’s practice, won't you?’ This functions as a confirmation request, because this interrogative utterance was basically a prediction by the speaker related to the interrogative content. Masuoka & Takubo (1992:137; translation by Takada) claimed that when the deshoo form is accompanied by rising intonation, it “becomes an expression which requests the listener’s agreement with a prediction which the speaker believes is correct.” In addition, Adachi (1999) claimed that when deshoo is used for this function it is usually accompanied by rising intonation. 4.1.1.2. Incomplete endings There were four interrogative utterances uttered with falling intonation and incomplete endings, as shown in Table 3. Utterances Nos. 1-3 have forms omitted after the topic, and the main clause of the complex sentence in Utterance No. 4 is omitted. Table 3. The interrogative utterances with incomplete endings with Falling Intonation Utterance Scene No. No.

Speaker

Hearer Listener

Utterance

Request function

Jaa, Murakami-Sensee no "keezaishi" wa? 1

17

'Well, (how Professor.Murakami's Mr.Yamada Ms.Tamura ’Well, as forabout) professor Murakami’s History (how is it)?’ HistoryofofEconomics, Economics?'

2

23

Ms.Yoshida Mr.Yamada

3

29

4

34

Waitress

Mr.Yamada

Nani ka? '(Is there) something?'

Gochuumon wa? '(What is) your order?'

Expl Expl Expl

A, ato, kaojashin mo noseyoo ka to omou n desu ga?

Professor Expl Ms.Yoshida ’Oh, I am thinking aboutabout also including Tanaka (m) 'Oh, in in addition, addition,it’s it'sthat that I am thinking a photo ofyour your picture face, but, (would be all right)?’ but, (is itthat alright)?' including

The omitted parts of utterances No. 1-4 can be recovered from the context and situation. No. 1 is the omitted version of Jaa, Murakami-Sensee no keezaishi wa doo desu ka? ‘Well, as for Professor Murakami’s History of Economics, how is (it)?’ In this case, only the topic (name of the class) differs from the immediately preceding utterance Ozawa-Sensee no kokusaihoo wa doo desu ka? ‘how is Professor Ozawa’s International Law?’, and by uttering only the part that is replaced, it is possible to infer the rest. No. 2 and No. 3 are omitted versions of Gochuumon wa nani ni nasaimasu ka? ‘As for your order, what will you have?’ and Nani ka shitsumon ga aru no? ‘Do (you) have any questions?’, respectively. They are expressions used frequently to encourage the listener to give his/her opinion. In contrast, there is an additional positive effect from the omission in No.4. The utterance is presumably the omitted version of A, ato, kaojasin

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

251

mo noseyoo to omou n desu ga, ii deshoo ka? ‘Oh, in addition, I am thinking about also including a photo of your face, but, would that be all right?’, and it functions to request the listener’s permission. When requesting listener’s action or permission, the speaker is offered to use the strategy of making the expression vague by omitting direct expressions, and thus having the listener infer the omittion. The strategy is used to expresses consideration for the listener. The reason that interrogative utterances with incomplete endings are pronounced with falling intonation relates to the fact that these utterances end at a point which is basically not sentence-final. Rising intonation acts on and requests the listener’s response; that is, it implies that the listener’s utterance should come next. Interrogative utterances with incomplete endings have information content that can be completed from the context, are grammatical without a final form, and intrinsically the final-forms of the utterance are forms where rising intonation does not occur. In actuality, interrogative utterances with incomplete endings can have rising intonation as well as falling intonation. The choice of rising intonation versus falling intonation relates to the function of the omission itself. For example, falling intonation is preferred to rising intonation (which indicates the end of the utterance) in cases where an ellipsis is used as a politeness strategy5 and it is necessary to focus on the omitted part (as in No. 4), because it allows for the implication that the utterance will continue. This point is worthy of further study in the future. 4.1.1.3. Other examples There was only one utterance accompanied by falling intonation which had a final utterance form other than deshoo and did not have an incomplete ending, as shown in Table 4. In the interrogative utterance in Table 4, Mr. Tanaka (Professor, male) asks Ms. Suzuki (student, female) whether or not the materials he lent her were helpful. According to Masuoka & Takubo (1992), this interrogative utterance which requests unknown information from the listener, should be accompanied by rising intonation. The existence of this exception suggests that while there are types of intonation that are preferred for certain utterance forms, in actual utterances there are also cases which violate that correlation. Furthermore, the violation of the correlation may depend on the redundancy of the interrogative function that appears on utterance-final intonation. Namely, while the utterance-final rising intonation functioned 5

For example, it can be considered as a negative politeness strategy in Politeness Theory (Brown & Levinson 1987).

252

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

as requesting conformation for the listener, there was also the final interrogative particle ka. Such reduplication of the same function might cause the no-rising of utterance-final intonation. However, further study is necessary to confirm this. Table 4. The interrogative utterances with mashita (ka) with Falling Intonation Utterance Scene No. No. 1

2

Speaker

Listener Hearer

Utterance

Professor Tanaka (m)

Ms.Suzuki

De, yaku ni tachi mashita ka? 'Then, was it helpful?'

Request function Judg

4.1.2. Rising-falling intonation and utterance-final forms—yo ne Rising-falling intonation occurred in the three utterances given in Table 5. These utterances functioned as a Confirmation Request (Conf), and the rise and fall occurred on the utterance-final form consisting of the final particles yo ne. Table 5. The interrogative utterances with yo ne with Rising-Falling Intonation Utterance Scene No. No. 1

5

2

11

3

15

Speaker Professor Tanaka (m)

Listener Hearer

Utterance

Tashika shimekiri wa senshuu no kin yoobi Ms.Suzuki deshita yo ne? 'The deadline was last Friday, wasn't it?'

Soo ieba, senpai wa tashika kyonen, Tai e ikare mashita yo ne?

Ms.Suzuki Mr.Watanabe 'That remainds me, for certain you [my senior] went to Thailand last year, didn't you?'

Request function Conf

Conf

Watanabe-san wa, Amerika ni ryuugaku-shite

imashita yo ne? Professor Mr.Watanabe 'Mr. Watanabe, You were studying in the Saito (f) America, weren't you? )

Conf

For the rising-falling intonation in the present data, the measurement reference point for the rise was on the yo of the final particles yo ne, after which it rose to the highest point in the middle of ne, and subsequently fell at the end of the utterance. In this way there was a change from rising to falling intonation on the final mora. Koyama (1997) and Katagiri (1997) investigated the function of the combination of rising-falling intonation and final particles. Although Koyama (1997:102; English translation by Takada) does not refer to the combination of yo and ne, he claims that “ne has two functions: 1) presentation to the listener (making approaches to listener with rising intonation), and 2) additional display of the speaker’s internal recognition (matching/admiration) (falling intonation).” Koyama’s explanation is applicable to the explanation of interrogative utterances with utterance-final

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

253

yo ne in the present data. Katagiri (1997:254; English translation by Takada) investigated the relation between final intonation and the confirmation request function with the final particle form yo ne. In combining with the rising-falling intonation referred to in the present research, he claims that “yo ne suggests the existence of some kind of information source which supports the correctness of the accepted information which is expressed by the sentence.” This explanation can also be applied to the utterances in the present data. Koyama’s and Katagiri’s explanations do not contradict one another; the former explanation is a more abstract version of the latter. In the present data, the utterance-final form yo ne also occurred with rising intonation. In regard to the influence of different intonations on the meaning of the utterance, Katagiri (1997:254; English translation by Takada) claimed that with rising intonation yo ne becomes “a simple confirmation request of agreement”, and with rising-falling intonation, it “adds the implication that the speaker is using some information source … as a basis for accepting the information.” In this way, the connection between intonation and interrogative utterance forms is fixed to some extent, and that relation is not limited to a one-to-one correspondence, allowing for slight variations in nuance when a different intonation is used. When used as a confirmation request, the utterance-final form yo ne is similar to the utterance-final form deshoo with rising intonation discussed in 4.1.1.6 However, while yo ne can have the confirmation request function with rising-falling intonation or rising intonation, deshoo does not function as a confirmation request unless it has rising intonation. This is because while the former (yo ne) form itself has the confirmation request function, and intonation is employed to give variations in nuance, the latter (deshoo) form itself does not have this function and acquires this function in context with an addition of the intonation. 4.2. Amount of rise in intonation In this section, characteristics of the amount of rise observed in rising intonation and rising-falling intonation are investigated. Falling intonation is excluded from the analysis because there is no pitch change to compare to after the reference point, which is the end point of the utterance. Below, the overall tendencies in the amount of rise in intonation accompanied by a rise is noted first. 6

More specifically, refer to Koyama (1997). Koyama reports on differences in the semantic functions of ne and deshoo (daroo) with rising intonation. He also conducted a study on deshoo (daroo) with falling intonation, but did not refer to its function as an interrogative sentence as noted by Adachi (1999) and as mentioned in 4.1.1.

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

Semitones (ST) were used for the analysis of the amount of pitch rise in order to compare the pitch of a multiple of both male and female speakers, and the following formula is used to transform Hertz values to semitones. In this formula, f1 refers to the fundamental frequency (F0) of the reference point (the point where the F0 of the final accent phrase reaches its lowest value) and f2 to the highest F0 of the rise after the reference point.7 ST is an abbreviation of semitone.

10 Number of utterances

254

5

0 0

2

4

6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Level of rise (ST)

Figure 6. Histogram of amount of rise in rising intonation

ST＝12×log2(f2/f1) Figure 6 is a histogram showing the number of utterances for the amount of rise in terms of ST. The mean value of rise is 8.75 ST indicated by a “↓” (and the median value 8.71 hardly varies at all). The shape of the distribution shows a bell-shaped but positively skewed distribution. In other words, within the range of the distribution, the data was concentrated in the relatively smaller rise levels, while the data for the relatively larger rise levels was scattered and there were no ample data for each level. Even among the larger rises, there was a limit to the amount of rise that can occur over a short period of time. The largest rise in the present data was 19.35 ST for Mr. Watanabe’s (male) interrogative utterance Suzuki-san, nani o mite iru no? ‘Ms. Suzuki, what is it that you are looking at?’, and the smallest rise was for Mr. Yamada’s (male) Senpai no yotee wa? ‘As for (your) the plan my senior, (what is it)?’, an interrogative utterance with an incomplete ending utterance-final form. 4.2.1. Amount of rise in rising-falling intonation Figure 6 in 4.2 shows the combined results for rising intonation and rising-falling intonation, but there were only three interrogative utterances with rising-falling intonation, as shown in Table 5 in 4.1.2. These three utterances were all smaller than the mean rise value (the amount of rise in the order that the utterances are listed in Table 5 was 8.2 ST, 3.8 ST, and 2.6 7

The relation of height between two sounds is decided with the ratio but not with the difference. Semitone is one way to indicate the relation by numerical values. To calculate the semitones, the fomula by Fletcher (1934), Young (1939) and Pickler (1965) were refered.

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

255

ST). The first utterance Tashika shimekiri wa raishuu no kinyoobi deshita yo ne. ‘For certain the deadline is (as I recall) Friday of next week, isn’t it?’ has a larger rise in comparison to the other two and indicates the teacher’s dissatisfaction or suspicion towards the student. It may be that the speaker’s emotion is displayed in the relatively large amount of rise. The fact that the other two utterances which do not particularly exhibit strong emotion such as dissatisfaction have a small rise in intonation (3.8 ST, 2.6 ST) suggested that rising-falling intonation basically only rises in a small amount. 4.2.2. Amount of rise in relation to the speaker In this section, examination is made on the tendencies in the values of mean and standard deviation for the rise in relation to the speaker in the dialog. In a study of the sentence-final intonation of interrogative sentences, Ayusawa (1992:9-10; English translation by Takada) demonstrated that although “each speaker had a characteristic pattern”, there were differences neither in the distance between the accent nucleus of the interrogative word and the end of the sentence, nor in relation to the type of interrogative sentence (echo questions which repeat a previous word, wh-questions, yes/no questions). The pattern she described consisted of duration of the rise, amount of the rise, and the shape of the rise. The results suggest that in the present data while a regular tendency in the amount of rise for individual speakers will be observed, there will be no difference in the type of interrogative utterances. In addition, it is also necessary to ascertain whether or not the tendencies observed for each individual speaker relate to that speaker’s gender, social position, etc. Figure 7 shows the mean and standard deviation of the amount of rise for each individual speaker. The means for females are indicated by ● and for males by ■. The standard deviation is indicated by the length of the lines that extend upward and downward from each mean. Assuming the data follows a normal distribution, approximately 68% of the data is included in this range. The speakers are listed from the left according to their role as junior students, senior students, professors, and others, and the numbers given under the name of each speaker indicate the number of interrogative utterances that were accompanied by a rise for each speaker. Cases with less than three utterances will be dealt separately when the necessity arises. Focusing on the mean of individual differences, the mean value for each speaker was 6-10ST, and among the speakers whose mean differed the most, there was a difference of approximately 4 ST (the data of Mr. Watanabe was

256

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

Clerk1 (f)

Shop assistant (f) Passing stranger (f)

Prof.Saito

Prof.Tanaka

Ms.Tamura

Ms.Yoshida

Mr.Watanabe

Ms.Suzuki

Mr.Nomura

Mr.Yamada

Amount of rise (ST)

excluded because he had 15.5 only one utterance). In the 15 analysis of variance (One-Way 11.9 10 9.6 10.2 9.7 9.7 ANOVA) there is a significant 8.1 difference between these 6.2 5.9 5.6 5 4.0 groups (α =.05 ), but in 0 multiple comparisons (the Tukey-Cramer Method), there was not a significant difference among any speakers (α=0.05) (the data of speakers whose 8 17 9 2 7 10 14 6 1 1 3 number of interrogative Professors Junior Senior Others students students utterances were below four was excluded). In other Figure 7. Mean and standard deviation of amount words, in the data of this of rise for each individual speaker (●=females, ■ report, although there was a =males) difference in the amount of rise among the speakers, it was not possible to determine where this specific difference lay. Focusing on the standard deviation for the speakers, the standard deviation was higher for the individual speakers with a high mean. High standard deviation means that there was a wide variability. This was due to the fact that while the speakers whose mean was low did not change the amount of rise much, the speakers whose mean was high tended to vary the amounts of rise. In other words, this data confirmed that there are two types of amount of rise: amount of rise that is always small, and amount of rise that always varies. No data was confirmed for the amount of rise that is always large. Next, the relations between social attributes of the speakers and the amount of rise were focused. Figure 7 shows the social attributes of the speakers; However there were no differences in the social attributes for gender or social position. In the One-Way ANOVA, there was also not a significant difference between these groups (α=.05). Although of course these social positions differed from reality because they were based on an acting performance, it is interesting to note that the amount of rise did not vary with the social position being performed. 4.2.3. Type and function of interrogative utterance and the amount of rise According to Ayusawa’s (1992) results, there was no difference in the amount of rise in sentence-final intonation due to the type of interrogative sentence. In this section, the relation between the type (and the function) of

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

257

Expl Req

Conf Req Judg Req Sel Req

Amount of rise (ST)

an interrogative sentence and the amount of rise is investigated, and examined to confirm whether or not Ayusawa’s (1992) results apply to the present data. Analysis of the types and functions of 15 interrogative utterances where a rise was observed showed that Confirmation Requests 10 (Conf) and Selection Requests (Sel) were rare; in particular, there was only one Selection Request. 5 For this reason, Selection Requests is dealt separately in the analysis. 0 In Figure 8, as in Figure 7, the mean and the standard deviation value for each interrogative 6 37 1 34 utterance type and function are indicated. For the Selection Request (Sel); however, only the Yes/No Wh-Q Q mean value is indicated. The number of utterances for each function is shown under the abbreviations. Here, while Explanation Requests (Expl) Figure 8. Average and had the highest mean rise value, Confirmation standard deviation of amount Requests (Conf) had the lowest mean rise value. of rise for interrogative utterance It was assumed that Confirmation Requests had a type and function low mean rise value because the rise occurred in rising-falling intonation. (As noted in 4.2.1, the rise in rising-falling intonation was small.) In addition, the mean rise value for Judgment Requests (Judg) was between that of Confirmation Requests and Explanation Requests. But in the One-Way ANOVA, there was not a significant difference between these groups (α=.05). Judgment Requests were characterized by a smaller standard deviation. This suggests that the distribution of the amount of rise for Judgment Requests is relatively concentrated and not scattered. In contrast, the standard deviation for Explanation Requests was larger. This implied that the amount of rise of Explanation Requests varied and there was a tendency to have more utterances which have a large rise. The rise in Confirmation Requests may depend on whether or not they had rising-falling intonation or rising intonation, and this appeared to be correlated to the increase in standard deviation. Considering the circumstances described above, the differences of the amount of rise depending on these functions were related more to whether or not they fixed the amount of rise, rather than to whether or not the amount of rise was large. Results of the single Selection Request cannot be generalized because there was only one utterance, but the mean value for this utterance was quite small compared to the overall distribution.

258

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

4.2.4. The location of the accent nucleus and the amount of rise In this section, investigation is made on the differences in the amount of rise of intonation based on the location of the accent in the utterance-final form. As mentioned earlier, Japanese accent and intonation are both expressed by rise and fall in pitch. However, the unit to which they apply differs; accent applies to a word unit, and intonation to a sentence/utterance unit. In other words, at the end of an utterance, first, the accent is determined by the form of the utterance-final word (accent phrase), and second, intonation is realized over the accent as a element which expresses the emotion, function, etc. of the utterance. Therefore, when observing the amount of rise in intonation, it is necessary to consider differences related to the accent of the utterance-final form. The following two questions are considerd when categorizing the accent type of utterance-final forms in relation to the rise of intonation. 1) Regarding the High-Low relative pitch of the accent8, is the final mora to which the utterance-final intonation is added, “High” or “Low”? 2) In cases where the reference point for the rise of the final utterance intonation is “Low” according to the condition in 1), how far away is the accent nucleus of the accent phrase from the reference point? As for 1), if due to the accent, the final mora on which the rise starts is “High”, the beginning of the rise becomes a higher pitch to some extent than when the rise starts from a “Low” mora, and of necessity, the amount of rise in intonation is expected to be small. As for 2), the closer the falling point of the accent from “High” to “Low” is to the start of the rise of intonation, the more pronounced the change from “High” to “Low” will be over a short interval, and there will be some influence on the amount of rise (the rise will increase or decrease) due to the burden this may cause to the speaker. Taking the above into account, the accent types of utterance-final forms are categorized as following three types. The number in each accent type’s name represents the mora where the accent nucleus is located. The mora is counted from the last mora of the final form, and the direction of the count is represented by minus (-). The swung dash (~) beside the number is a sign which implies “or more”. In the examples, the arrow (↓) indicates the location of the accent nucleus where the voice falls within the utterance-final form. The part that is considered to be the utterance-final form holding the accent is underlined. 8

According to the accent for standard Japanese, each of the mora in a word has a relative pitch height of either “High” or “Low”.

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

259

0 Type:

The final form in which the final mora is the “High” of the accent, that is, the accent type does not have a fall within the accent phrase. EX 1 Yamada-kun wa? ‘(What about) Mr. Yamada?’ EX 2 Dore ga ichi-ban suki? ‘Which one do (you) like the best?’ -2 Type: The final form in which the final mora is the “Low” of the accent, and the accent nucleus is located on the penultimate mora. EX 3 Suzuki-san, nani o mite iru↓no? ‘Ms. Suzuki, what is it that you are looking at?’ EX 4 Tokui na ryoori wa na↓ni? ‘What kind of food are (you) good (at cooking)? -3~Type: The final form in which the final mora is the “Low” of the accent, and the accent nucleus is located before the penultimate mora. EX 5 Do-nichi mo tsukae-ma↓su ka? ‘Can (it) be used on Saturday and Sunday too?’ EX 6 Shuushoku wa, moo kimari-ma↓shita ka? ‘Have (you) already found a job?” EX 7 Do↓o shite? ‘Why?’

-3~ Type

-2 Type

0 Type

Amount of rise (ST)

The interrogative utterances in this report are classified according to the above classification and the amount of rise for each accent type is shown in Figure 9. As in Figures 7 and 8, I indicate the mean and the standard deviation value for each of the accent types of the utterance-final form are indicated. The numbers under the name of each accent type indicate the number of utterances. There was a tendency for the utterances to be concentrated in the -3~ Type due to the extremely high 15 frequency of use of the polite (desu/-masu) forms and their conjugating forms, which have an accent in 10 which the location precedes the penultimate mora. The remaining 0 Types and -2 Types were for the most 5 part set forms. Namely, the 0 Types were observed on incomplete ending utterances, and utterances 0 ending with verbs and adjectives with what is called a dictionary form, and -2 Types occurred with utterances 7 9 62 ending with the interrogative pronoun nani ‘what’, final particle no, etc. In analyzing the differences related to accent types, it was not possible to separate Figure 9. Average and the influence of forms which were set to some degree standard deviation of from the influence of the utterance-final form. amount of rise for accent Here, the amount of rise for the 0 Type was small type of final forms as expected. This was because it was already in a

260

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

state of high pitch before the rise and rose from that point. However, three of the seven 0 Types occurred in interrogative utterances with incomplete endings. The rises for these incomplete ending utterances (2.2 ST, 4.2 ST, 4.6 ST) were small compared to that of the other four utterances (3.6 ST, 7.8 ST, 8.8 ST, 9.8 ST). There were also two incomplete ending utterances of the -3~ Type (Shuushoku katsudoo no hoo wa? ‘As for job hunting, (how is it going)?’, De, kaze no hoo wa? ‘And, as for (your) cold, (how is it)?’). In the present data, because there were few interrogative utterances with incomplete endings, it was not possible to generalize, and whether the tendency for the amount of rise to be small for the 0 Type is depended on the location of the accent or related to the fact that the utterance had an incomplete ending remained as a question for future study. The -2 Type had the largest amount of rise, and the amount of rise for the -3~ Type was between the -2 Type and 0 Type. The reason that the -2 Type had the largest amount of rise probably related to the fact that the speaker made a conscious effort to raise the intonation because the fall in the accent occurred just before the end of the utterance. In the One-Way ANOVA, there was a significant difference between these groups (α=.01). Furthermore, in multiple comparisons (Tukey-Cramer Method), there were significant differences between the 0 Type and the -2 Type and between the -2 Type and -3~ Type (α=.01), but was not between the 0 Type and the -3~ Type (α=.05). 5. Summary A report was conducted on intonation in interrogative utterances in the speech of the dialogues in the “Dialog Module” of the “TUFS Language Modules” Japanese Version of the “21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Program Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics” of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. The following results were reported in relation to the questions posed in Section 2.3. 1)

What kind of utterance-final intonation types are observed in the data? In the data for this report, there were three intonation types were observed: 1) rising intonation, 2) falling intonation, and 3) rising-falling intonation. Rising intonation was the most frequent and thought to be the most typical intonation for interrogative utterances. 2)

How do the types of utterance-final intonation correlate with the function and type of interrogative utterance and with the

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

261

utterance-final form? It was reported that the connection between intonation and interrogative utterance forms was fixed to some extent. Specifically, falling intonation and rising-falling intonation correlated with specific forms. Falling intonation correlated with utterance-final forms including deshoo which express a polite question without the supposition function, and incomplete endings which involve the ellipsis of information, etc. Rising-falling intonation correlated with the utterance-final form yo ne when it functioned as a Confirmation Request. But this report also showed that the relation was not limited to a one-to-one correspondence. When the form itself possesses the fundamental function, the intonation is employed to give variations in nuance, and when the form itself does not have this function, it acquires an applied function in context with the addition of the intonation. 3)

Is there a difference in the amount of rise in the utterance-final intonation and the speaker in the dialog? Although there were individual differences, they were not related to individual attributes such as gender and social position of the speaker. The amount of rise depended on the speakers; there were speakers whose amount of rise was always small and speakers whose amount of rise varied, but there were no speakers whose amount of rise was always large. 4)

Are there differences in the amount of rise in the final utterance intonation that correlate with the location of the accent nucleus at the utterance-final form? The location of the nucleus of the accent were divided into three types: 1) 0 Type, 2) -2 Type and 3) -3~ Type. The amount of rise in intonation with the 0 Type (where the rise in intonation began from a relatively high pitch) was small. With the -2 Type, where the fall in accent and rise in intonation occurred over a short time interval, the amount of rise was large. In addition, this report suggests a number of questions for future intonation research. The variation in the number of data in each type of category presents a statistical problem in the present research. Due to the limited nature of the data, it was difficult to equalize the numbers, but taking this into account, it should be made possible to obtain clearer results in quantitative analyses in the future. There is also room for improvement in the categorizing in the analysis. By increasing the amount of data, it is possible to set up more precise categories. Features that were not analyzed in the present study include the emotional aspect of the speakers. As stated in Section 4.2 in the discussion

262

Mieko TAKADA and Takako AYUSAWA

of interrogative utterances with rising-falling intonation that had a large amount of rise, it is possible that peaks in the speakers’ emotions are expressed by increase in the amount of rise of intonation. In Section 4.1, non-interrogative functions of interrogative utterances were described, but new classificatory headings were not created in order to avoid over-complication of the issues. However, this may be required in future qualitative and quantitative studies. Since the dialogs in teaching materials are used for the research, the above results are limited and difficult to generalize. Nevertheless, they have important implications for future research questions. Acknowledgement This report was written under the supervision of Professor Takako Ayusawa. I would like to thank her for her valuable suggestions and encouragement. I would also like to thank Professor Polly Szatrowski for her helpful comments on the English translation and the contents of the report. References Adachi, T. 1999. Nihongo gimonbun ni okeru handan no shosoo (Aspects of Judgment in Japanese Interrogatives). [Frontier Series 11]. Tokyo: Kuroshio pub. Ayusawa, T. 1992. “Nihongo no gimonbun no inritsuteki tokuchoo (Prosodic Characteristics of Interrogative Utterances.)” Nihongo no inritsu ni mirareru bogo no kanshoo 2: onkyoo-onseigakuteki taishoo-kenkyuu (First Language Interference in Japanese Prosody 2: a contrastive analysis in acoustic and auditory phonetics. [Annual report of D-1 Group, “Nihongo-Onsee” in 1991]. 1-20. Brown, R. and S. Levinson 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fletcher, H. 1934. “Loudness, Pitch and the Timbre of Musical Tones and their Relation to the Intensity, the Frequency and the Overtone Structure.” JASA.6-2, 59-69. Katagiri, K. 1997. “Shuujoshi to intoneishon (Japanese Sentence-final Particles and Intonations.)” Bunpoo to Onsei (Speech and Grammar). Spoken Language Working Group ed. 1997. Tokyo: Kuroshio pub., 235-256. Kori, S. 1997. “Nihongo no intoneishon: kata to kinoo (Intonation of Japanese: pattern and function.)” Akusento, intoneishon, rizumu to poozu (Accent, Intonation, Rhythm, and Pause). Sugitoo, M. ed. 1997. Tokyo: Sanseidoo, 169-202. Koyama, T. 1997. “Bunmatsushi to bunmatsu intoneishon (Sentence-final Particles and Sentence-final Intonations.)” Bunpoo to Onsei (Speech

The Intonation of Interrogative Utterances

263

and Grammar). Spoken Language Working Group ed. 1997. Tokyo: Kuroshio pub., 97-113. Masuoka, T. and Y. Takubo Kiso nihongo bunpoo: kaitei-ban (Fundamentala Japanese Grammar: revised edition.) Tokyo: Kuroshio pub. Pickler, A. G. 1966. “Logarithmic Frequency Systems.” JASA 39-6, 1102-1110. Sugitoo, M. 1997. “Hanashikotoba no akusento, intoneishon, rizumu to poozu (Accent, Intonation, Rhythm, and Pause in Spoken Language.)” Akusento, intoneishon, rizumu to poozu (Accent, Intonation, Rhythm, and Pause). Sugitoo, M. ed. 1997. Tokyo: Sanseidoo, 3-20. The National Language Research Institute (NLRI) 1963. Hanashikotoba no bunkei 2: dokuwa shiryoo ni yoru kenkyuu (A Sentence Pattern in Colloquial Japanese 2: on Materials in Speech.) Tokyo: Shuei pub. Uyeno, T. 1989 “Bunpoo to intoneeshion (Grammar and Intonations).” Nihongo no onsei onin 1 (Sound and Phoneme of Japanese 1). [Kouza Nihongo to Nihongo-kyouiku 2 (Lectures on Japanese and Japanese Language Teaching 2)]. Sugitoo, M. ed. 1989. Tokyo: Meijishoin, 298-315. Wada, M. 1975. “Akusento intoneishon purominensu (Accent, Intonation and Prominence.)” Nihongo to nihongo-kyooiku: hatsuon, hyoogen hen (Japanese and Education of Japanese: Pronunciation and Expression). Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Japan. Young, R. W. 1939. “Terminology for Logarithmic Frequency Units.” JASA.11, 134-139.

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean* Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA 1. Introduction The recent studies of Seoul Korean (standard Korean) prosody are characterized by the approach assuming a model. One of the most influential models is one proposed by Jun (1993). This model lets the subsequent researches focus on the relationships between the phonological structure of prosody and syntax or semantics. Those researches cover focus (e.g. Chung and Kenstowicz 1997, Jun and Lee 1998, Utsugi forthcoming), interrogatives (e.g. Jun and Oh 1996, Park and Ahn 2002), and the syntactic structure (e.g. Schafer and Jun 2002, Utsugi forthcoming). Along the lines of these prosodic studies, the present paper deals with the prosody of auxiliaries in Seoul Korean as a first attempt. 1.1. The prosody of Seoul Korean According to Jun (1993), the prosodic structure of Seoul Korean has two kinds of prosodic phrases.1 She calls these the ‘intonational phrase’ (IP) and the ‘accentual phrase’ (AP). An IP consists of one or more APs and an AP consists of one or more phonological words. In Jun’s model, both the IP and the AP are defined by tones. The IP is the prosodic phrase demarcated by a boundary tone, i.e. a special tone appearing at the end of a certain prosodic phrase. In her later study (Jun 2000), Jun postulates nine categories of boundary tones such as L%, H%, LH%, HL%, LHL%, HLH%, LHLH%, HLHL%, LHLHL%.2 On the other hand, the AP is defined by semi-constant tonal patterns. The basic tonal pattern appearing when an AP consists of more than three syllables is LHLH. When it consists of three syllables, it bears a LH, LLH, or LHH tonal pattern, and when it consists of one or two syllables, it bears a LH tonal pattern. When the end of an AP corresponds to the end of an IP, however, an AP-final H tone is replaced by a boundary tone. It is also reported by Jun (2000) that there is an exceptional tonal pattern for AP. According to her, the AP-medial H tone sometimes appears * 1 2

We wish to thank the reviewers for their invaluable comments. We use the term ‘prosodic phrase’ in a generic sense referring to various kinds of phrases in prosodic studies. Tones followed by % stand for boundary tones.

266

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

on the third syllable instead of the second syllable. The factor which causes this delay is an open question. Jun (1993) and the subsequent researches have revealed that this prosodic structure is related to syntax and/or semantics. However, recent studies have revealed that the relationship is not as strong as the earlier studies have stated. For example, Jun (1993) reported that focus induces the dephrasing of APs, i.e. the incorporation of several APs into one AP, while the later studies (Chung and Kenstowicz 1997, Jun and Lee 1998, Utsugi forthcoming) reported that there are many cases in which focus does not induce the AP-dephrasing. Recent studies have also revealed that these cases often involve the suppression of an AP-medial peak (Chung and Kenstowicz 1997, Utsugi forthcoming). 1.2. Auxiliaries in Korean Korean has auxiliaries, most of which are also used as main predicates. When they are used as auxiliaries, they follow a main predicate and mainly have a grammatical function losing or reducing the original lexical meaning. For example, po- in (1a) is a verb meaning “see”, while that in (1b) functions as an auxiliary expressing attempt.3 (1) a. Na-nun ecey yenghwa-lul po-ass-ta. I-TOP yesterday movie-ACC see-PAST-DC “I watched movie yesterday.” b. Na-nun ecey hankwuk umsik-ul mek.e I-TOP yesterday Korean food-ACC eat (III)4 “I tried Korean food yesterday.”

po-ass-ta. ATTEMPT-PAST-DC

3

The Yale system is used for the Romanization of Korean. Abbreviations used for glosses in this paper are as follows: TOP: topic particle, ACC: accusative case particle, PAST: past tense suffix, DC: declarative sentence-type ending, POL: polite speech level ending (so-called hayyo-form). 4 Following Kōno (e.g. Kōno 1946, 1950), we use bases (or goki) to illustrate the inflection of predicates in Korean. In this approach, a base consists of a stem and a thematic vowel and is usually followed by an ending. There are three bases in Korean as in (i). (i) a. The first base (hereafter, I): a stem + Ø (e.g. mek-) b. The second base (hereafter, II): a stem + Ø/u (e.g. mek.u-). c. The third base (hereafter, III): a stem + e/a (e.g. mek.e-). This approach is different from other approaches which regard the vowels inserted after a stem as a part of the ending. The difference between these two approaches clearly appears in (ii), which shows the interpretation of verb inflection in mek.umyen (“if (someone) eats”; a stem = mek). (ii) a. Base-based approach: mek.u -myen base ending b. Other approaches : mek -umyen stem ending Thus, in glosses of (1b), III shows that mek.e is the third base of a predicate mek- (“eat”). For the review of bases, see Kanno (1997).

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

267

Nam and Ko (1993: 123-126) classifies Korean auxiliaries into auxiliary verbs and auxiliary adjectives and lists them by functions as in (2) and (3).5 Parenthesized forms in this list illustrate the ending forms in the preceding verbs.6 (2) Auxiliary verbs a. Progression: (III) kata, (III) ota, (I-ko) issta, (I-ko) kyeysita. b. Finality: (I-ko) nata, (III) nayta, (III) pelita, (I-koya) malta. c. Service: (III) cwuta, (III) tulita. d. Attempt: (III) pota. e. Possession: (III) twuta, (III) nohta, (III) kacita. f. Causative: (I-key) hata, (I-key) mantulta. g. Passive: (III-) cita, (I-key) toyta. h. Negation: (I-ci) anihata/anhta, (I-ci) malta, (I-ci) moshata. i. Emphasis: (III) tayta. j. Speculation: (III) poita. k. Obligation: (III-ya) hata. l. Approval: (I-kinun) hata. (3) Auxiliary adjectives a. Wish: (I-ko) siphta. b. Negation: (I-ci) anihata/anhta, (I-ci) moshata. c. Speculation: (II-nka, I-nunka, I-na) pota, (I-nunka, I-na, II-lkka) siphta. d. State: (III) issta, (III) kyeysita. e. Approval: (I-kinun) hata.

As can be seen in (2) and (3), Korean auxiliaries cover the function of aspect, voice, and modality. Auxiliaries are morphologically similar to compound verbs. Many auxiliaries connect to the third base of a main verb as in (4a), while most compound verbs are also formed in the same way as in (4b) even though compound verbs do not insert a space between morphemes orthographically. (4) a. Auxiliary: pat.a cwu-ta receive (III) SERVICE-DC “receive (for the sake of someone)” 5 6

This classification by Nam and Ko (1993) may be controversial. However, it is beyond the scope of this paper to argue the grammatical aspect of auxiliaries in detail. Although Nam and Ko (1993) do not use bases, their classification is illustrated here using bases.

268

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA b. Compound verb: pat.atul.ita accept “accept”

< pat.a receive (III)

+ tul.i-ta put inside-DC

A major difference between auxiliaries and compound verbs is in productivity. The combination of main verbs and auxiliaries is productive, while the formation of compound verbs is not productive. However, there are many cases in which the distinction between auxiliaries and compound verbs is not clear. Thus, how to distinguish them has been an issue in the grammatical studies of Korean (e.g. Utiyama 1997). This issue is beyond the present paper. In the following sections, only the typical auxiliaries as are listed in (2) and (3) are analyzed. 1.3. Purpose and organization of this paper The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prosody of auxiliaries in Seoul Korean. In particular, it is focused on whether there is an AP boundary between a main verb and an auxiliary. Also, if there are variations on AP-phrasing, the factors influencing AP-phrasing are also investigated. In section 2, the AP-phrasing of auxiliaries in the TUFS language modules (see 2.1.1 for details) is analyzed to find general tendencies. In section 3, an additional experiment is reported to examine the tendencies found in section 2. 2. The analysis of the TUFS language modules This analysis aims to investigate the AP-phrasing of predicate phrases consisting of a main predicate and an auxiliary in Seoul Korean. Since this is the first attempt to investigate the AP-phrasing of auxiliaries, what is especially aimed at is to find general tendencies in the material having variety and naturalness. For this reason, the TUFS language modules were used as the material. 2.1. The outline of the TUFS language modules The TUFS language modules are developed by the 21st Century COE Program “Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics”, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.7 These are developed as multilingual learning programs on the web. These include learning programs of 17 languages, and each program consists of four modules such as pronunciation, conversation, grammar, and vocabulary. Among these modules, the conversation module in the Korean learning program was analyzed. This module contains movies, sounds, 7

http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/modules/index.html

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

269

Korean scripts and Japanese translations. As for sounds, the original WAV files were analyzed. 2.2. Method 2.2.1. The object for analysis Since the distinction between auxiliaries and compound verbs is sometimes not clear as stated in 1.2, only the auxiliaries listed in Nam and Ko (1993) (see (2) and (3)), which are the typical auxiliaries, were analyzed8 2.2.2. Analysis The phrasing of AP was analyzed based on F0 tracks and auditory impression. This analysis was made on Praat (Version 4.3.04), the software for acoustic analysis developed by P. Boersma and D. Weenink at the University of Amsterdam. As for the judgments of AP-phrasing, Jun (1993) and K-ToBI conventions version 3.1 (Jun 2000) were adopted.9 These utilize the total impression involving several acoustic properties for the judgment of AP-phrasing and especially respect tonal features. That is to say, AP-like tonal sequences (e.g. LH, LLH, LHLH) as stated in 1.1 are the major cue for AP. It should be noted, however, that tonal features do not always work as the cue for AP. Also, Jun’s model is not the perfect one but only the tentative one which is to be modified (see Utsugi (forthcoming) for the problems of Jun’s model). Thus, controversial cases for AP-phrasing are mentioned in the discussion. 2.3. Results In the material, 52 tokens of auxiliaries were found. Among these tokens, 10 tokens inserted an AP boundary between a main predicate and an auxiliary, while 42 tokens did not insert an AP boundary between them. When a main predicate consists of one syllable, the predicate phrase appeared as one AP without an AP boundary between the main verb and the auxiliary without exception. Figure 1 shows the example of this case. In this contour, a peak appears at the first syllable of the auxiliary [bʷa], which also corresponds to the second syllable of the predicate phrase. This contour matches to the LHLH pattern when we focus on the total contour of the 8 9

(III-ya) toyta, which is not listed by Nam and Ko (1993), is included in the object for analysis since this has almost the same function and behavior as (III-ya) hata in (2k). ToBI (Tones and Break Indices) is one of the influential prosodic labeling conventions for English developed by Silverman et al. (1992). K-ToBI (Beckman and Jun 1996, Jun 2000) is the Korean version of ToBI based on Jun’s (1993) model of Korean prosody.

270

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

predicate phrase. Thus, this contour is judged as one AP without an AP boundary between the main verb and the auxiliary. On the other hand, when a main predicate consists of more than one syllable, there are two cases such as one AP and two APs. Figure 2 shows the case of one AP. In this contour, the peak appeared at the second syllable of the predicate phrase [joŋ], followed by a gradual fall. Thus, this contour is judged as one AP. Figure 3 shows the case of two APs. In this contour, the main predicate shows a high plateau from the second syllable [se] to the third syllable [kʰe] of the main predicate, suggesting the LHH tonal pattern which appears when an AP consists of three syllables. Thus, this contour is interpreted as having two APs. Table 1 illustrates the AP-phrasing of predicate phrases with auxiliaries by the number of syllables in a main predicate. To examine that the number of syllables influences the AP phrasing in this table, Fisher’s Exact Test was used. The result of the test showed that the number of syllables in a main verb and the AP-phrasing is not independent (p = 0.0011), suggesting that the number of syllables influences the AP-phrasing. 500

300

200

100

50

k abwa s* 0

 j o 2

Time (s)

Figure 1.

The F0 contour of the case when a main predicate consists of one syllable. The TUFS language modules (Korean conversation): Scene 9: Caknyen.ey hanpen ka pwass.e.yo. [ʨaŋɲɔne hanbɔn kabʷas*ɔjo] (“I went there once in the last year.” Main predicate = ka, auxiliary = pwasse.e.yo). In the phonetic description, [*] stands for the tense obstruent.

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

271

500

300

200

100

50

i jo  a  o i 0

s*



j

o 3

Time (s)

Figure 2.

The F0 contour of the case when a main predicate consists of more than one syllable and the predicate phrase appeared as one AP. The TUFS language modules (Korean conversation): Scene 24: Cenun amacon.ul cwulo iyonghako iss.e.yo. [ʨɔnɯn amaʥonɯl ʨuɾo ijoŋɦaɡo is*ɔjo] (“I mainly use Amazon.” Main predicate = iyonghako, auxiliary = iss.e.yo).

500

300 200

100

50

k  m s e kh e bo l k* e j 0

o 1.5

Time (s)

Figure 3.

Table 1.

The F0 contour of the case when a main predicate consists of more than one syllable and the predicate phrase appeared as two APs. The TUFS language modules (Korean conversation): Scene 16: Kemsayk.hay polkeyyo. [kɔmsekʰe bolk*ejo] (“I will search it.” Main predicate = kemsayk.hay, auxiliary = polkeyyo).

The AP phrasing predicates with auxiliaries by the number of syllables in a main verb. 1 AP 2 APs Total 1 syllable 12 0 12 2 syllables 22 2 24 3 syllables 4 6 10 4 syllables 4 2 6 Total 42 10 52

272

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

We turn now to the tendency of AP-phrasing by functions. In the material, 12 types of auxiliaries were found. Table 2 illustrates the AP-phrasing of each auxiliary with its function. In this table, it is noteworthy that the negative auxiliaries (I-ci) anhta and (I-ci) malta always appeared as two APs, even though there are only five tokens of negative auxiliaries in this material. Figure 4 shows the example of a negative auxiliary. In this contour, the F0 peak appears on the second syllable of the auxiliary [se], suggesting that the auxiliary forms the independent AP. In sum, it was identified that there are two patterns of AP-phrasing in the sequence of a main verb and an auxiliary, such as one AP and two APs. In addition, it was found that two factors are likely to influence the AP-phrasing, such as the number of syllables in a main verb and the function of the auxiliary (negation or not). Since the material is small and not well-balanced, further examinations are needed. Table 2. The AP-phrasing of auxiliaries by the function of the auxiliary Auxiliary Function* 1 AP 2 APs (III) kata Progression (2a) 1 0 (I-ko) issta Progression (2a) 4 0 (I-ko) nata Finality (2b) 1 0 (III) pelita Finality (2b) 6 0 (III) cwuta Service (2c) 12 0 (III) tulita Service (2c) 1 0 (III) pota Attempt (2d) 9 4 (I-ci) anhta Negation (2h) / (3b) 0 1 (I-ci) malta Negation (3b) 0 4 (III-ya) toyta Obligation (2k) 3 0 (I-ko) siphta Wish (3a) 4 1 (III) issta State (3d) 1 0 Total 41 11 * The function here follows the classification by Nam and Ko (1993) (See 1.2).

Total 1 4 1 6 12 1 13 1 4 3 5 1 52

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

273

500

300

200

100

50

k i d a  i dim a

s e

0

j

o 2.5

Time (s)

Figure 4.

The F0 contour of the predicate phrase whose auxiliary has the function of negation. The TUFS language modules (Korean conversation): Scene 34: Ce kitarici maseyyo. [ʨɔ kidaɾiʥi masejo] (“Don’t wait for me.” Main predicate = kitarici, auxiliary = maseyyo).

3. Experiment In the previous section, the two factors which can influence the AP-phrasing of auxiliaries were found. Among these factors, the function of the auxiliary was focused on and examined further by an additional experiment. 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Subjects The subjects in this experiment are the following 2 native speakers of Seoul Korean: PYI, born in 1970, male KMS, born in 1973, female

3.1.2. Material The material used in this experiment has four factors such as the function of auxiliaries (hereafter, function), the target word, the part of speech, and the sentence type (See Table 3 for the material).

274

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

Table 3. The Material of the experiment Sentence Type A: Kuken

-e.yo. (“As for that, ___.”) Part of Speech

Negation (Neg)

Auxiliary

Main Predicate

may-ci anh.ass.e.yo

an.ass.e.yo

“(I) did not tie”

“(I) embraced”

nay-ci moshayss.e.yo

moshayss.e.yo

“(I) could not submit”

“(I) could not do”

mek.e pelyess.e.yo

pelyess.e.yo

“(I) have eaten”

“(I) threw away”

maywe po.yess.e.yo

po.yess.e.yo

“(it) looked spicy”

“(it) was seen”

Function

Others (Oth)

Sentence Type B: Kuken OK.”)

-nuntey kwaynchanh.ass.e.yo. (“As for that, ___, (but) it was Part of Speech

Negation (Neg)

Auxiliary

Main Predicate

may-ci anh.assnuntey

an.assnuntey

“(I) did not tie, but”

“(I) embraced, but”

nay-ci moshayssnuntey

moshayssnuntey

“(I) could not submit, but”

“(I) could not do, but”

mek.e pelyessnuntey

pelyessnuntey

“(I) have eaten, but”

“(I) threw away, but”

maywe po.yessnuntey

po.yessnuntey

“(it) looked spicy, but”

“(it) was seen, but”

Function

Others (Oth)

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

275

The factor of the function has two levels; negation (hereafter, Neg) and the functions other than negation (hereafter, Oth). The difference between these two levels is the main concern in this experiment. The factor of the target word means which target word it is. This factor is nested to the factor of the function and has two levels for each function. Even though there are three auxiliaries for Neg in (2) and (3), (III-ci) malta was omitted since this is only used in imperative sentences. As to Oth, two auxiliaries were selected to compare them with negative auxiliaries in the same number of auxiliaries. The factor of the part of speech consists of two levels such as an auxiliary and a main predicate as in (5): (5) a. Auxiliary:

Kuke-n nay-ci moshay-ss.e-yo. that-TOP submit(I)- ENDING NEGATION(III)-PAST(III)-POL “As for that, I could not submit.” b. Main Predicate: Kuke-n moshay-ss.e-yo. that-TOP cannot_do(III)-PAST(III)-POL “As for that, I could not do.”

This factor is included to control the data. Since it is difficult to control the segmental condition which can affect prosody, main predicates having the same segments as auxiliaries were included in the material.10 If the difference between Neg and Oth is attributed to the segmental difference of target words, a similar difference will appear in main predicates; thus, the interaction between the factor of the function and the factor of the part of speech shows no significance. On the other hand, if there are differences other than segmental effects, the interaction will be significant. Finally, the factor of the sentence type has two levels such as the sentences in (6a) and (6b): (6) a. Sentence Type A: Kuke-n nay-ci moshay-ss.e-yo. that-TOP submit(I)-ENDING NEGATION(III)-PAST(III)-POL “As for that, I could not submit.” b. Sentence Type B: Kuke-n nay-ci moshay-ss-nuntey kwaynchanh.a-ss.e-yo. 10

Since anh- is only used as an auxiliary, the homonym an- (“embrace”) is used as the corresponding main predicate.

276

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA that-TOP submit(I)-ENDING NEGATION(III)-PAST-but OK-PAST-POL “As for that, I could not submit, but it was OK.”

This factor is included to examine data in various types of sentences. In each sentence type, the number of syllables in an auxiliary is four. This is because an AP with four syllables usually bears a H tone on the second syllable, which makes the judgment of AP-phrasing easier. 3.1.3. Recording procedures The recordings were made on digital audio tape (DAT), using a DAT-recorder (Sony TCD D-7) and a dynamic microphone (AKG D112), in a recording booth in the Phonetics Laboratory of the University of Tsukuba. A set of cards from which to read the material was made as follows. First, the material was divided into two groups. The first group was for the sentence type A and the second group was for the sentence type B. Second, for each group, 3 sentences were added for a purpose not related to this experiment. Thus, each group contained 11 sentences (8 sentences + 3 sentences). Third, each sentence of each group was printed in Hangul (Korean characters) on three cards; thus, a total of 33 cards for each group (11 sentences × 3) were printed. Forth, these cards were randomized. Fifth, for each group, 10 dummy cards were added to the 33 cards, 5 cards at the top and 5 cards at the bottom. The dummy cards were included to obviate the instability of speech intensity. Thus, the full set consisted of 43 cards for each group: 33 cards and 10 dummy cards. Before the recordings, the subjects were instructed to read the cards as natural speech, and were requested to practice reading the cards. The recordings were made as two sessions; the first session was for the first group of cards, and the second session was for the second group of cards. Between the two sessions, subjects had a short break. For each subject, the recordings were made once. Since a set of cards included 3 repetitions, 3 tokens were obtained per sentence. 3.1.4. Editing and analyzing procedures The recorded sounds were digitized at 16,000 Hz and were saved as WAV files, using WaveStudio (Version 4.50.11, Creative). The files were then analyzed using Praat (Version 4.3.04). On this software, F0 contours were computed using the autocorrelation algorithm. The F0 contours were analyzed in two ways; the observation of contours and the measurement. In the measurement, the minimal value in the first syllable (S1min) and the maximal value of the second syllable (S2max) of each target word were measured. Then, the rise from S1min to S2max (hereafter,

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

277

Initial Rise) was calculated by subtracting S1min from S2min. If the target word and the preceding word are incorporated into one AP, the F0 contour will show the gradual fall from the second syllable of the preceding word to the penultimate syllable of the target word. In this case, both S1min and S2max will be measured at the boundary between the first and second syllable, and the Initial Rise is expected to be zero.11 If the target word and the preceding word are prosodically separated as two APs and the AP-medial peak is not suppressed, the Initial Rise will be a positive number. If they are prosodically separated as two APs and the AP-medial peak is totally suppressed, the Initial Rise will be zero or near zero. The measured data were statistically analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA using four main factors and one interaction: the sentence type (block factor), the function, the target word (nested to function), the part of speech, and the interaction between the function and the part of speech. 3.2. Results Figure 5 shows the examples of the F0 contours in PYI’s data, in which the left contour illustrate Neg and the right illustrate Oth. As can be seen from these contours, each F0 contour has two peaks irrespective of the function; one at the final syllable of the main predicate and the other at the second syllable of the auxiliary. The two-peak-pattern like these is found in every token of PYI’s predicate phrases including auxiliaries. In these contours, the first peak is interpreted as the final H tone of the first AP and the second peak is interpreted as the medial H tone of the second AP. Thus, these contours are interpreted as two APs. 500

500

300

300

200

200

100

100

50

m e d i a n a

s*

 j

0

o 1.5

Time (s)

50

m    b  j 

s*

 j o

0

1.5 Time (s)

Figure 5. The F0 contours of predicate phrases (subject: PYI, sentence type: A). Left: mayci anh.ass.e.yo [meʥi anas*ɔjo] (Neg), right: mek.e pelyess.e.yo [mɔɡɔ bɔɾʲɔs*ɔjo] (Oth). 11

Even though the theoretically expected value is zero in this case, the measured value can slightly exceed zero because of the microprosodic perturbation.

278

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

The statistical results of PYI’s Initial Rise showed that the interaction between the function and the part of speech is statistically not significant (F (1, 47) = 0.37, p = 0.5471), suggesting that Neg and Oth have the similar Initial Rise. This can also be seen from Figure 6, which illustrates this interaction. On the other hand, as to KMS, Neg and Oth showed different F0 contours. Figure 7 shows the examples of F0 contours. As can be seen from these contours, Neg has two peaks, while Oth only has a peak at the final syllable of a main predicate, followed by a gradual fall.12 These contours suggest that Neg is preceded by an AP boundary while Oth is not. 70

Initial Rise (Hz)

60 50 40

NEGATION

30

OTHERS

20 10 0 Main Predicate

Auxiliary

Figure 6. The interaction between function and part of speech in PYI’s data. 500

500

300

300

200

200

100

100

m e d i a n a s*  j o

50 0

1.5 Time (s)

Figure 7.

12

50

m    b j  s*  j o 0

1.5 Time (s)

The F0 contours of predicate phrases (subject: KMS, sentence type: A). Left: mayci anh.ass.e.yo [meʥi anas*ɔjo] (Neg), right: mek.e pelyess.e.yo [mɔɡɔ bɔɾʲɔs*ɔjo] (Oth).

It should also be noted that there are exceptional patterns in KMS’s data. Among 12 tokens of negative auxiliaries, one token shows a two-peak-pattern. On the other hand, the other auxiliaries show no exceptions.

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

279

70

Initial Rise (Hz)

60 50 40

NEGATION

30

OTHERS

20 10 0 Main Predicate

Figure 8.

Auxiliary

The interaction between function and part of speech in KMS’s data.

The statistical results of KMS’s Initial Rise showed that the interaction between the function and the part of speech is statistically significant (F (1, 47) = 16.13, p = 0.0002), suggesting that Neg and Oth have a different tendency on the Initial Rise. This can also be seen from Figure 8, which illustrates this interaction. In this figure, the Oth’s Initial Rise is quite small, suggesting no AP boundary. 4. Discussion 4.1. The AP-phrasing of negative auxiliaries Both the section 2 and 3 results show the difference between negative auxiliaries and the other auxiliaries. That is to say, the negative auxiliaries insert an AP boundary immediately before it without exception, while the other auxiliaries sometimes insert it but sometimes do not. This suggests that the AP boundary in that position is obligatory for the negative auxiliaries but optional for the other auxiliaries. This is interesting when we compare this to the prosodic phrasing of Tokyo Japanese. Tokyo Japanese is similar to Seoul Korean both in grammar and prosody. As to grammar, Tokyo Japanese has auxiliaries which are similar to Seoul Korean auxiliaries in that it is derived from a predicate and follows a main predicate as in (7). (7)

Watasi-wa kinoo kankokuryoori-wo I-TOP yesterday Korean_food-ACC “I tried Korean food yesterday.”

tabete mita. eat-ENDING ATTEMPT-PAST

Also, Tokyo Japanese has negative auxiliaries as in (8). (8)

ookiku nai big-ENDING NEGATION

280

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

As to prosody, similar to Seoul Korean prosodic studies, many researchers of Tokyo Japanese prosody have considered that the prosodic phrasing has an important role in this language. In particular, what has an important role is the domain of downstep13, which is called ‘phrase’ or ‘tonal phrase’ by Kawakami (1957, 1961), ‘intermediate phrase’ by Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988), ‘major phrase’ by Kubozono (1993), and ‘intonation phrase’ by Venditti (1997). Hereafter, we call this ‘intonation phrase’ or ‘IP’. In Tokyo Japanese, the prosodic phrasing of auxiliaries involves the IP. As Kubozono (1993) and Maekawa (1994) pointed out, the auxiliaries are downstepped in this language. In the perspective of IP, this suggests that no IP boundary is inserted before the auxiliary. However, this is not the case for negative auxiliaries. The negative auxiliaries, rather, insert an IP boundary. This characteristic of the negative auxiliaries is seen in Kori’s (1997: 182) description of Tokyo Japanese intonation although he does not mention the IP-phrasing. Also, this agrees with the impression by the author, who is a native speaker of this dialect. Comparing the IP-phrasing of Tokyo Japanese auxiliaries with the AP-phrasing of Seoul Korean, there are both similarities and the differences. A similarity is seen in the prosodic phrasing of negative auxiliaries; both the languages insert a prosodic boundary. On the other hand, there is a difference in the other auxiliaries; Tokyo Japanese inserts no prosodic boundary, while this insertion seems to be optional in Seoul Korean. Now the question is why a prosodic boundary is inserted before the negative auxiliary both in Seoul Korean and Tokyo Japanese. A possible answer is that a negative auxiliary gets focus, affecting prosodic phrasing. This can explain the above phenomena since it has been known that focus causes the insertion of a prosodic boundary before the focused word both in Seoul Korean (Jun 1993, Chung and Kenstowicz 1997, Jun and Lee 1998, Utsugi forthcoming) and in Tokyo Japanese (Pierrehumbert and Beckman 1988, Kori 1989). This explanation is somewhat similar to Kori’s (1997: 182) intonational analysis of Tokyo Japanese negative sentences. He states that the whole of the predicate phrase including a negative auxiliary or ending is focused. However, taking account of the fact that the prosodic boundary is inserted between a main predicate and an auxiliary, we suggest that what is focused is not the whole of the predicate phrase but only the phonological word including the function of negation.

13

In Tokyo Japanese, when a H*+L tone (or accent-kernel) follows another H*+L tone, the latter H*+L tone is markedly lowered. This phenomenon is called ‘downstep’ in the prosodic studies of Japanese.

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

281

4.2. Other factors influencing the AP-phrasing of auxiliaries In 4.1, we discussed the influence of negative function to the AP-phrasing of Seoul Korean auxiliaries. We now turn to the other factors which can influence the AP-phrasing. A possible factor is the number of syllables in a main predicate. As is found in section 2, this seems to be influencing the AP-phrasing. However, the factor of the number of syllables should be carefully treated since the difficulty in the judgment of AP-phrasing by researchers also depends on the number of syllables. For example, when both of the main predicate and the auxiliary consist of two syllables and each has an F0 peak on the final syllable, there are two possible interpretations of AP-phrasing as in (9).14 (9) a. { σ L b. { σ L

σ}{ H σ σ H L

σ σ} L H σ} H

Utsugi (forthcoming) argues that this ambiguity often happens in the sequence of the phonological words in which the first phonological word consists of more than one syllable, if the effect of intensifying the prosodic link between APs is taken into consideration. On the other hand, this ambiguity does not happen if the first phonological phrase consists of one syllable. As is shown in (10), two types of AP-phrasing bear clearly different tonal patterns in this case. (10) a. { σ }{σ σ σ } LH L H b. { σ σ σ σ } L H L H

Taking these prosodic ambiguities into consideration, there are two points to be noted on the results of section 2. First, it is clear that the predicate phrase appears as one AP when a main predicate consists of one syllable. This is because there is no ambiguity in this case. Second, as to the case in which a main predicate consists of more than one syllable, there are two possibilities. One is that the AP-phrasing is influenced by the number of 14

In (9), σ stands for a syllable and {} stands for an AP.

282

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

syllables in a main predicate. The other is that what is influenced by the number of syllables is not the AP-phrasing itself, but the researchers’ interpretation on AP-phrasing. Which of these possibilities is valid is to be examined further. 5. Conclusion So far we have examined the prosody of auxiliaries in Seoul Korean and especially focused on the AP-phrasing. The results of the present analyses showed that the predicate phrase including an auxiliary shows two types of AP-phrasing; i.e. one AP or two APs. Also, we identified two factors which influence these variations of AP-phrasing. The first factor is the function of auxiliaries. That is to say, it is obligatory for auxiliaries with the function of negation to put an AP boundary immediately before themselves, but it is optional for the other auxiliaries. We mentioned that this obligatory AP boundary in negative auxiliaries seems to be ascribed to focus. The second factor is the number of syllables in a main predicate. However, this factor should be further examined since a small number of data were examined in the preset analysis and there is intrinsic difficulty in the examination of this factor. It should be noted that the findings in this description-oriented study can contribute to theoretical studies examining the principles of prosodic phrasing in Seoul Korean from a more general perspective, which focus on the relationship between prosodic phrasing and syntax and/or semantics. The future direction of our study also involves such an examination. References Beckman, M.E. and S.-A. Jun. 1996. “K-ToBI (Korean ToBI) Labeling Convention (Version 2.1)”. Manuscript, Ohio State University and UCLA. [http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/jun/ktobi/k-tobi -V2.html] Chung, S.-J. and M. Kenstowicz. 1997. “Focus Expression in Seoul Korean”. Harvard Studies in Korean Linguistics 7. 93-105. Jun. S.-A. 1993. “The Phonetics and Phonology of Korean Prosody”. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University. . 2000. “K-ToBI (Korean ToBI) Labeling Conventions (Version 3.1)”. Manuscript, UCLA. [http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/linguistics/people/jun/ktobi/k-tobi .html] and H.-J. Lee. 1998. “Phonetic and Phonological Markers of Contrastive Focus in Korean”. Proceedings of the 5th International

The Prosody of Auxiliaries in Seoul Korean

283

Conference on Spoken Language Processing. 1295-1298. and M. Oh. 1996. “A Prosodic Analysis of Three Types of Wh-phrases in Korean”. Language and Speech 39. 37-61. Kanno, H. 1997. “Tyoosengono gokini tuite [On Verbal Bases in Korean]”. In The National Language Research Institute (ed.) Nihongoto gaikokugotono taisyookenkyuu IV: nihongoto tyoosengo (gekan): kenkyuuronbunhen [Contrastive Studies of Japanese and Foreign Language IV: Japanese and Korean: Research Articles]. Tokyo: Kurosio. 1-21. Kawakami, S. 1957. “Tookyoogono takuritukyootyoono ontyoo [The Tone of Prominence in Tokyo Japanese]”. Kokugo Kenkyuu [The Studies of Japanese Language] 6. 21-31. . 1961. “On the Relationship between Word-tone and Phrase-tone in Japanese”. Onseeno Kenkyuu [Studies in Phonetics] 9. 169-177. Kōno, R. 1946. “Tyuukityoosengono kanryoozisyooni tuite [On the Perfect Tense of Middle Korean]”. In Kōno (1973). . 1950. “On the Intensive Stem of Middle Korean”. In Kōno (1973). . 1973. Koono rokuroo tyosakusyuu: dai1kan [The Selected Papers of R. Kōno: Part I]. Tokyo: Heebonsya. Kori, S. 1989. “Kyootyooto intoneesyon [Emphasis and Intonation]”. In M. Sugito (ed.) Kooza nihongoto nihongokyooiku 2: nihongono onsee on’in (joo) [Japanese Language and Its Education 2: The Phonetics and Phonology of Japanese (Part I)]. Tokyo: Meeji Syoin. 316-342. . 1997. “Nihongono intoneesyon: katato kinoo [Japanese Intonation: Forms and Functions]”. In T. Kunihiro, H. Hirose, and M. Kono (eds.) Nihongo onsee 2: akusento intoneesyon rizumuto poozu [The Sounds of Japanese 2: Accent, Intonation, Rhythm, and Pause]. Tokyo: Sanseedoo. 169-202. Kubozono, H. 1993. The Organization of Japanese Prosody. Tokyo: Kurosio. Maekawa, K. 1994. “Is There ‘Dephrasing’ of the Accentual Phrase in Japanese?”. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 44. 145-164. Nam, K.-S. and Y.-G. Ko. 1993. Pyocwun kwuk.e munpeplon [Standard Korean Grammar]. Seoul: Tower Press. Park, M.-Y. and B.-S. Ahn. 2002. “Hankwuk.e uymunsa uymunmun.uy chocem silhyen.ey tayhan wun.yul thukcing yenkwu [A Study of the Prosodic Characteristics of Focus in Korean Wh-question]”. In Center for Korean Language, Institute of Korean Culture, Korea University (ed.) Umseng en.e calyowa kwuk.e yenkwu [Speech Materials and the Studies of Korean Language]. Seoul: Wel.in. 215-243.

284

Akira UTSUGI and Hideki NOMA

Pierrehumbert, J. and M.E. Beckman. 1988. Japanese Tone Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schafer, A.J. and S.-A. Jun. 2002. “Effects of Accentual Phrasing on Adjective Interpretation in Korean”. In M. Nakayama (ed.) Sentence Processing in East Asian Languages. Stanford: CSLI. 223-255. Silverman, K., M.E. Beckman, J. Pitrelli, M. Ostendorf, C. Wightman, P. Price, J. Pierrehumbert, and J. Hirschberg. 1992. “ToBI: A Standard for Labeling English Prosody”. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. 860-870. Utiyama, M. 1997. “Gendai tyoosengoni okeru gooseeyoogenni tuite [On the Compound Verbals in Modern Korean]”. Chosen Gakuho [Journal of the Academic Association of Koreanology in Japan] 165. 39-114. Utsugi, A. Forthcoming. “Tyoosengo souruhoogenni okeru akusentoku: onkyoobunsekini yoru saikentoo [The Accentual Phrase of Seoul Korean: Reconsideration through Acoustic Analysis]”. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tsukuba. Venditti, J.J. 1997. “Japanese ToBI Labelling Guidelines”. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 50. 127-162.

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax — The Case of Makonde Tonology — Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND 1. Introduction In the past thirty years, there has been a debate over the nature of the phonology-syntax interface1. The most extreme views (and the most strongly antagonistic) can be dubbed the Indirect Reference Theory and the Direct Reference Theory 2 . The Indirect Reference Theory 3 (IRT) assumes that phonology cannot access syntactic information directly, only indirectly, through intermediate structures (typically given by the Prosodic Hierarchy). The main arguments supporting this approach are drawn from mismatches observed between syntactic and prosodic structures, such as the Chaga4 example below: (1) [NP leeri [CP [NP Prayanyi ] [VP aleenenga [NP Ladi ] ] ] ](Mc Hugh, 1990 p. 403) ( leer Prayanyi )φ ( aleenena Lad )φ money Brian gave Ladi The money Brian gave to Ladi

It can be remarked, in this example, that prosodic phrases (indicated by the symbol φ) do not coincide with groupings originating directly in the syntactic structures : the first phonological phrase ends at the end of the subject , i.e. midway through the relative clause. The opposite view, the Direct Reference Theory5 (DRT), assumes that phonology can have direct access to syntax. One of the main arguments in favor of DRT is the existence of numerous rules, occurring generally inside nominal phrases, which refer to specific grammatical categories or syntactic 1

2 3 4 5

In this article, the expression “syntax-phonology interface” refers to the interface between syntax and phonology, as characterized by a set of phonological rules limited to syntactic contexts. The cases in which syntax phenomena are affected by phonological rules (cf. Kager & Zonneveld 1999 for an overview) will not be considered. For a general reminder of the evolution of this debate, see Inkelas & Zec 1995, Kager & Zonneveld 1999... Selkirk 1986, Nespor & Vogel 1986, Hyman 1990, Truckenbrodt 1999, among others... Bantu, Tanzania ; Mc Hugh 1990 Kaisse 1990, Kaisse & Zwicky 1987, Odden 1987, 1990c, 2000 among others...

286

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

constructions. Thus, in Shi6, for example, the last tone of a noun ending with a …BH sequence is deleted when the noun precedes a directly governed element. The following examples are taken from Philippson 1991, p. 314-5: (2) (3) (4)

oomwaana mutoo Æ oomwaana mutoo a little child [child – little] balume na-bakazi Æ balume nabakazi men and women [men – and-women] aabalume basunikaa Æ aabalume basunikaa people who push [people – who push]

The limitation of this rule to the lexical category “nominal” cannot be accounted for in the IRT framework. This type of rules is not exceptional : in Ewe7, a high tone verb exhibits a rising tone followed by a rising or high tone, if the root of the following noun has a mid or a high tone on its first syllable and in Hausa8, a long final syllable of a verb is shortened before an object noun phrase. The case of Runyankore9 provides an especially illuminating illustration of the issues raised by these rules. In his Ph. D. thesis, Poletto argued that an IRT approach, more specifically the End-Based Theory10, provides a simple and straightforward account of the following rule : a high tone is inserted at the end of a low-tone lexeme if it is followed by a low-tone word in the same phrase. (5) (6)

6 7 8 9 10

enkaito enkaito omuuntu omuuntu

nuunji muruunji

shoe good shoe person good person

(Poletto 1998, p.263)

Bantu, Democratic Republic of Congo ; Philippson 1991 Gbe, Ghana and Togo ; Clements 1978 Tchadic, Nigeria ; Hayes 1990 Bantu, Uganda ; Poletto 1998 Selkirk 1986 : in this model, which is a variant of Clements’s IRT model (Clements 1978), prosodic phrases are built on the basis of syntactic structures, by grouping into a single phrase all the words up to a Xmax constituent (NP, VP....). This model is particularly constrained as a single type of syntactic information is available : the limit of X-bar constituents (phonology cannot access to the syntactic relationship such as : head/complement, complement versus adjunction, domination, c-command, etc....). According to Selkirk, the alignment of phonological phrases on the left or on the right boundary of a Xmax constituent is language dependent. We will not here reproduce Poletto’s analysis but we will follow his conclusions.

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

287

As expected, this rule does not apply in the following example (7): (7)

omuuntu

muufu

short person

Crucially, Poletto shows that this rule can be treated within the IRT framework and not in the DRT theory, especially because examples, such as the following, are problematic for the DRT : (8)

(9)

akareeba kaoma y’ omwaana (Poletto 1998, p. 324) he saw eagle of farmer ...........................................................................]X-MAX ( )φ He saw the eagle of the farmer akareeba kaoma na mareere he saw eagle and hawk .................................. ]X-MAX ...............................]X-MAX ( )φ ( )φ He saw an eagle and a hawk

The relationship between the verb and the complement being similar in both examples, the DRT would not be able to account for the occurrence of a high tone in the second utterance. There is a rule in Runyankore, however, belonging to the set of rules sensitive to specific grammatical categories or specific phrases mentioned previously, which, according to Poletto, could only be accounted for in the DRT: “a noun loses his high tone when it is followed by certain types of directly governed high tone determinants”: (10) enkoko chicken enkoko yaabo their chicken but the rule does not apply in : (11) enkoko yaanje my chicken

(Poletto 1998, p. 260)

Thus, we end up with the following situation in Runyankore: one of the rules receives an adequate treatment within the DRT but not within the IRT. On the contrary, another one can be treated by the IRT approach but not by the DRT. Thus, the treatment of rules referring to grammatical categories or

288

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

specific phrases is problematic11. In this paper, we will examine several rules of this type, occurring within nominal phrases in four dialects of Makonde, a Bantu language from East Africa: Simakonde [SIM], a dialect spoken by Makonde people who emigrated on the Zanzibar Island and in Tanga (Western Tanzania) – using data from Manus 2003 ; Shimakonde [SHI], spoken in Mozambique – using data from Liphola 2001; Mahuta [MHT] and Maraba [MRB], the two other dialects, are spoken in the South of Tanzania and seem strongly influenced by Swahili – the data are taken from Odden 1990a and Odden 1990b respectively. Studying these rules and their variations across these four dialects, we will propose that they originate in from phonological rules through analogy processes. In fact, due to the role of analogy, these rules are not phonological rules which intervene in specific syntactic environments. We will conclude that they have to be treated in morphology and not as part of the phonology-syntax interface. From a theoretical point of view, our research illustrates the power of analogy as a means to separate rules that do belong to the phonology-syntax interface from those that do not, and to characterise these rules and processes. We thus aim to contribute to a more precise definition of the phonology-syntax interface, diminishing the number of problematic cases. We will first consider, in four dialects of Makonde, syntax-sensitive tone rules occurring inside nominal phrases, which are usually considered as belonging to the phonology-syntax interface (part 2). Then we will argue for an analogical origin of these rules, which implies that they are morphological and not phonological (part 3). Our conclusion will elaborate on the nature of analogy and its use as a criteria to tell apart processes that belong to the syntax-phonology interface from those that belong to morphology. 2. Tone rules in various Makonde dialects This part will be devoted to the examination of tone rules applying in noun phrases. Our analysis will proceed depending upon noun phrase types, in the following order : • Noun + demonstrative • Noun + possessive 11

The problems triggered by these rules have been partially solved in the IRT framework when Hayes proposed the Precompilation Theory (Hayes 1990). In this model, the rules referring to the lexical elements are « precompiled », as they operate of the lexical level and not at the postlexical one. Several allomorphs are derived. At the interface syntax/phrasal phonology, the appropriate morphemes will be introduced in the adequate syntactic contexts. However, the model, while being elegant, cannot account for some situations. (cf. critical comments by Odden 1990c et Kaisse 1990).

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

289

• Noun + interrogative • Noun + other determinants 2.1. Noun+Demonstrative When a Makonde noun is followed by a demonstrative, its last two syllables receive a high tone. This rule occurs in the following dialects: Mahuta, Maraba and Shimakonde, as illustrated by the following examples : (12) nankatataambwe nankatatambwe yuuno (13) likuunwa likunwa liino

« spider » « this spider »12 [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 92] « drum » « that drum » [MHT, Odden 1990a, p. 176]

The Shimakonde demonstratives studied by Liphola, all of them being far demonstrative, begin with a vowel. Segmental processes, particularly the drop of the last vowel of the noun, tend to obscure the two high tone assignment rule which, nevertheless, was identified by Liphola. The following Shimakonde forms exemplify this process: (14) lindandoosha lindandosh’ aali
« ghost » « this ghost » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 394]

In Simakonde, the rules are different. In a noun phrase with a demonstrative, the noun, whatever its lexical tones, is totally high: (15) ipooso iposo

12

13

aiila

« gift » « that gift »13

[SIM, Manus 2003, p. 304]

Makonde presents a regular lengthening of the penultimate syllable, which is the accented syllable. In some syntactic situations, which vary depending upon the dialects, the lengthening will not occur. Manus’s examples in her thesis are essentially nouns with disyllabic roots, few of them being based on a trisyllabic root. On the contrary, Odden and Liphola’s studies present mainly examples involving roots with three syllables.

290

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

Summary

N (preceding a Dem)

SIMAKONDE

SHIMAKONDE

MARABA

MAHUTA

cvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

2.2. Noun+Possessive The rules concerning noun+possessive phrases vary depending upon the dialects and the lexical tones of the noun. In Maraba, a noun loses its lexical tones and is assigned a high tone on its last syllable: (16) chiteleeko « cooking pot » chiteleko cheetu « our cooking pot » [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 89]

The high tone of the last syllable can be analysed, according to Odden, as a floating tone which is introduced as part of the possessive marker.

N

Poss

H This floating high tone has been found regularly in all the dialects of Makonde and was posited in all analysis of these dialects. In Maraba, it triggers the deletion of the lexical tones of all the complements which might occur between the nominal and the possessive (ex : N Adj Adj Poss)... In Mahuta, the rules are more complex, depending upon the lexical tones of the noun. a) Low tone noun +possessive

An entirely low tone noun, when followed by a possessive, exhibits, as expected, the floating high tone on its last syllable :

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

291

(17) nankakataambwe « spider » nankakatambwe waanu « my spider » [MHT, Odden 1990a, p. 175] b) Noun with a high tone on the penult syllable +possessive A noun with a lexical high tone on the penultimate syllable, will surface with the floating high tone on its last syllable and no other high tones. (18) chilaambo chilambo chaake

« world » « his world »

[MHT, Odden 1990a, p. 175]

Odden assumes a rule deleting the first tone in a sequence of two high tones within a noun phrase with a possessive. This rule is ordered after the association of the floating high tone. Step 1 : chilambo chaake Step 2 : chilambo chaake Step 3 : chilambo chaake

The reader might wonder why Odden proposes this specific rule, while a more general rule deleting all the lexical tones, as in the analysis of noun phrases with possessive in Maraba, might have been suggested ? The raison d’etre of this rule is the coherence with other data, such as the following: c) Noun with one or more high tones + possessive

In this case, a tonal « bridge » (an uninterrupted sequence of high tones) links the lexical tone(s) and the floating tone of the last syllables: (19) litikiiti « watermelon » litikiti lyaanu « my watermelon » [MHT, Odden 1990a, p. 175] Step 1 : litikiti Step 2 : litikiti Step 3 : litikiti

lyaanu lyaanu lyaanu

Thus, Mahuta data can be accounted for without any reference to syntax, as they involve only phonological rules (OCP, tonal “bridges” formation). In Maraba a rule such as « deletion of the noun lexical tones in noun phrase with possessive » is syntax sensitive and operates within the phonology-syntax interface. We will come back later on these rules while discussing the nature

292

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

of syntax sensitive rules in Makonde noun phrases (cf. 3). The Shimakonde data is quite interesting as it involves additional complexity. At first glance, Shimakonde behaves globally as Mahuta: (20) nakatataambwe nakatatambwe waanu

« spider » « my spider »

[SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 393] (21) shidanadoono « Adam’s apple » shidanadono shaake « his Adam’s apple » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 393] (22) lipanapaana « sp. cactus » lipanapana lyaake « his cactus » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 370]

Liphola does not propose the same rules as Odden and does not suggest a deletion of the lexical tones. In fact, he introduces additional data, involving a free variation in the noun tones. A noun in phrases with possessive may end with high tones on its two final syllables as in noun phrases with demonstrative, which is illustrated by the following examples: (23) nakatataambwe nakatatambwe waanu nakatatambwe waake

« spider » « my spider» « his spider »

[SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 372] (24) shindanadoono « Adam’s apple » shindanadono shaake « his Adam’s apple » shindanadono shaake « his Adam’s apple » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 383] But a noun in the same context may also be totally high: (25) lipanapaana lipanapana lyaake lipanapana lyaake

« sp. cactus » « his sp. cactus » « his sp. cactus » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 385]

The speaker can use freely either one or the other form. Simakonde behaves differently from the other dialects. As Shimakonde, it has a free variation between two forms. In the first form, the lexical noun tones are not modified.

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax (26) lyuula lyuula

lyaanu

293

« watermelon» « my watermelon » [SIM, Manus 2003, p. 295]

We can notice that there is no reduction of the vowel length and that the possessive floating high tone is not carried by the last syllable of the noun. These two facts are related and can be explained by a mapping of the possessive phrase within two phonological phrases (Manus says “distinct prosodic groups”): ( Poss )φ ( N )φ In the second form, the floating high tone reappears: (27) lyula

lyaanu

« my watermelon » [SIM, Manus 2003, p. 310]

There is a reduction of the vowel length AND the floating tone present: the two terms belong to the same phonological phrase (Manus says “single prosodic group”). ( N Poss )φ The lexical tones are not modified. Recapitulative tables

SHIMAKONDE

MAHUTA

MARABA

cvcvcvvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

cvcvcvcv

294

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

SIMAKONDE 2 phonological phrases

1 phonological phrase

cvcvvcv

cvcvvcv

cvcvcv

cvcvvcv

cvcvvcv

cvcvcv

2.3. Noun phrases with interrogative There is an interesting phenomenon in Makonde: deletion of the lexical nominal tones occurs in interrogative phrases with the interrogative marker –aani. This is attested in Mahuta: (28) chikaapu chikapu ntaani

« basket » « what type of basket? » [MHT, Odden 1990a, p. 178]

It has to be emphasised that this tone deletion does not occur with other interrogative markers: (29) chikapu chiliida « which basket? » vikapu vinaapi « how many baskets? » [MHT, Odden 1990a, p.178]

Similarly, in Shimakonde, the lexical tones of the noun are not deleted but a floating high tone is associated to the last syllable, as in noun phrases with a possessive. (30) lipanapaana lipanapana shaani

14

« cactus » « which14 cactus ? » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 373]

The meaning of -aani is not the same in Odden and Liphola

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

295

In Simakonde, the floating high tone is present but there is no deletion of the noun lexical tones! The noun behaves similarly in an interrogative noun phrase with -saani and in a possessive phrase. (31) lyuula lyula saani lyula lyaanu

« watermelon » « which matermelon » « my watermelon » [SIM, Manus 2003, p. 310]

The Maraba case is interesting. Thus, in this dialect, there is a deletion of the lexical tones of the noun and a lack of floating high tone but tone deletion occurs in noun phrases with various interrogative morphemes: (32) chiteleeko « cooking pot » viteleko vinaapi « how many cooking pots? » chiteleko chanaani « whose cooking pot? » [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 88] (33) litikiiti « watermelon » litikiti aani « what type of watermelon? » [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 88] However, this tone deletion is not found in interrogative phrases with -liida. (34) chiteleko

chiliida

« which cooking pot? » [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 88]

2.4. Other nominal phrases (noun+other determinants) Let’s consider phrases with other determinants. No specific rules apply to these phrases in Mahuta or Simakonde. On the contrary, Maraba and Shimakonde dialects have interesting processes. In Maraba, the noun exhibits a high tone on its penultimate syllable before a variety of determinants: (35) nankatataambwe « spider » nankatatambwe veeni « many spiders » nankatatambwe vooe « all the spiders » [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 91] (36) limbeende « skin » limbende likulu « large skin » mambende manne « four skins » [MRB, Odden 1990b, p. 92]

296

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

In Shimakonde, the same rule is found, with a special feature: last syllables (and not only the last one), exhibit a high tone. (37) nakatataambwe nakatatambwe nuluuuma nakatatambwe nantaandi nakatatambwe ashitukuuta

the two

« spider » « round spider » « the first spider » « the spider which was running » [SHI, Liphola 2001, p. 394-6]

Note that, optionally, a noun is realised totally high when preceding an adjective in adjective noun phrases. 3. Integrating analogy into the analysis Currently, analogy is used only with parcimony15, by a small number of linguists. This concept, which has long been attractive, has come under criticism – as many others – for being too powerful. In fact, analogy could be overused and it may be tempting to apply it to any type of process, without limitations. Moreover, if analogy is sometimes considered as worthless because it « explains everything », other authors consider that linguistics does not explain analogy. According to these authors, we can only observe the effects of analogy, while the « motivations » for analogy processes seem « extragrammatical ». Lass summarises clearly this view: « I agree that for instance analogical levelling is very common (in my experience of language histories) ; but neither I nor anybody else knows how common, or can say safely how ‘representative’ our experience is. Given an initially undefined and undelimited corpus, each additional corroboration is meaningless if one doesn’t know how many negative instances are lurking out there. If every case of analogy (or movement in the ‘right’ direction along a grammaticalization cline, or whatever) not happening ‘doesn’t count’, then analogy or whatever is an uninterpreted category, not a ‘principle’, and surely nothing explanatory or even usefully exegetical »16

In other words: if we cannot predict why analogy occurs in some cases and not in others, and if we cannot predict the contexts of its occurrence, analogy cannot be used as an explanatory concept. 15

16

Outside of diachrony studies, analogy is almost exclusively used to account for data observed in the domain of language acquisition, to explain some of the children’s « mistakes » (such as *si j’aurais su in French). Lass 1997

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

297

However, if this argumentation is relevant, it seems too extreme. Interesting attempts are currently made to determine the conditions in which analogy can be used in linguistics. One of the strong predictions of the Optimal Paradigms model17 proposed by McCarthy is the avoidance of analogical levelling when it might trigger a violation of a constraint ranked higher in the hierarchy18. We could also mention Albright‘s works19, which show the tendency for the analogy to select, as base forms, forms which keep contrasts20 optimally. Note that Lass’s argumentation was mainly directed against the view of analogy as « universal » and/or « natural », which is not part of our concerns in this article. At last, the possibility of using analogy is limited by diachronical or transdialectal data, which is scarce for many African languages. Despite these limitations, an approach integrating analogy has many advantages. Firstly, it allows for a better characterisation of the rules of phonology-syntax interface, versus rules which are not part of this interface. Analogy can be considered as « d’ordre grammatical » (meaning that it is is not phonetic or phonological), according to Saussure: « L’analogie est d’ordre grammatical : elle suppose la conscience et la compréhension d’un rapport unissant les formes entre elles. Tandis que l’idée n’est rien dans le phénomène phonétique, son intervention est nécessaire en matière d’analogie »21

Thus, analogy does not refer to phonology, at least not necessarily. To quote Saussure again: « C’est d’elle que relèvent toutes les modifications normales de l’aspect extérieur des mots qui ne sont pas de nature phonétique22 ». This view is largely accepted, since the Neogrammarians, witness the following quotations, by Lass and Sweet respectively: « One of the worst problems for the morphological historian is of course analogy, where regular, expected […] phonological developments are interfered with by non-phonological processes »23

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

McCarthy 2005 An analysis that opponents to the Optimality Theory might consider as ad hoc and/or circular. Albright in prep. Albright 2002 Saussure, 1916, ed 1972., p. 226 We’re underlying Lass 1997

298

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND « [Analogy] is not a phonetic change at all, but rather a substitution... by analogy »24

Interestingly, the analogical approach provides an explanation for the fact that these rules have exceptions (proper nouns, loan words, etc…) without introducing « lexical » models (Precompilation Theory, Lexical Sandhi Theory25, etc…). At last, it can explain specific cases which cannot be accounted for by other models. Therefore, let’s observe a Kinyambo 26 rule presented by Bickmore: The high tone of a word causes the deletion of the last high of the preceding word27 (38) abakozi bakakoma abakozi bakakoma

« workers » « they tied » « workers tied »

Curiously, this rule is sensitive to the number of syllables between the two tones in question: • The two tones are on two successive syllables = the rule is obligatory • The tones are separated by one to three syllables = the rule is optional • The tones are separated by four syllables = the rule cannot apply (39) kokushubira na (*kokushubira...)

kaemuro

« Kokushubira and Kagemuro »

None of the phonology-syntax interface models can explain this phenomenon.. We propose – with precautions due to absence of diachronic data – that the optionality of the rule (when one to three syllables separate the two tones) signals an analogical process, originating in forms with contiguous tones (which undergo a classical rule motivated by the Obligatory Contour Principle). 5. Conclusion The Makonde data analysed in this article argue in favor of an analogical origin of some rules usually considered as phonology-syntax rules. 24 25 26 27

Sweet 1900 An alternative model to Precompilation Theory, proposed by Odden 1990c Bantu, Tanzania Bickmore 1989 ; the rule is somewhat simplified, for clarity

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

299

Of course, further research would be necessary to better delimit the role of analogy in the formation of these rules, especially when they occur in noun phrases. As analogy excludes any role played by phonology, the rules presented in the first part have to be considered as « simple » morphosyntactic rules. The tone rules that we studied in this article can be related to such phenomena as consonantal mutations28 in Celtic languages which have clearly a phonological origin but which are clearly morphological in the current state of these languages. Bibliography Albright, A. 2002. The identification of bases in morphological paradigms. UCLA dissertation in prep. “Explaining universal tendencies and language particulars in analogical change” Bickmore, L. 1989. “Tone in Kinyambo”. Current Approaches to African Linguistics, Vol. 6. Haïk I. & Tuller L. (eds.). Dordrecht: Foris Publications. 19-26 Clements, G. N. 1978. “Tone and syntax in Ewe” Elements of Tone, Stress, and Intonation. D.J. Napoli (ed.),Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 21-99. Green, A. 2003. "The Independence of Phonology and Morphology : The 28

We refer to Green’s work (2003, in particular), which compares two types of lenition in manx : one being analyzed as morphological and the second one as phonological. The phonological lenition, which is optional, concerns obstruants between two vowels word-internally. This rule is independant from morphosyntactic contexts. The morphological lenition intervenes in particular contexts : feminine nouns after definite article, nouns after some possessive, some numerals, some prepositions, dative nouns after article, adjective after singular feminine nouns, past verbs, etc… The two types of lenition differ also in a way which strengthens remarkably Green’s argumentation. Thus, the phonological lenition triggers expected surface forms, as the following ones : Input p t k b d g s x Output b~v d~ g~ v   , z ~h~ø On the contrary, after the application of the morphological deletion, the phonemes are not those expected in a usual lenition process : Input p t, tj k, kj b d, dj g, gj s, sj m h~x, w~v , j , j h, h~xj Output f h~x, w~v h~xj h~xj These two types of rules – the phonological deletion and the morphological deletion - can be compared to the rules of Makonde presented in this paper. The Mahuta rules involving a nominal and a demonstrative - which are phonological - would be the counterpart of the phonological deletion while the Maraba rule –which is morphologicalwould correspond to the morphological deletion.

300

Cédric PATIN and Annie RIALLAND

Celtic Mutations". ZAS Papers in Linguistics 32. 47-86 Hayes, Bruce. 1990. “Precompiled phrasal phonology”. The Phonology-Syntax Connection. Inkelas, S. & Zec, D. (eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 85Inkelas, S. & Zec, D. 1995. “Syntax-phonology interface”. The Handbook of Phonological Theory. J.A.Goldsmith (ed.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 535-549. Hyman, L. 1990. "Boundary Tonology and the Prosodic Hierarchy". The Phonology-Syntax Connection. Inlekas, S & Zec, D. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 109-125 Kager, R. & Zonneveld, W. 1999. “Phrasal phonology: an introduction”. Phrasal Phonology. R. Kager & W. Zonneveld (eds.). Nijmegen: Nijmegen University Press. 1-34. Kaisse, E. 1990. “Toward a Typology of Postlexical Rules”. The PhonologySyntax Connection. Inkelas, S. & Zec, D. (eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 127-144 & Zwicky, A. 1987. “Introduction : syntactic influences on phonological rules”. Phonology Yearbook 4. Ewen C. & Anderson J. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3-12 Lass, R. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 81. Cambridge. Liphola, M. 2001. Aspects of Phonology and Morphology of Shimakonde. PhD Dissertation. Ohio State University. McHugh, B. D. 1990. Cyclicity in the Phrasal Phonology of Kivungo Chaga. PhD Dissertation. University of California. Manus, S. 2003. Morphologie et tonologie du smakoonde, parlé par les communautés d’origine mozambicaine de Zanzibar et de Tanga (Tanzanie). Thèse de Doctorat. Paris: INALCO. McCarthy, J. 2005. “Optimal paradigms”. Paradigms in phonological theory. Downing L., Hall T. A., Raffelsiefen R. (eds.). Oxford : Oxford University Press. 170-210 Nespor, M. & Vogel, I. 1986. Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Odden, D. 1987. “Kimatuumbi phrasal phonology”. Phonology Yearbook 4. Ewen C. & Anderson J. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13-36 Odden, D. 1990a. “Tone in the Makonde dialects: Chimahuta”. Studies in African Linguistics 21. 149-187. Odden, D. 1990b. “Tone in the Makonde dialects: Chimaraba”. Studies in African Linguistics 21. 61-105. Odden, D. 1990c. “Syntax, Lexical Rules and Postlexical Rules in Kimatuumbi”. The Phonology-Syntax Connection. Inkelas, S. & Zec, D.

On the Nature of Rules Sensitive to Syntax

301

(eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 256-278 Odden, D. 2000. “Phonology at the Phrasal Level in Bantu”. Bantu Phonology and Morphology. Katamba, F. München, Newcastle: LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 06, LINCOM EUROPA. 40-68. Philippson, G. 1991. Tons et accent dans les langues bantu d’afrique orientale : étude typologique et diachronique. Thèse d’Etat. Paris: Université Paris V René Descartes. Poletto, R. 1998. Topics in Runyankore Phonology. PhD Dissertation. Ohio State University. Saussure, F. 1972 – (1st ed.: 1916). Cours de lnguistique générale. Paris: Bibliothèque Scientifique Payot. Selkirk, E. 1986. “On derived domains in sentence phonology”. Phonology 3. 371-405. Sweet, H. 1900.: The History of Languages. London: J. M. Dent. Truckenbrodt, H. 1999. “On the relation between syntactic phrases and phonological phrases”. Linguistic Inquiry 30. 219-255.

An Acoustic Study on Intonation of Nominal Sentences in Indonesian Masashi FURIHATA 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to observe and discuss the intonation patterns of ‘nominal sentences’ in Indonesian with the use of acoustic analysis. Indonesian is the national language of the Republic of Indonesia, with a population of over 200,000,000.1 The Indonesian language has also been established as one of the working languages in the Democratic Republic of East Timor. There is some difficulty in investigating phonetical phenomena in Indonesian, a language that has many regional variations. For most of its speakers, Indonesian is a second language.2 In these cases, Indonesian that is spoken is more or less influenced by their first or regional language. Ebing (1994:183) has pointed out that there is no objective way of determining which form of Indonesian best meets the requirement of not showing a regional accent. Despite this difficulty, however, “To some extent it is indeed justifiable to attempt a general analysis of Indonesian intonation” (Ebing 1994:183), taking into consideration that Indonesian language is used as bahasa persatuan (language of unity). Attempts to seek general phonetical features of Indonesian, as Ebing (1994) did, are required. In addition, it is also necessary to conduct phonetical analyses of actual speech. This study presents an acoustic analysis of Indonesian intonation. The materials for this analysis are the dialogues, which were recorded for D-modules (dialogue modules) developed as e-learning materials at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS).3 The dialogues may not be fully 1

2

3

According to Badan Pusat Statistik, Republik Indonesia (BPS: Statistics Indonesia of The Republic of Indonesia), “Based on the result of the 2000 Population Census, total population of Indonesia on June, 30, 2000, was 206,264,595 people” , as of July 2005. There are “over 140,000,000 second-language speakers” of Indonesian (Ethnologue, Language of the World, , as of July 2005). The 21st Century COE Program “Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics”, (Japanese version), (English version), as of July 2005.

304

Masashi FURIHATA

natural, but they do contain some features that occur in usual conversations. In Chapter 2, the ‘nominal sentence’ in Indonesian will be described. In Chapter 3, the statement of Halim (1981) on intonation in relation to syntax in Indonesian, which is applied as the framework of this study, will be introduced. After the explanation of analysis procedure in Chapter 4, the results are discussed in Chapter 5.4 2. Nominal Sentences in Indonesian Basic sentence structure in Indonesian generally consists of two immediate constituents, i.e. one subject and one predicate. 5 As for the sentence pattern, subject-predicate order is unmarked. The subject position is usually occupied by a noun phrase or a pronoun phrase. Sometimes another kind of phrase (such as a verb phrase) is used as the grammatical subject.6 Predicates have an important role in Indonesian basic sentence structure. In Indonesian, a predicate is formed not only by a verb (or verb phrase), but also by an adjective (phrase), a prepositional phrase, and so on. Moreover, a single noun (noun phrase, pronoun, or pronoun phrase) can also function as the predicate of a sentence without a copula or any other markers. (1) Dia guru. he/she teacher.

“He/She is a teacher.” (Sneddon 1996:233)

(2) Ini keputusan saya. this decision I

“This is my decision.” (Sneddon 1996:233)

In (1) and (2) above, dia ‘he/she’ and ini ‘this’ are the subjects, while guru ‘teacher’ and keputusan saya ‘my decision’ form the predicates in the unmarked sentence structure. Although there are no copulas or any other markers, this sentence structure is fully grammatical. In this paper, sentences like (1) and (2) are called ‘nominal sentences.’ In other words, a nominal sentence has a noun or pronoun (or a phrase equivalent to a noun in the sentences) as the predicate without using copulas

4 5 6

For description of Indonesian, its orthographical system is used in this paper. Some sentences consist of only predicates as immediate constituents, which Sneddon (1996:238-239) calls ‘subjectless clauses’. Sneddon (1996:307) uses the term ‘simple nominal clauses’ for these type of phrases with the explanation: “Intransitive verbs and active transitive verbs can be used as nouns meaning ‘the general activity denoted by the verb’.”

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

305

or any other markers.7 In practical use, nominal sentences frequently occur in both oral and written communication. There are also copulas such as the words adalah and ialah. However, the use of these copulas is optional, and “they are most common in noun clauses where either the subject or predicate is long, in which case they break up a string of nouns and add a smoothness to the construction” (Sneddon 1996:237).8 (1’) Dia adalah guru.

“He/She is a teacher.”

(3) Ayah Tomo adalah pegawai Bank Indonesia. (Sneddon 1996:238) father Tomo employee bank Indonesia “Tomo’s father is an employee of the Bank of Indonesia.”

Words or phrases other than nouns or pronouns can syntactically behave equivalently to nouns at the predicate position.9 (4) Saya memancing. I fish (v)

“I do fishing.”

(5) Hobi saya memancing. “My hobby is fishing.” hobby I fish (v)

Sentence (4) is a non-nominal sentence using the verb memancing ‘fish’ as its predicate. In (5), however, the verb memancing behaves syntactically equivalent to a noun at the predicate position, thus it is regarded as a nominal sentence.10

7

8

9 10

Sentences of this type may be called ‘equational sentences’. However, there exist other types of equational sentences such as the ones using copulas as mentioned below, thus, in my opinion, the term ‘nominal sentence’ should be used to specify the sentence structure described here. In formal writing or speech, copulas (adalah / ialah), or merupakan (literally means ‘form, constitute’) are required to distinguish the subjects from the predicates in nominal sentences. Sneddon (1996:308) states, “A simple nominal clause can also occur as predicate, in which case it is usually preceded by copula adalah or ialah”. One significant feature of nominal sentences is the way of negation. There are two basic negatives, i.e. bukan ‘not (equal to) ...’ and tidak ‘not (in the process/condition) ...’. The former is used as the negative for nominal sentences, whereas the latter is the negative for non-nominal sentences.

306

Masashi FURIHATA

3. Halim’s Argument on Indonesian Intonation in Relation to Syntax Ebing (1994) has counted Halim (1981) 11 as one of the only two authors who discussed Indonesian intonation in detail. “Indonesian Standard Grammar” (“Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia”, Moeliono, et al. 1988:73-75), a product of a national language project in Indonesia,12 has obviously adopted Halim’s work.13 Considerable attention should be paid to Halim’s work when we discuss Indonesian intonation. The present paper will also base the observations and discussion on Halim’s framework as follows.14 Halim (1981:119,122) discusses the role of Indonesian intonation in relation to its syntax. He argues that syntactically motivated intonation patterns are relatable to the categories ‘topic’ and ‘comment,’ which are not syntactically marked by such devices as word order. Halim (1981:15-34) made a critical survey of some earlier studies on Indonesian non-segmental phonology. According to him, the earlier studies which refer to intonation are “very superficial, and assume that there is a one-to-one correspondence between intonation patterns and such sentence-modes as declarative, interrogative, and imperative” (Halim 1981:119). He refuted the assumption through his investigation using instrumental methods. Halim has established three pitch levels for his description of intonation, i.e. high pitch level (PL3), neutral of mid pitch level (PL2), and low pitch level (PL1). A sentence or utterance contains one pause-group (which is identical with ‘breath group’) or more, and each pause-group consists of one contour (or pitch pattern). Four underlying pitch patterns are relatable to grammatical categories, as shown in Table 1.

11 12

13 14

Halim (1981) is the reproduction of Halim (1974) with some slight corrections. Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia was composed with the effort of Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa (Centre of Language Development and Cultivation, now: Pusat Bahasa ‘Centre of Language’) under the Department of Education and Culture (now: the Department of National Education). The third edition of Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (Alwi, et al. 1998:84-86) has still adopted Halim’s work, although some modification is found in it. For further discussion, see especially Chapter 4 of Halim (1981:63-118).

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

307

Table 1. Halim’s pitch patterns relatable to grammatical categories15,16,17 Pitch pattern Grammatical role 231f Unmarked comment 232f Marked comment 233r Focalized topic 211f Unfocalized topic

Intonational topic-comment structures of nominal sentences can be described by these pitch patterns both for nominal sentences and for non-nominal sentences. Halim has further developed more interesting discussions in terms of the topic-comment structure of non-nominal sentences, but only discussion of nominal sentences will be mentioned.18. (6) Orang itu guru saya. “That person is my teacher.” (Halim 1981:84)19 233r / 23 1f # person that teacher I (7) Guru saya orang itu. “My teacher is what that man is.” (Halim 1981:84) 2- 3 2f / 2-11 f #

In (6), the grammatical subject orang itu ‘that person’ also performs the role of the focalized topic. The pitch movement to PL3 occurs at the end of the phrase (i.e. pause-group) and the pitch level remains high. The predicate guru saya ‘(is) my teacher,’ as an unmarked comment, experiences an abrupt pitch rise to PL3 at the penult of the phrase, followed by abrupt pitch fall to PL1.20 15

16

17 18

19 20

Halim calls the initial neutral pitch level (PL2) in each contour pattern ‘pre-contour’. A contour consists of a pre-contour and a primary contour in its underlying form (Halim 1981:94). The terminal part of the pitch movement is displayed by f (falling), r (rising), or s (sustained) at the contour final (Halim 1981:85-86). The feature ‘sustained’ will not be considered in this paper. As for the yes-no interrogative, Halim (1981:108-109) uses other pitch patterns, which will be mentioned in Section 5.1.3. below. A single bar ( / ) represents a ‘tentative pause’ that means that the preceding pause-group is non-final in the sentence, while a double-cross ( # ) represents the ‘final pause’ at which the sentence ends (Halim 1981:91-92). Since contour final features (f,r) were not written in the source, I added them to (6) and (7) for convenience. Halim (1981:86-91) connects the position of an abrupt pitch rise with the accent which appears only once in a single pause-group except an unfocalized topic. Indonesian does not have word accents that express lexical contrasts. Accents in Indonesian will not be discussed in this paper.

308

Masashi FURIHATA

In (7), the grammatical predicate (guru saya) precedes the subject (orang itu). This word order, according to Halim, means that the predicate becomes the marked comment, whereas the subject as topic is defocalized. As is the case with unmarked comments, the pitch of the marked comment abruptly rises around the penult of the pause-group and then falls, but the pitch level does not reach PL1 since it is not the sentence final. The subject as unfocalized topic does not show any significant pitch movement with “relatively level pitch /1/ until it reaches the end of the utterance and fades away” (Halim 1981:4). It should be noticed that nominal sentences have different possibilities from non-nominal sentences. In a non-nominal sentence, the non-nominal constituent may be easily identified as the predicate, either preceding or following the subject, except when it is used equivalently to a noun as is called the ‘simple nominal clause’ by Sneddon (1996:232,233,307). A nominal sentence, however, consists of two nouns (or their equivalents) either of which can be the subject. For example, when (6) is uttered with the pitch pattern of (7), i.e. 232f/211f#, it means ‘My teacher is that man.’ A case like this is quite natural as the response to a question, for example, Siapa guru Anda? ‘Who is your teacher?’ or Guru Anda itu yang mana? ‘Which one is your teacher?’ There are no grammatical markers such as copulas or nominative case markers in nominal sentences, but there must be device(s) for distinguishing the subject as topic and the predicate as comment. Taking into account Halim’s discussion above, it is quite likely that intonation takes an important role in Indonesian grammar, especially for nominal sentences. 4. Analysis 4.1. Sources The materials of the present analysis were taken from the dialogues in the TUFS Language Modules. Indonesian D-module materials of the TUFS Language Modules contain 40 units of brief exchanges.21 Each unit except one consists of 10 passages.22 Two Indonesian speakers make almost all the dialogues. 23 Each passage contains one to four utterances, and 514 utterances are found in the Indonesian D-module materials.

21

22 23

Indonesian D-module materials of the TUFS Language Modules are available at the following URL address: (Japanese version only, as of July 2005). There is one unit that contains only eight passages in the Indonesian D-module materials. A Japanese female speaker takes part in only one unit that contains two passages spoken by her.

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

309

4.2. Target Sentences The number of nominal sentences is 34 out of the 514 utterances,24 all of which are uttered by the two Indonesian speakers. The 34 nominal sentences are listed in the Appendix. 4.3. Speakers One of the two Indonesian speakers is AR, male, born in Lampung, Sumatra Island. He is in his mid-forties. Javanese is his mother tongue; he also speaks Indonesian. The other one is EL, female, born in Blitar, East Java. She is in her late twenties. Javanese is her mother tongue; she also speaks Indonesian. 4.4. Sound Data The sound data analyzed in the present study were recorded in the shooting of Indonesian D-module materials of the TUFS Language Modules in February 2003 at a studio on the TUFS campus. The sound data available for the analysis are PCM wave files in 48,000 Hz sampling rate and 16-bit stereo mode. Some slight differences in quality or loudness between the sound data were found, and sometimes the sound data contained noises. However, the influence of the quality differences or noises was mitigated by adjusting settings of the computer software used for the present analysis. 4.5. Analyzing Device Pitch contours of the target sentences are to be analyzed and then observed, especially from the viewpoint of their relative rise and fall in the pitch movement (henceforth: PM).25 The pitch contours of all 34 nominal sentences were analyzed by using the Multi-Speech Model 3700 Version 2.5.1., a product of Kay Elemetrics Corp., which runs on a personal computer with a Windows XP operating system. As mentioned in the previous section, some adjustments were made in the pitch contour analysis. First, analysis ranges between the two speakers were changed. The analysis range of AR’s sound data was adjusted to between 70-350 Hz, and that of EL’s was adjusted to between 70-450 Hz. Second, the frame length and frame advance of each sentence were adjusted 24

25

Three sentences, each of which contains a copula adalah, are also found in the utterances. All of them have subject-predicate patterns. These three sentences will not be treated in the present analysis. Halim (1981:122) explains that the division of pitch levels into that of three pitch levels, i.e. PL1, PL2 and PL3, is relative rather than absolute.

310

Masashi FURIHATA

between 10-25 msec. and 5-15 msec., respectively, for the most reliable result. 5. Results and Discussion 5.1. Observation of Pitch Contours In this chapter, pitch patterns of the target sentences obtained through the analysis procedure mentioned above will be observed and then discussed. For the sake of observation, the 34 target sentences have been divided into five groups classified in terms of sentence types, i.e. declarative sentences, yes-no interrogative sentences and interrogative sentences with question words (henceforth: QW interrogative sentences), and sentence patterns, i.e. subject-predicate (S-P) or predicate-subject (P-S) construction. Table 2 shows the division of the 34 nominal sentences into Group A to E.26 Table 2.

Number of nominal sentences according to sentence types, sentence patterns and speakers Speaker AR EL Sentence type and pattern A. Declaratives in S-P order 6 9 B. Declaratives in P-S order 2 1 C. Yes-no interrogatives in S-P order 2 1 D. QW interrogatives in S-P order 1 2 E. QW interrogatives in P-S order 4 6

It is commonly said, including my previous work (Furihata 1998, 2005), that interrogative sentences in Indonesian have interrogative rising intonation at the end of the sentence. Sneddon (1996:310) also says, “Yes-no questions are spoken with interrogative intonation, marked by a rise in final pitch, ...”27 On the other hand, Halim (1981) claims that Indonesian intonation patterns are irrelevant to sentence patterns, as shown in Chapter 3. Because of these contradictory claims on the relationship of intonation to sentence types, further observation of pitch patterns with division of sentence types must be meaningful. All pitch contours of the target sentences were observed and compared. In the following sections, some of them, including those that were problematic, are selected for the discussion.

26 27

Yes-no interrogative nominal sentences in P-S order were not found in the source materials. Explanation of intonation in ‘specific questions’ (i.e. QW interrogative sentences) was not found in Sneddon (1996).

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

311

5.1.1. Declarative Sentences in S-P Order There are 15 declarative nominal sentences in S-P order in Group A. All of their pitch patterns were observed, then six out of the 15 sentences have been selected for the discussion. (8) Itu motor saya, Pak.

“It’s my motorcycle, sir.”

(9) (Ya,) tapi maksud saya cara mengambilnya. “(Yes,) but what I mean is how to take it.”28 (10) Hobi saya memancing.

“My hobby is fishing.”

(11) Nama saya Rini Puspita.

“My name is Rini Puspita.”

(12) Itu ide bagus.

“It’s a good idea.”

(13) Saya Joko.

“I’m Joko.”

The pitch contour (PC) of each sentence is illustrated with its energy contour in the following figures. Vertical dotted lines through the pitch and energy contours are used to separate subject and predicate parts (tagged by SUBJ and PRED respectively), and also other parts such as sentence tags, terms of address, conjunctions, if any. I---------- tu

SUBJ

mo- tor sa--ya, Pak.

ta- pi mak-- sud sa--- ya

SUBJ

PRED

Figure 1. PC of (8) Itu motor saya, Pak.

Figure 2.

ca-ra me- ngam- bil--- nya.

PRED

PC of (9) ... tapi maksud saya cara mengambilnya.

Figures 1 and 2 show the pitch contours of (8) and (9). In (8), the subject itu ‘it’ shows rising movement to the end, and, preceded by some pause, predicate motor saya ‘(is) my motorcycle’ shows an abrupt rise and 28

-nya is the enclitic form of ia ‘he/she/it’ and it has various functions. In (9), it is used as the object of mengambil ‘take.’ It is also used in genitive relationship with the preceding word as found in (14), (15), (18), (20) and (23) below.

312

Masashi FURIHATA

then an abrupt fall at the penultimate to final syllables. This pitch pattern can be regarded as typical of Halim’s 233r/231f# construction, although followed by a term of address, Pak ‘sir’, at the end of the sentence. The subject of (9), maksud saya ‘what I mean,’ which is preceded by the conjunction tapi ‘but,’ shows different movement from that of (8), i.e. rising and falling and ending with rising pitch. Some rise and fall in pitch may occur between the pre-contour (2-) and the final pitch rise (-33r). Thus, the pitch pattern of (9) can also be regarded as typical 233r/231f# construction. Ho---- bi

SUBJ

sa-ya me-------- man--------cing.

PRED

Na- ma

sa--ya

SUBJ

Ri--- ni

Pus-----pi-----ta.

PRED

Figure 3. PC of (10) Hobi saya memancing. Figure 4. PC of (11) Nama saya Rini Puspita.

Figures 3 and 4 show the pitch contours of (10) and (11). A distinct pause between the subject (hobi saya ‘my hobby,’ nama saya ‘my name’) and the predicate (memancing ‘(is) fishing’, Rini Puspita ‘(is) Rini Puspita’) cannot be found in either of them. Halim (1981:92-93) argues that phonetically a pause may be identified without a silent interval. The boundary of subject and predicate in such cases as (10) and (11) can be identified on the basis of other clues.29 The predicate of (10) shows rising movement at the penult, which is followed by the fall in pitch toward the final syllable. On the other hand, the PM of the predicate in (11) is less remarkable. However, the pitch level of the final syllable is relatively low as compared to that of the penult, and the relative difference between them may be interpreted as a significant pitch fall around the phrase final corresponding to the 231f# pattern.

29

“It is also assumed that when a pause is not realized by cessation of speech the listener can still identify one psychologically on the basis of phonological or syntactic-semantic cues, or both” (Halim 1981:92).

An Acoustic Study on Intonation I------- tu

SUBJ

i------- de

ba------ gus.

PRED

Figure 5. PC of (12) Itu ide bagus.

Sa---- ya

313

Jo------------------ ko.

SUBJ

PRED

Figure 6. PC of (13) Saya Joko.

Figure 5 shows the pitch contour of (12). The predicate of (12) has rising-falling PM around the penult, followed by one more rise at the phrase final. This pitch rise may be caused by the “speaker’s emotional and attitudinal involvement” (Halim 1981:110). In this case, the speaker’s cheerfulness or mood may be expressed with the final pitch rise. According to Halim, PM that is affected by emotional and attitudinal involvement is non-syntactically motivated intonation, thus is not taken into account in terms of the syntactical pitch patterns. Figure 6 shows the pitch contour of (13). It does not seem to have a remarkable PM. Despite its rather flat PM, the subject and the predicate in (13) can be identified. The subject, saya ‘I,’ is considered to have relatively rising pitch. In Joko ‘(am) Joko’ as the predicate, a slight difference of pitch levels between the penult and the final syllable may be regarded as the 231f# pattern. Other than that, duration of the predicate is observed to have lasted much longer than that of the subject, although the two constituents have the same number of syllables. Duration of constituents might also be taken into account as one of the factors in distinguishing their roles. 5.1.2. Declarative Sentences in P-S Order There are only three declarative nominal sentences in the P-S order in Group B, listed below: (14) (Ada, Bu,) ini suratnya.

“(I have, ma’am,) here’s the letter.”

(15) Ini uangnya, Pak.

“Here’s the money, sir.”

(16) Ini daftar nilai Anda.

“Here’s your list of grades.”

These sentences apparently have S-P construction, i.e. ini ‘this’ in each sentence may be regarded as the subject. However, it is not the case in terms of context. In (14), for example, suratnya ‘the letter’ is the topic of this utterance and thus syntactically functions as the subject, since it was made in

314

Masashi FURIHATA

the situation that the speaker was about to hand over the letter, as requested by the addressee. Also in (15) and (16), the second constituents (uangnya ‘the money’ and daftar nilai Anda ‘your list of grades’) are contextually the topics and thus syntactically function as the subjects. I------ ni

su---rat----------nya.

SUBJ

PRED

Figure 7. PC of (14) ... ini suratnya. I----- ni

PRED

daf----- tar

ni---lai

I--------ni

PRED

Figure 8.

u------- ang----------nya,

Pak.

SUBJ

PC of (15) Ini uangnya, Pak.

An------ da.

SUBJ

Figure 9. PC of (16) Ini daftar nilai Anda.

Figures 7 to 9 show the pitch contour of (14) to (16). As for (14) and (15), the second constituents, i.e. the subjects show rather flat PM, which can be the realization of Halim’s unfocalized subject pattern (211f#). On the other hand, their predicates show different movement. The pitch contour of the predicate in (14) seems to keep a similar level with a slight fall, in which the initial high pitch level might be caused by the former part of the sentence. In (15), it shows an unremarkable falling movement at the phrase final after the previous rise. Auditorily the final pitch fall was not perceived. These pieces of acoustic and perceptual evidence may be relatable to Halim’s focalized topic (233r), yet this part of the utterance was still recognized as the comment. The PM of (16) has a different shape from those of (14) and (15). Rising movement at the phrase final in the first constituent and rising-falling movement in the second one seem to be the realization of the 233r/231f# pattern, i.e. (16) has the unmarked S-P construction. Despite its acoustic result, the sentence contextually has the P-S order that was mentioned above. The sentences of Group B examined in the present analysis are few in number, and none of them show the typical PM as compared with Halim’s

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

315

232f/211f# pattern. It is difficult to state any significant relation between the acoustic and perceptual evidence of the three sentences and Halim’s underlying intonational structure. Thus, future investigations should take into account both the contextual point of view and other factors apart from acoustic analysis. 5.1.3. Yes-no Interrogative Sentences in S-P Order Halim (1981:108-109) states that some yes-no questions are signaled by intonation. The alternative pitch patterns in the yes-no interrogatives are 2f31f for unmarked comment (231f), 2f32f for marked comment (232f), and 2f31f for unfocalized topic (211f). There are three yes-no interrogative nominal sentences in S-P order in Group C. Two of them are discussed here. (17) Anda mahasiswa Jurusan Bahasa Prancis? “Are you a student in the French Language Department?” (18) Namanya Robi, ’kan?

“His name is Robi, isn’t it?”

(17) is a yes-no question without any grammatical markers to show its interrogativeness. The structure of this sentence is the same as that of a declarative sentence. (18) is a tag-question, i.e. it has the same structure as declarative sentences, with the tag ’kan ‘isn’t it’ at the sentence final.30 An-- da

SUBJ

ma- ha-sis-wa (--------------)- sa Pran- cis?

PRED

Figure 10. PC of (17) Anda mahasiswa Jurusan Bahasa Prancis?

Na-- ma---nya

SUBJ

Ro------------ bi,

’kan?

PRED

Figure 11. PC of (18) Namanya Robi, ‘kan?

Figure 10 shows the pitch contour of (17). This sentence was uttered with abrupt rising PM at the end of predicate mahasiswa Jurusan Bahasa Prancis ‘(is a) student in French Language Department’ as the sentence final. According to Halim, this rising PM is non-syntactically motivated. In other words, he seems to consider that the essential pitch pattern of the predicate in 30

’kan is a shortening of bukan which is also used as a sentence tag.

316

Masashi FURIHATA

such sentences as (17) should only be described as 2f31f,31 and that the final rising PM is syntactically optional, although it clearly expresses its interrogativeness.32 Figure 11 shows the pitch contour of (18). It seems to have the typical S-P pitch pattern of 233r/231f#, which is followed by a tag ’kan with its extreme rising PM. Tags such as ’kan, as well as bukan, in tag-questions usually, to my knowledge, experience extreme rising PM as occurred in (18).33 5.1.4. QW Interrogative Sentences in S-P Order There are three QW interrogative nominal sentences in S-P order in Group D. Two of them are discussed here. (19) ..., ini pemberitahuan tentang apa, ya? “..., what is this notice about, you know?” (20) Acaranya apa saja?

“What kind of programs are there?”

In (19), the subject ini ‘this’ precedes its predicate pemberitahuan tentang apa (which literally means ‘notification about what’), with ya ‘yes / you know’ as a tag at the sentence final. In (20), which begins with the subject acaranya ‘its program,’ the question word apa ‘what’ is combined with the particle saja ‘only, just, exactly’ as the predicate.34 I---ni

SUBJ

pem- be-ri---tahu-an ten-tang

a------ pa,

ya?

32 33 34

SUBJ

PRED

Figure 12. PC of (19) ..., ini pemberitahuan tentang apa, ya? 31

A---- ca---- ra----- nya

Figure 13.

a---- pa sa----------ja?

PRED

PC of (20) Acaranya apa saja?

Halim’s criterion for distinguishing 2f31f from 231f in yes-no interrogatives is not clear for me. Nor is it clear what kind of markers are used to identify the 2f31f pattern. Some non-nominal interrogative sentences found in the sources actually have falling PM at the end. One other sentence in this group also has the tag ’kan at the sentence final, which has a similar PM to (18). “Combinations of a question word followed by saja when occurring in questions indicate an expectation on the part of the person asking the question that the answer will contain reference to more than one thing” (Sneddon 1996:319).

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

317

Figure 12 shows the pitch contour of (19). Its PM seems to be typical of the 233r/231f# pattern, followed by a tag ya ‘yes/you know’ with extreme rising movement at the sentence final. Especially, the speaker’s concern that is represented by the question word apa ‘what’ seems to coincide with the peak of the PM. On the contrary, the pitch contour of (20) shown by Figure 13 seems to have some different movement from that of (19). While the subjects of both sentences show typical 233r movement, the pitch level of the predicate (20) runs rather low throughout it. The author’s auditory perception discerned that the intonation of this part fell gradually. 35 Although some rising-falling movement is found around the penult, further consideration should be required for this kind of low-going PM. 5.1.5. QW Interrogative Sentences in P-S Order There are 10 QW interrogative nominal sentences in P-S order in Group E. Four of them are discussed here. (21) Apa syarat untuk menjadi anggota perpustakaan? “What are the requirements to become a library member?” (22) Berapa nomor mahasiswa Anda, ...? “What is your student ID number, ...?” (23) Berapa harga tiketnya?

“How much does the ticket cost?”

(24) Kue apa ini?

“What kind of cake is this?”

The single appearance of question words apa ‘what’ in (21) and berapa ‘how many, how much’ in (22) and (23) form the predicates respectively in the initial position of the sentences. In (24), on the other hand, kue apa ‘what cake’ behaves as the predicate, in which apa takes the genitive relation to the previous word kue ‘cake’.

35

One other sentence in this group which was uttered by the same speaker (EL) shows a similar PM to (20)

318

Masashi FURIHATA

A- pa sya- rat

un-tuk (------------------) per- pus-ta--ka-an?

Figure 14. PC of (21) Apa syarat untuk menjadi anggota perpustakaan? Be- ra----- pa

PRED

har-- ga

no--mor

PRED

SUBJ

PRED

Be-ra----- pa

ti---- ket------ nya?

SUBJ

Figure 16. PC of (23) Berapa harga tiketnya?

maha-----siswa An-----da,

...

SUBJ

Figure 15 PC of (22) Berapa nomor mahasiswa Anda, ...? Ku- e

a-------------- pa i----------- ni?

PRED

Figure 17.

SUBJ

PC of (24) Kue apa ini?

Figures 14 to 17 show the pitch contours of (21) to (24). It is observed that each predicate, whether remarkable or not, seems to have a rising-falling PM at the penultimate or the final syllable. Only that of (23) repeats the rising-falling movement. The subject of (21) has the most extreme fall and a continuous extreme rise in PM at the phrase (sentence) final, which indicates its interrogativeness. However, the other ones do not show the movement as such. They have gradually falling movements, but not completely at the sentence final. This kind of PM merits further consideration. 5.2. Discussion The pitch patterns observed in the previous sections have shown some interesting indications. In regard to sentence structure, there exist two types of nominal sentence construction: S-P order and P-S order. In S-P construction (Sections 5.1.1., 5.1.3. and 5.1.4.), the subject of each sentence analyzed (including the cases not illustrated above) has rising PM at the phrase final. Halim’s underlying pitch pattern of focalized topic (233r) appears to be quite concretely realized in the PM of subjects in such construction. It seems that a stable occurrence of this pitch pattern is because of the need to appeal for the topic of the sentence. The PM of their predicates, however, varies. Especially, the ones in QW interrogative sentences such as (20) seemed to accompany a

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

319

gradual pitch fall, within which a slight rising-falling movement seemed to occur. Further consideration will be needed for the relation of such realization to Halim’s underlying 231f# patterns. Some cases have been influenced by the use of sentence tags, or by emotional factors. Since there are so few varieties found in the present analysis, it is difficult to discuss them in terms of the varieties, which require further analyses. In P-S construction, three declarative sentences observed in Section 5.1.2. seem to show different PMs. Whereas there is a sentence such as (14) with a PM which can be considered as a realization of Halim’s 232f/211f# pitch pattern, the PM of (16) looks like his 233r/231f# pattern. Contextually, the former constituents of the three sentences are obviously comments of the utterances (thus syntactical predicates of nominal sentences), thus they must have clues to be judged as predicates. Some of the phonetical features may work as such clues, or there may be other clues outside the phonetical features. Also, it seems possible that both phonetical and non-phonetical features co-work to indicate their syntactical status. The simple analysis of pitch pattern observations made in this study for only three cases cannot lead to any further discussion. On the contrary, interrogative sentences in the P-S order observed in Section 5.1.5. seem to realize Halim’s 232f/211f# pitch pattern. The contrast between declarative and interrogative sentences might be partly because of the reason that the interrogative part of the sentence should be clearly stated since, at the same time, it semantically functions as the comment that indicates the speaker’s concern. In this study, two subtypes of interrogative sentences were analyzed, i.e. yes-no interrogatives (only S-P construction) and QW interrogatives (both S-P and P-S constructions). Of the three yes-no interrogative sentences observed in Section 5.1.3., two have sentence tags ’kan at the sentence final with extreme rising PM, and the other one does not have any tags, but is accompanied by an extreme rising PM at the sentence final. According to Halim (1981), a predicate of this type has the 2f31f pitch pattern. The distinction of this pattern from 231f in other sentence types will not be discussed further here since it is beyond the scope of the present study. Halim also argues that final pitch rise, which has been considered as a feature of an interrogative sentence in other studies, is irrelevant to syntactically motivated intonation. Actually, some QW interrogative sentences analyzed here have falling PM at the sentence final. Also, some yes-no interrogative non-nominal sentences in the source materials do not have rising movement at the sentence final. While there are interrogative sentences with both rising and falling PM at the sentence final and Halim argues that sentence types are irrelevant to syntactical motivated intonation, final rising pitch that indicates its interrogativeness does frequently occur in

320

Masashi FURIHATA

interrogative sentences. Thus, further consideration will be required on final rising pitch as an indication of interrogativeness as well as that of sentence tags and terms of address. Two QW interrogative sentences in the S-P order, such as (20), have a gradual pitch fall at their predicates. Halim’s 233r/231f# pattern for S-P construction does not seem to apply in these two sentences. At present, it is difficult to explain what kind of factors have influenced the utterances in this intonation. Emotional factors might be part of the explanation. Those sentences could be heard to contain some intention of confirmation. On the other hand, the influence of the speaker’s first language would be counted among its possible factors. 36 Since these points are mere suppositions, further investigations are required. 6. Conclusion Although the present study only consists of an acoustic analysis of pitch pattern in Indonesian nominal sentences, it has raised some interesting points. To some extent, Halim’s underlying pitch patterns, i.e. 233r/231f# for S-P construction and 232f/211f# for P-S construction, are quite applicable to the intonation of the nominal sentences analyzed here, especially to declarative and yes-no interrogative sentences in the S-P order and QW interrogative sentences in the P-S order. However, some of the other sentence types (declarative sentences in the P-S order and QW interrogative sentences in the S-P order) did not accord with Halim’s. A larger number of sentences should be investigated for further discussion of such sentence types. Halim’s study has limited its objectives to ‘syntactically motivated intonation.’ He dealt neither with non-syntactically motivated intonation nor with other grammatically relevant phenomena of intonation such as terms of address and sentence tags, he states, “These are related problems of intonation which await further studies” (Halim 1981:123). There is no doubt that it is important to continue investigating the relationship between non-syntactically motivated intonation that is clearly realized by its PM, including terms of address and sentence tags, and syntactically motivated intonation, besides the relation of intonation to syntax itself. The influence of non-syntactically motivated intonation upon syntactically motivated intonation should also be taken into account. In addition, the influence of regional languages upon Indonesian should 36

In a casual conversation, one of my friends, whose first language is Javanese, told me that what he said as a question was sometimes not understood to be a question in Bandung, a Sundanese-speaking area, because of the difference of intonation. It might not be the case of a QW interrogative, but his statement has interesting implications for Indonesian intonation.

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

321

not be neglected in phonetical investigation. Ebing (1994) and Zanten, et al. (2003), for example, have taken regional distinction into account, but the number of such studies is still small and should be developed in the future. References Alwi, H., et al. (eds.). 1998. Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Standard Grammar). 3rd edition. [in Indonesian]. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka. Ebing, E.F. 1994. “Towards an Inventory of Perceptually Relevant Pitch Movements for Indonesian”. Experimental Studies of Indonesian Prosody, Odé and Heuven (eds.) 1994. 181-210. Furihata, M. 1998. Keyword de Oboeru! Yasashii Indonesia Kaiwa (Easy Indonesian Conversation; Learn with Keywords). [in Japanese]. Yokohama: Unicom. . 2005. Indonesia-go no Shikumi (Structure of Indonesian in Essay). [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Hakusuisha. Halim, A. 1974. Intonation in Relation to Syntax in Bahasa Indonesia. Jakarta: Djambatan. . 1981. Intonation in Relation to Syntax in Indonesian. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. Pacific Linguistics D 36. Materials in Languages of Indonesia 5. Moeliono, A. M., et al. (eds.). 1988. Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian Standard Grammar). [in Indonesian]. Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan / Balai Pustaka. Odé, C. and V. J. van Heuven (eds.). 1994. Experimental Studies of Indonesian Prosody. (SEMAIAN 9). Leiden: Vakgroep Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden. Sneddon, J. N. 1996. Indonesian Reference Grammar. St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Weijer, J. van de, V. J. van Heuven and H. van der Hulst (eds.). 2003. The Phonological Spectrum Volume II: Suprasegmental structure. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Zanten, E. van, R. Goedemans, and J. Pacilly. 2003. “The status of word stress in Indonesian”. The Phonological Spectrum Volume II: Suprasegmental structure, Weijer, Heuven and Hulst (eds.) 2003. 151-175.

322

Masashi FURIHATA

Appendix. The Nominal Sentences in the Indonesian D-module Materials of the TUFS Language Modules The 34 nominal sentences found in the Indonesian D-module materials of the TUFS Language Modules are listed here, divided into five groups (A to E) according to sentence types and patterns (see Section 5.1.). Each sentence provides information at the head such as the speaker, the unit number and the passage number in brackets. A double slash ( // ) means the boundary of the subject and predicate, whereas single slashes ( / ) are used to separate other constituents such as sentence tags, conjunctions, terms of address, terms of greetings, and so on. A. Declarative Sentences in S-P Order (a01) [EL:02:03] Nama saya // Rini Puspita. name I Rini Puspita

“My name is Rini Puspita.”

(a02) [EL:02:05] Nomor mahasiswa saya // satu-sembilan-satu-dua-sembilan-tujuh. number student I 1 9 1 2 9 7 “My student ID number is 191297.” (a03) [EL:04:02] Perkenalkan, / nama saya // Ani. introduce name I Ani

“How do you do, my name is Ani.”

(a04) [AR:04:05] Selamat siang, / nama saya // Joko. safe daytime name I Joko “Good morning/afternoon, my name is Joko.” (a05) [AR:04:07] Hobi saya // membaca. hobby I read

“My hobby is reading.”

(a06) [EL:11:08] Itu // ide bagus. it idea fine

“It’s a good idea.”

(a07) [EL:14:02] Aaah, / ini // surat pemberitahuan bahwa ..... oh this letter notification conj. “Oh, this is a letter of notice that .....” (a08) [AR14:05] Ya, / tapi maksud saya // cara mengambilnya. Yes but intention I way take -it “Yes, but what I mean is how to take it.”

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

323

(a09) [AR:14:09] Mungkin / itu // kiriman dari orang tua saya di kampung. maybe it package from parents I at birthplace “Maybe it’s a package from my parents at my birthplace.” (a10) [AR:20:05] Hobi saya // memancing. hobby I fish

“My hobby is fishing.”

(a11) [AR:22:05] Saya // Joko. I Joko

“I’m Joko.”

(a12) [EL:27:09] Tetapi / batas terakhirnya // hari Kamis minggu ini, Pak... but limit last -its Thursday week this sir “But the deadline is Thursday of this week, sir.” (a13) [EL:32:04] Itu // motor saya, / Pak. it motorcycle I sir

“It’s my motorcycle, sir.”

(a14) [EL:40:05] Ini // Akiko Tanaka dari Jepang. “This is Akiko Tanaka from Japan.” this Akiko Tanaka from Japan (a15) [EL:40:05] Akiko, / ini // Bapak Yanto. Akiko this Mr. Yanto

“Akiko, this is Mr. Yanto.”

B. Declarative Sentences in P-S Order (b01) [AR:02:08] Ini // daftar nilai Anda. this list grades you

“Here’s your list of grades.”

(b02) [AR:05:07] Ada, / Bu, / ini // suratnya. exist ma’am this letter -its

“Yes, (I have,) ma’am, here’s the letter.”

(b03) [EL:29:10] Ini // uangnya, / Pak. this money-its sir

“Here’s the money, sir.”

C. Yes-no Interrogative Sentences in S-P Order (c01) [AR:17:03] Namanya // Robi, / ’kan? name -his Robi isn’t it

“His name is Robi, isn’t it?”

324

Masashi FURIHATA

(c02) [EL:18:01] Anda // mahasiswa jurusan bahasa Prancis? you student department language France “Are you a student in the French language department?” (c03) [AR18:02] Anda // mahasiswa jurusan bahasa Jepang, / ’kan? you student department language Japan aren’t you “You are a student in the Japanese language department, aren’t you?”

D. QW Interrogative Sentences in S-P Order (d01) [EL:13:05] Waktu peminjamannya // berapa hari? time lending -its how many day “How long is the lending period?” (d02) [AR:14:01] Ria, / ini // pemberitahuan tentang apa, / ya? Ria this notification about what you know “Ria, what is this notice about, you know?” (d03) [EL:28:05] Acaranya // apa saja? program-its what just

“What kind of programs are there?”

E. QW Interrogative Sentences in P-S Order (e01) [AR:02:04] Berapa // nomor mahasiswa Anda / dan / jurusan apa? how much number student you and department what “What is your student ID number and which department?” (e02) [EL:04:06] Berapa // umurnya, / dan / apa // hobinya, / Joko? how much age -its and what hobby-its Joko “How old are you, and what is your hobby, Joko?” (e03) [AR:06:06] Kue apa // ini? cake what this

“What kind of cake is this?”

(e04) [AR:08:02] Apa // nama penerbitnya? what name publisher-its

“What is the publisher’s name?”

(e05) [EL:08:05] Berapa // harganya? how much price -its

“How much does it cost?”

An Acoustic Study on Intonation

325

(e06) [EL:12:03] Apa // syarat untuk menjadi anggota perpustakaan? what requirement for become member library “What are the requirements to become a library member?” (e07) [EL:18:05] Apa // yang paling sulit? what rel. most difficult

“What is the most difficult thing?”

(e08) [AR:19:01] CD apa // itu? CD what that

“What kind of CD is that?”

(e09) [EL:20:04] Omong-omong, / apa // hobi Iwan? “By the way, what is your hobby?” by the way what hobby Iwan (e10) [EL:36:08] Berapa // harga tiketnya? how much price ticket-its

“How much does the ticket cost?”

Acoustic and Structural Analysis of Enclitic Particles in Tagalog Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI This paper deals with the enclitics or enclitic particles in Tagalog from the acoustic point of view with reference to structure and concludes that the clitic order observed in Tagalog and other Philippine and Taiwan aboriginal languages is defined by the structural basis and/or acoustic basis, both of which are observed in the Tagalog language. However the Tagalog clitic ordering is mainly determined by the latter. I. Clitics One of the remarkable grammatical and phonological characteristics in the Indonesian language group or Hesperonesian group in the Austronesian languages, especially Tagalog and other Philippine-Formosan languages is the clitic. Researchers on the languages in the area should have knowledge of the clitics. If they do not have knowledge of this grammatical item, they will have a hard time during their survey. In the languages in the world other than the Austronesian group Perlmutter (1971) discusses the clitic or “se” in Spanish, and Fauconnier (1975) does pronouns in French. II. Syntactic Analysis of Enclitics i. Proclitics and Enclitics The clitics are a class of words and phrases that occur only in certain fixed word-order relations to other sentence elements. They are subcategorized into Proclitics, which are usually placed at the beginning of the sentence or obligatorily proceed the first word of the construction of which they constitute an immediate part, and Enclitics, which are placed second at the beginning of the sentence or obligatorily follow the first word of the construction of which they constitute an immediate part. From the view of parts of speech the clitics contain pronouns, adverbs, interrogative markers, linking particles and phrases which show the modality. In Tagalog the following particles are observed:

328

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

ii. Proclitic particles a. hindi, di “not”(= nagator) (wala “none”, ayaw “hate”, mayroon / may “have, there is”, Huwag “do no” etc. are classified in this group.) Hindi matanda ang lalaki. (not old the man) *Matanda hindi ang lalaki. *Matanda ang lalaki hindi.

“The man is not old.”

May bangka si Juan. (have boat Juan) *Bangka may si Juan. *Bangka si Juan may.

“Juan has a boat.”

iii. Enclitic Particles a. Pronouns In the Philippine and Formosan languages there are two types of pronouns, the proclitic pronouns and enclitic pronouns. But the former type of pronouns are not observed in the Tagalog language except “ikaw” (=you), which is the remnant of the old proclitic and showing the existence of the proclitic pronoun system in the language. Some other languages in the group possess both types of the pronouns, which will be discussed in the later chapter. #

+ Focus

Pr

Sg ako

2nd Pr 3rd Pr

ka siya

1

st

Pl tayo kami kayo sila

(Inclusive) (Exclusive)

# - Focus

1st Pr

Sg ko

2nd Pr 3rd Pr

mo niya

Pl natin (Inclusive) namin (Exclusive) ninyo nila

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

329

b. Adverbs kasi “because”:

Maingay kasi kayo. “Because you are noisy.” (noisy because you) kaya “perhaps”: Maglakad kayo doon(/roon). ”Perhaps you should walk there.” (walk you there) din~rin “too”: Kumakain din si Juan. “Juan is eating too.” (eat too Juan) lamang~lang “only”: Apat lamang kami. “We are four.” (four only we) man “even, ever”: Ano man ang gusto mo? “What do you want?” (what ever the like by you) muna “for a while”: Teka muna. “Wait a minute.” (wait for a while) na “already”: kumain na ako. “I have already eaten.” (ate already I) naman “on the other hand”: Nag-aaral naman si Linda. “Linda, on the other hand, is studying.” (studying on the other hand Linda) nga “please”: Uminom ka nga. “Please drink.” (drink you please) pa “still”: Kumain pa kayo. “Please eat some more.” (eat still you) pala “so”: Maganda pala si Linda. “Oh, Linda is beautiful.” (beautiful so Linda) tuloy “as a result”: Nahuli tuloy si Juan sa klase. “As a result Juan was late for class.” (late as a result Juan for class)

c. Modals ba

“question marker”: Saan ba si Juan nakatira? “Where does Juan live?” (where QM Juan live) daw~raw “it is said”: Saan daw pupunta si Juan? “Where did they say Juan was going?” (where said go Juan) po “honorification”: Magandang umaga po, Ginoong Natividad. “Good morning sir, Mr. Natividad.” (good morning sir Mr. Natividad) ho “honorification”: Oho. (=oo ho) “Yes sir.” (yes sir)

330

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI sana “I hope”: Nanalo sana si Juan. “I hope Juan wins.” (win hope Juan) yata “seem”: Mahal yata ang karne. “The meat seems expensive.” (dear seem the meat)

d. Linker -ng/-ŋ/ na:

In Tagalog and other Philippine-Formosan languages the linking particle or connecting particle “-ng/-ŋ/na” is observed. The particle connects the adjective to noun or noun to noun or verb phrases. “-ng” and “na” are allomorphs and show a complementary distribution. The former is used if the preceding constituent ends in the vowel /ʔ/ or /n/ (the latter two are replaced by /-ŋ/) and the latter is done in the case of other phonemes and the pause. maganda-ng babae “beautiful lady” (beautiful-LINKER lady) mabait na babae “diligent lady” (diligent-LINKER lady”

iv. Ordering of the Enclitic Particles When a sentence includes enclitic particles in itself, they must obligatorily follow the ordering rule of the enclitic particle. Maganda-ng babae si lLinda. “Linda is a beautiful girl.” Maganda siya-ng babae. “She is a beautiful girl.” ?*Magand-ng babae siya.

All of the enclitics must be placed after the initial word or constituent and in the enclitic group there is an ordering rule, which they obligatorily follow. Kumain ka na ba? “Did you eat?” Kumain na ba kayo? “Did you (pl.) eat?” Kumain pa nga kayo? “Please eat some more.” Nagtatrabaho ba raw naman kayo roon? “Are they saying you’re working there instead?.” Nabili yata pala/ pala yata niya ang damit. “I think he got to buy the clothes.” Gusto ko siyang tawagin. ”I want to call him.” Hindi pa man lamang tuloy nakapag-almusal si Juan. “As a result Juan did not even have breakfast.”

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

331

Maganda na siyang babae. “She became a beautiful lady.”

The sentences above reveal the existence of the hierarchy or ordering of the clitics and the sentence that follow other orderings results in ungrammatical sentences. And the sentence Hindi pa man lamang tuloy nakapag-almusal si Juan. “As a result Juan did not have even breakfast.”

shows the combination of the proclitic particle “hindi”(=not”) and the enclitic particles “pa, man, lamang, and tuloy.” The enclitics must follow the following ordering: Class I: Class II-a: Class II-b: Class II-c-1: Class II-c-2: Class II-d: Class III: Class IV:

monosyllabic pronouns monosyllabic particles monosyllabic particles mono-/disyllabic particles disyllabic particles disyllabic particles disyllabic pronouns Linker

Cl-I → Cl-II-a → Class II-b → Class II-c-1 → Class II-c-2 → Class II-d → Class III → Class IV ko ka etc.

na pa

man

ba din kasi ho po lamang nga

daw muna naman

kaya pala sana tuloy yata

ako kayo etc.

-ng/na

The hierarchy that determines this ordering is the number of the syllables and the parts of speech. Class-I and Class-II-b are monosyllabic enclitics and class-II-1 and -2 are the mixture of monosyllabic and disyllabic enclitics. But class-II-d and class-III are disyllabic ones. The adverbial and modal enclitics are sandwiched between monosyllabic pronouns and disyllabic pronouns.

332

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

III. Typological Analysis of the Enclitics i. Clitics and Focus The ordering of the enclitics in Tagalog discussed above is summarized as below: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

1 syllable pronouns ↓ 1 syllable particles ↓ 2 syllable particles ↓ 2 syllable pronouns ↓ Linker

The ordering above reveals that there are two kinds of criteria: 1. 2.

Number of Syllables Pronouns or Particles

This rule seems to be indifferent to the Focused and non-Focused pronouns. However, if a two syllable Focused pronoun and a two syllable non-Focused pronoun are in a sentence, the Focused pronoun must follow the non-Focused pronoun. Hinampas niya sila. (They hit them.) *Hinampas siya nila.

As a result there are three criteria that determine the order of the enclitics. ii. Enclitics in Ivatan The Ivatan language, which is spoken by the people on the islands between Taiwan and Luzon Island, shows an interesting enclitic ordering. The language has the whole set of the two kinds of pronouns, which are proclitic pronouns and enclitic pronouns.

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

333

Proclitic Pronouns yaken imo (si)iya yaten yamen inyo sira

o navoya no Pedro.

“the one(s) who Pedro see is/are”

I you he/she we (inclusive) we (exclusive) you they

(the seen by Pedro)

Enclitic Pronouns 1. Focused Pronouns

Navoya

ako ka (s)iya ta kami kamo sa, sira

(seen

no Pedro.

“I “You “(S)he “We (Inclusive) “We (Exclusive) “You “They

was/were seen by me.”

by Pedro)

2. Non-Focused Pronouns

Nasadiw

(bought

ko mo na ta namen nyo da

o vahay da.

“Their house was bought by

the house their)

3. Adverbial Enclitic Particles Koman ta na. “Let’s eat.” (eat we already) Matava dana anchi Si Juan. “Juan will be fat later.” (fat already later Juan)

me” you” her/him” us (Inclusive)” us (Exclusive)” you” them”

334

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

4. Negative Marker Komininan ako pa ava. (ate I yet not)

“I have not eaten yet.”

5. Sentential adverbs that denote the speaker’s opinion: kono “they say”, sawen “I agree”, paro “do you think?, is it true?” Magulang kono si Lita. “They say Lita is slender.” (slender said Lita) Magulang siya kono. “They say she is slender.” (slender she said) Magulang kono sawen si Lita. “I agree (they say) Lita is slender.” (slender said agree Lita)

iii. Enclitic Order in Ivatan If several particles are incorporated in a sentence, an ordering rule constrains them in the right order as follows: HEAD + pronoun

+

pa + kono na paro dana/ rana

+ sawen

+

ava + anchi

Manutong pa kono sawen ava anchi si Ina. “It is said that mother will surely not cook anymore.” (cook, still, said, perhaps, not later mother)

1. Ordering in the Enclitic Pronouns. The enclitic pronouns are arranged –Focus pronoun and +Focus pronoun Ichadaw

ko imo. “You are loved by me.” *ko ka. (be loved, by me, you)

Placement of the proclitic pronouns after the enclitics. Mavoya ko anchi imo. “You will be seen by me.= I will see you later.” (seen by me later you(+Focus)9 *ko ka anchi. (by me you(+focus) later)

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

335

2. Structural or Grammatical Constraints The Ivatan language is a typical V-O language, which follows the operand/important and operator/less important word order. If the ordering of the clitics in Ivatan is observed, the hierarchy is determined by the operand-operator ordering. [[[[[HEAD + Pronoun] +Adverbs]+Modals]+negative]+Locational adverb]

As the result of the discussion the clitics in Ivatan are constrained 1) structurally or grammatically or typologically. But The Tagalog clitics are based on the two factors : 1) number of the syllables 2) structural grammatical or typological constraints. IV. Acoustic analysis of the enclitics An interesting phenomenon on enclitics is ordering or its obligatory placement after an initial word. This seems to be a matter of the suprasegmental phenomenon. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the phonetic rules on the placement acoustically and to investigate the reason why they are enclitics or placed in the fixed ordering. The suprasegmentals on a sentence are classified into three features: Stress, Pitch and Duration. So spectrographic analysis is used in the analysis. The data analyzed in this paper are based on the Pilipino Dialogue Modules of TUFS Language Modules, which have been developed since 2002 in The 21st Century COE project “Usage -Based Linguistic Informatic” at the Graduate School of Area and Culture Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS), see http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/modules/tr/dmod/ (in Japanese) i. Stress In this section the stress or amplitude pattern in the sentence is paid attention to. a. Medial Figure 1.

Ikumusta ninyo ako kay Mang Rudy. (say hello, bu you, I, to uncle Rudy) “Please give my best regards to Uncle Rudy.”

336

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

b. Final Figure 2.

Pasensiya ka na. (be sorry, you, already)

“Pardon me.”

As the experimental results shown above reveal, the stress or amplitude does not affect the sentence patterns or flatness. ii. Pitch Pitch patterns of the enclitics change according to their position and meaning in the sentence. a. Medial 1. Declarative Sentence with pronouns As shown in Figure 3 the pitch of the enclitics is declining and the constituents after the enclitics start different patterns anew. Figure 3.

Natikim naman ako ng durian at marang. “I tasted durian and marang.” (tasted, so, I)

2. Interrogative sentence There are several types in the interrogative sentences: 1) beginning with “ano” what, “sino” who, “saan” where, etc. and 2) with the interrogative

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

337

marker “ba”. 1) The interrogative sentence beginning with an interrogative pronoun has the pitch pattern starting with high pitch and gradually descending. Figure 4.

Saan ho kayo galing? (where, honorific, you, from)

“Where are you from?”

2) Another interrogative sentence is the one with the interrogative clitic “ba”. It must follow the clitic ordering. The pitch pattern is the same as the declarative sentence. Figure 5.

Tagalog lang ba ang alam mo? “Tagalog is the only language you know.” (only, Q-marker, the, know, you)

3. Adverbial “na”, “pa”, “lang”, “rin”, “pala” The pitch pattern of the sentence with adverbial particles is the same as that with pronouns, in other words descending gradually.

338

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

Figure 6.

Pakisabi na lang ho ninyo kay Josie ---. “Tell Josie --(be told, already,only,honorific, by you)

4. Modal “yata”, “daw/raw” These particles do not show the descending pattern, but the enclitic “yata” (=perhaps) keeps its steady or leveled tone and succeeds to the following constituents. Figure 7.

May tao yata sa labas. “There may be a man outside.” (there is, man, perhaps, outside)

5. Honorification “ho”, “po” The honorific enclitics “ho” or “po” keep their level tone pattern and succeed their level tone to the following constituents.

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

339

Figure 8.

Mura na ho iyon. “it is very cheap.” (cheap,already, honorific,it)

6. Linker “-ng” or ”na” The linker morpheme has two allomorphs: “-ng[-ŋ]” and “na”, the former of which is adjoined to the word ending in the vowel, /n/ or /ʔ/ (the latter two are replaced by /-ŋ/) and the latter of which is placed after the word ending in other phonemes. The pitch of the linker keeps its level pitch, and if there is another enclitic, the linker adjusts the falling pitch to the level pitch. Figure 9.

Kailangan ko hong umuwi nang maaga ngayon. “I must go home this morning.” (needed, by me,honorific+Linker,return, morning, today)

b. Final 1. Declarative Sentence with Pronouns The sentences ending with pronouns show an interesting pitch decline, which seems to be signaling the end of the sentence.

340

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

Figure 10.

Inunahan mo naman ako, eh. (to be first,you, so, I)

“you are ahead of me.”

2. Interrogative Sentence The sentences ending with “ba” show the same pattern as the one ending in a pronoun. Figure 11.

May klase ka ba? “Do you have a class?” (to have, class, you, Q-marker)

3. Averbial The sentences ending with “na” show the same pattern as the one ending in a pronoun.

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

341

Figure 12.

Pasensya ka na. “You pardon me.” (pardon, you, already)

4. Modal The sentence ending in the modal enclitic “yata” shows the slight rising tone, which signals the stressing of the speaker’s opinion. Figure 13.

May bagyo yata (there is, typhoon, perhaps)

“There may be a typhoon.”

5. Honorification The sentences ending with “ho” or “po” show the same pattern as the one ending in a pronoun.

342

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI

Figure 14.

Maligayang Pasko ho, Mrs. Rosales. “Merry Christmas, ma’am, Mrs. Rosales.” (happy, Christmas,honorific)

iii. Duration a. Medial 1. Declarative Sentence The duration of the pronouns is almost 200± msec. except “ninyo”. But the length of the enclitic placed at the end of the clitic group is prolonged 50 to 100%. Figure 3: (cf. p336) Natikim naman ako ng durian at marang. “I tasted durian and marang.” (tasted, so, I durian and marang)

2. Interrogative Sentence 1) Beginning with “ano” (what), “sino” (who), “saan” (where), etc. The interrogative sentence beginning with an interrogative pronoun has its final word prolonged to 400 msec. Figure 4: (cf. p337) Saan ho kayo galling? (where, honorific, you, from)

“Where are you from?”

2) With the Interroative Marker “ba”. Another interrogative sentence is the one with the interrogative enclitic “ba”. It must follow the clitic ordering. Its duration is the same as the declarative sentence, 200 msec. Figure 5: (cf. p337) Tagalog lang ba ang alam mo? “Tagalog is the only language you know.” (only, Q-marker, the, know, you)

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

343

3. Adverbial The duration of the adverbial particles is the same as that with pronouns, but the length of the clitic in the clitic group is longer than the usual length (200 msec to 450 msec.). Figure 6: (cf. p338) Pakisabi na lang ho ninyo kay Josie —. “ Tell Josie — (be told, already,only,horific, by you)

4. Modal The clitic “yata” (=perhaps) keeps its length very long, 300 msec.. Figure 7: (cf. p338) May tao yata sa labas. “There may be a man outside.” (there is, man, perhaps, outside)

5. Honorification The honorific enclitics “ho” or “po” are uttered a little bit shorter than other enclitics (150 msec to 190 msec.). Figure 8: (cf. p339) Mura na ho iyon. (cheap,already, honorific,it)

“it is very cheap.”

6. Linker The duration of the linker keeps its usual length, 100 to 150 msec. Figure 9: (cf. p339) Kailangan ko hong umuwi nang maaga ngayon. “I must go home this morning.” (needed, by me,honorific+Linker,return, morning, today)

b. Final 1. Declarative Sentence The sentences ending with pronouns show an interesting lengthening to 300 msec. Figure 10: (cf. p340) Inunahan mo naman ako. (to be first,you, so, I)

“you are ahead of me.”

2. Interrogative sentence In the sentences ending in the interrogative marker “ba” the marker shows a shorter length than other enclitics, although it is longer than in the medial position.

344

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI Figure 11: (cf. p340) May klase ka ba? “Do you have a class?” (to have, class, you, Q-marker)

3. Adverbial In the sentences ending with “na” the adverb shows the same pattern as the one ending in a pronoun. Figure 12: (cf. p341) Pasensya ka na. “You pardon me.” (pardon, you, already)

4. Modal In the sentence ending in the modal clitic “yata” the marker is prolonged to 480 msec. Figure 13: (cf. p341) May bagyo yata (there is, typhoon, perhaps)

“There may be a typhoon.”

5. Honorification The honorific clitics “ho” or “po” keeps their usual length or a more prolonged duration (300 msec.). Figure 14: (cf. p342) Maligayang Pasko ho, Mrs. Rosales. (happy, Christmas,honorific)

“Merry Christmas, mom, Mrs. Rosales.”

V．Conclusion i. Clitics and Suprasegmentals From the results of the experiments and discussion in IV the acoustic analysis of the suprasegmentals clarifies that: 1. 2. 3.

Stress does not show the vivid variation in the sentence. The pitch declination is observed after the enclitic group and the sentence final. The enclitic which is at the group final and the sentence final becomes very long and the modal, which denotes the meaning of the speaker’s opinion, especially the honorification, is uttered longer than usual length: 150 - 250 msec.

1, 2 and 3 above reveal that the suprasegmentals, especially pitch and duration, give information of the boundary and the modality in the sentence, the latter of which denotes the meaning of the speaker’s opinion. That is, a

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

345

sentence with the enclitic group is divided into two parts — the enclitic group and other sentential constituents and their boundary are shown by pitch and duration. Especially the enclitic with modal meaning is pronounced longer and with vivid pitch declination. This syntactic or semantic constraint is reflected in the enclitic order in Tagalog: Pronouns 1 syllable

Adverbial I 1syllable

Adverbial II 2 syllables

Pronouns 2 syllables

ii. Phonological or Structural There arises another interesting ordering rule in Ivatan as discussed in Chapter III. The language has the clitic order, but it is not dominated by the phonological rules: In Ivatan Komininan ako na. (ate I already) *Komininan na ako.

“I ate already.”

But in Tagalog *Kumain ako na. (ate I already) Kumain na ako.

“I ate already.”

The order of the enclitics is determined syntactically in Ivatan (Pronoun: ako → Adverbial: na) and done phonologically in Tagalog (1 syllable: na → 2 syllables: ako). This denotes that the enclitic ordering is not solely dominated by the acoustic features. So based on the results of the discussion above it will be concluded that the ordering rule is determined on two different bases, which are a phonological one and a syntactic/structural one. iii. Orderings in Tagalog and Ivatan As shown in Chapter II the enclitic ordering in Ivatan, which has a syntactically or structurally governed eclitic order, is: Pronoun (-Focus) →

adverbial →

Pronoun (+Focus) [cf. Moriguchi (2005)]

But even in Tagalog, which is constrained by the phonologically governed rules, the syntactically or structually governed ordering is observed.

346

Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI Nakita ninyo (to be seen by you *Nakita ako

ako. I) ninyo.

“I was seen by you.”

The sentence above alludes to the existence of two dominated rules in Tagalog. The language still keeps the old enclitic rule prevalent in the Philippine languages. But in addition to the syntactic or structurally based rules the language is governed by the acoustically based rule or the number of the syllables. The acoustically and syntactically or structurally governed enclitic order in Tagalog is grouped as follows: a) b)

Pronouns [1 syllable

[Adverbial I 1syllable ]

Adverbial II ] 2 syllables

Pronouns 2 syllables

And this will be summarized as follows: a’) b’)

Pronouns 1 syllable

Adverbials Pronouns 2 syllables

As most of the Philippine and Taiwan aboriginal languages are V-O languages or operator–operand languages, the main part is placed at the beginning. Although the main part of the sentence is the topicalized or focused constituent, whose information is incorporated in the verbal forms, the constituent need not be placed in the beginning of the sentence as the verb is usually at the beginning of the sentence. The Ivatan language discussed above is a typical example of the V-O language and it follows only the syntactic or typological ordering. It is concluded that the Tagalog language still keeps the syntatically or typologically defined enclitic order but the language invented new acoustic rules independently and idiolectally. The latter which mainly dominates the ordering in contemporary Tagalog is based on the length of the word or the number of syllables, and showing the boundary in the sentence acoustically, that is, with a prolonged syllable and the declination of the pitch. As a result the clitic rules in Tagalog have two principles: syntactic or typological clitic order and acoustic clitic order, the latter of which is the main constraint on the clitics. References Fauconnier, G. R. 1975. “Theoretical Implications of Some Global Phenomena in Syntax.” I.U. Linguistic Club. Ph.D Thesis at U.C.S.D.

Acoustic and Structural Analysis

347

Moriguchi, T. 1977. “Some Remarks on Tagalog Accent — Physical Accent vs. Psychological Accent.” in South-east Asian Studies. pp. 79-94. Moriguchi, T. 1985. Tagalog Grammar. Daigaku Shorin. Moriguchi, T. 1998. “Some Remarks on Clitics in Isamorong: A Dialect of the Languages Spoken on the Islands between Formosa and Luzon.” in Research Report at University Education Center, Kumamoto University. pp. 53-67. Moriguchi, T. 2005. “A Typology of Languages Based Valence/voice-marking and Focus.” in Corpus-Based Approaches to Sentence Structures. pp.95126. TUFS. Perlmutter, D.M. 1971. “Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax.” Transatlantic Series in Linguistics. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Schachter, P and F. T. Otanes 1972. Tagalog Reference Grammar. U.C. Press

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives 1

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

Introduction The Turkish lexical accent has been relatively well studied. Nevertheless, the results are not always unanimous among phoneticians. For instance, in two experimental studies, Ahmet K. Konrot (1981) and Takahiro Fukumori (2004) have affirmed with other researchers that the rising of the fundamental frequency (F0) is related significantly with the presence of accent. On the contrary, they do not share their opinion on syllable duration. Konrot contends that final duration is irrelevant, since at the final position, duration is determined by the rule of “final vowel lengthening”. Its positional character also explains the fact that final duration is not perceived as the presence of accent by Turkish speakers in perception tests.2 On the other hand, for Fukumori, final duration belongs to one of the acoustic traits of the Turkish accent. Finally, the status of intensity distinguishes Konrot’s position from that of Fukumori. They are both in accordance with the general view that intensity is not related with accent in the final position. Konrot postulates however the coexistence of two different accentuations in Turkish, i.e. pitch accent and stress accent. If the final syllable does not have a pitch accent, F0 falls. When it has pitch accent, F0 shows falling and rising. On the other hand, Konrot has noticed that in Turkish, independently of the existence of accent, intensity is relatively at a high level in initial syllables of words. Intensity is significant only if accent plays a contrastive role. In spite of these recent studies on lexical accent, the correlation between accentuation and intonation in syntagms is of critical importance to investigate Turkish intonation. We should explicitly take into account the prosodic structuring from the smallest accentual unit to the largest intonation unit passing by several syntagmatic prosodic units. In the following paper, an almost total lack of such study on prosodic structuring requires us to grope in the dark as we work through this discussion.

1

2

The present article is based on the collaboration of three Japanese and Turkish researchers. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Jacqueline Vaissière and Mary-Annick Morel who facilitated this academic encounter. The final version of this article was translated from the previous French version. Turkish has distinctive long vowels especially in Arabic and Persian loan words.

350

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

1. Intonation and interrogative sentences The relation between syntactic structure and intonation has been recognized since the beginning of intonational analysis of Turkish. In his first acoustic experiment directed by Pierre Fouché at the Phonetic Institute of the University Paris III, Muzaffer Tansu explained, through his own reading and recording of the poems of Emrah, that Turkish intonation consists in the systematic combination of pitch variation. He remarked also that rising at the first part and falling at the end corresponded exactly to the syntactic structure of the poem, representing the relations of question and answer.3 In the following verse Dedim: inci nedir? dedi: dişimdir; “I said: what is pearl?, he said: it is my tooth.”, the question begins with the pitch peak of ne and is followed by the falling in dir. A small rising of dedi comes after and finally the answer to that question is given with the final falling of dişimdir.4 First of all, it is probably necessary to emphasize that even if Turkish has at its disposal morphosyntactic markers for interrogatives, we can not leave aside suprasegmental markers, and especially intonation. Concerning the intonation analysis of Turkish interrogative sentences, the typology of Otto von Essen appears traditional but valuable. He distinguished six types of interrogative intonation in the texts read by two Turks: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

MI question (Entscheidungsfragen): Benim karım olmak ister misin? Rhetorical question (rhetorische Frage): Imaret burası değil mi? WH-question (Ergänzungsfragen): Nerelisin? Double question (Doppelfragen): ...evli midir, bekâr mıdır? Repeated question (Nachfrage): Akşama mı? Specific question (Sonderformen): Demek sade ona razısın? (Essen (1956) 109-113)

A more recent paper by Mustafa Sarıca also concerns the intonation structure of interrogatives. He discerned five types according to the morphosyntactic structure: 1) Interrogative adverb in isolated form: Niye? 2) Interrogative adverb in nominal context: Nasılsın Ayşegül? 3) Interrogative adverb in verbal context: Nasıl geçiyor orda hayat? 3 4

Muzaffer Tansu (1941) Türk Dilinin Entonasyonu Tecrübî Etüd, İdeal Basımevi, Ankara, p.45. Tansu, op.cit., p.46: “(...) Bu şekilde bahs ettiğimiz mısraların birinci kısmında sesin «ne» hecesinde davamlı yükselişi ile ifade edilen sorgu, ikinci kısmında yani cevapta sesin inişi ile nihayet bulmaktadır.”

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

351

4) Interrogative particle in nominal context: Daha ilerlemesi söz konusu mu? 5) Interrogative particle in verbal context: Dersini yaptın mı? (Sarıca (1997) 319-331)

Based on the current state of research, it would be safe to take these typological studies as our basic model. 2. Turkish Dialogue Module as semi-natural corpus Forty dialogues that we analyzed exhaustively in this paper have been used as one of the conversation textbooks in 17 different languages on the Internet. These textbooks are called the Dialogue Modules of TUFS Language Modules, which have been developed since 2002 in The 21st Century COE project “Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics” at the Graduate School of Area and Culture Studies, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS), see http://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/modules/tr/dmod/ (in Japanese). All the dialogues were recorded in the studio at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and were played by a graduate student born in Mersin and a research student born in Kahraman Maraş. In short, the dialogues should not be regarded as natural, because these were enacted according to the previously fixed script. In this sense, the dialogues are semi-natural or semi-artificial, but more or less controlled by the students themselves: relatively normative pronunciation, sometimes didactic accent, rare redundancy in discourses and lack of overlapping, etc. There is no doubt that the spoken Turkish corpus has been valuable due to its availablilty. Nevertheless, our project to construct a spoken Turkish corpus has only just begun. In the present paper, we will have to make do with this semi-natural corpus of played dialogues. The intonation analysis was effectuated by PRAAT5 and its application Prosogramme.6 Sound sources are all wave files with the sample rate of 5 6

The speech analyser was developped by Paul Boersma and David Weenink, Institute of Phonetic Sciences, University of Amsterdam, cf. http://www.praat.org/ The most outstanding feature of Prosogramme lies in its stylization process of pitch variation. In opposition to previous stylization methods based on the statistical calculation of the F0 curve, Prosogramme has adopted a tonal perception model, i.e. the simulation of pitch perception. In our analysis, the glissando threshold is G = 0.32/T2 which gives us a stylization, in Mertens’ wording, “very close to the manual notation”. In Prosogramme, pitch is determined only in the vowel nucleus. The vowel nucleus corresponds to the voiced part around the intensity peak. In order to eliminate microprosodic perturbations, the voiced part is delimited on the left and right respectively by the points of -3dB and -9dB of the maximum. For further details, see Mertens (2004) 14-17 and his site, http://bach.arts.kuleuven.be/pmertens/prosogram/. We thank Piet Mertens for his kind suggestions about our analysis.

352

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

44,100 Hz, and a bit depth of 16 bits. From the morphosyntactic viewpoint, it is traditional to distinguish three major types of Turkish interrogatives. 1. 2. 3.

WH-question where an interrogative adjective or adverb is used. YES/NO-question where an interrogative particle –mI7 is used. Question without morphosyntactic marker where neither an interrogative adjective or adverb, nor particle –mI is present.

In the following lines, we first will analyze the intonation pattern of wh-questions, then that of yes/no-questions, and finally questions without morphosyntactic markers. 3. WH-question A WH-question is the interrogation by means of interrogative adjectives or adverbs like hangi “which”, kaç “how much”, nasıl “how”, ne “what”, nere “where” or niçin “why.” In example [1] Ne oldu? “What’s up?”, as Tansu had already explained it more than a half century ago, the pitch reaches its peak in the interrogative adverb Ne and then falls. However, besides this high pitch in Ne, there is another important position to interpret the intonation of wh-questions. It is the sentence final position. The intonation structure of wh-questions is thus composed of two relevant prosodic positions. Two relevant positions in wh-questions [1] - Ne oldu? “What’s up?”

HL H 8 position 1 interrogative adjective or adverb Ne 7 8

ol

position 2 sentence final -du ?

We follow here the traditional method of transcription for Turkish archiphoneme /I/ in vowel harmony. H = high-flat pitch, L = low-flat pitch.

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

353

3.1. Intonation pattern of wh-questions To establish more adequate intonation categories of wh-questions, it is important to take into consideration the terminal intonation contour of interrogative sentences. And it is well founded on the fact that the predication appears at the end of an utterance in Turkish. The terminal contour can be rising or falling. But final rising should be divided into two different categories, i.e. final rising with or without glissando. Thus, in our corpus, three terminal intonation patterns are to be differentiated in wh-questions, see Table 1. Table 1. Terminal intonation patterns of wh-questions F0 at the end of an utterance H ↑ Occurrences in the corpus 19/39 11/39 H = high-flat pitch, L = low-flat pitch, ↑ = rising glissando9

L 9/39

[2] - Merhaba Nilgün Hanım. - Merhaba Mehmet Bey. - Nasılsınız? - Iyiyim,.. “- Hello Ms Nilgün. – Hello Mr Mehmet. – How are you? – I am fine,..

0 0

0

L

H

↑

[3] - ... Siz nasılsınız? - Ben de iyiyim,.. “And you, how are you? Me too, I am fine,..”

0 H 9

L

0 0 H

Some examples in which Prosogramme did not suceed in extracting the F0 variation were systematically omitted from the present analysis. In a different framework, especially when high pitch is regarded as a referential one, our three intonation patterns will be described as follows: flat pitch (H=), falling pitch (H-) and rising pitch (H+).

354

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

For wh-questions, there is not a single interrogative characterized by a terminal falling glissando in our corpus. Otto von Essen noticed a general pitch rising of a sixth at the end of wh-questions.10 At morphosyntactic level, two sentences [2] and [3] are separated only by the personal pronoun Siz “you”, while at discourse level, the opposition seems more complex. In example [2], the interrogative adverb nasıl has low-flat pitch at the first syllable and then high-flat pitch at the second. Here the lexical accentuation constitutes probably one of the direct causes of assigning a high-flat pitch to the second syllable of Nasıl. On the contrary, example [3] begins with the personal pronoun Siz and the presence of this personal pronoun has modified the contour nasıl. The answer Ben de iyiyim is accompanied with another contrastive personal pronoun Ben “Me”. Therefore, the first discourse Siz nasılsınız? is in contrast with the second Ben de iyiyim. Nacar-Logie interpreted it in the same manner. (...) en turc, la démarcation du segment initial par la hauteur intonative dépend d’une mise en contraste énonciative, liée au changement de thème ou de propos. En d’autres termes, s’il n’existe pas de changement de thème ou de propos, l’intonation représente une configuration très peu modulée. (Nacar-Logie (1997) 271)

The same effect can probably be found in Sarıca’s intonation analysis, see Sarıca (1997) 338: Sen ne zaman... and Sen nerden... in examples 8 and 9. 3.2. Is rising glissando relevant? A striking difference is found in the terminal contour. Rising glissando –nız occurs in example [3]. As far as our corpus is concerned, rising glissando appears generally in the following contexts. In nominal context, i.e. the interrogative adjective followed by a noun. Hangi bina? “Which building?” Ne partisi? “What party?” Başka ne gibi yetenekleriniz var? “What kind of other faculties do you have?” Nasıl biri? “What kind of one?” Saçı ne renk? “What color is his hair?” Ne renk bir kalemdi? “What kind of colour pencil was it?”

Interrogative at the final position. Toplantı salonu nerede? “Where is meeting room?” Boyu ne kadar? “How tall is it?” 10

“Im Gegensatz zu den Entscheidungsfragen bildet diese Ergänzungsfrage den Schwerpunkt in der Fragepartikel. Der Ton springt auch hier energisch nach oben (Quartsprung); im Nachlauf sinkt die Stimme über c auf F und geht in der letzten Silben um eine kleine Sext wieder hinauf.”, Essen (1956) p.110.

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

355

Ne oldu Özgür? “What’s up, Özgür?”, the sentence with a rising glissando in the word Özgür, will be classified as an interrogative in nominal context. It must be noted that the terminal glissando is realized with a relatively long vowel nucleus. In addition, glissando can appear in the following various phonetic environments. Voiceless consonant + Vowel: [si] Voiced consonant + Vowel + Voiced consonant + Voiceless consonant: [rεnk] Voiced consonant + Vowel: [ba], [dε], [di], [na], [ri] Voiced consonant + Vowel + Voiceless consonant: [dar。 ], [dir。 ], [gyr。 ], [nıs], [υa。 r]

This means that the presence of the rising glissando is independent of phonetic environments. But we must not neglect the fact that the sentence can occur without any rising glissando in [3]. We will consider this glissando a relevant trait in Turkish interrogatives. But under what conditions does a Turkish interrogative sentence realize in high or low pitch with or without glissando? We will investigate the sentences [2] and [3] in more extended contexts. [2] - Merhaba Nilgün Hanım. - Merhaba Mehmet Bey. - Nasılsınız? - Iyiyim, teşekkür ederim. [3] Siz nasılsınız? - Ben de iyiyim, teşekkür ederim. “[2] - Hello Ms Nilgün. – Hello Mr Mehmet. – How are you? – I am fine, thank you. [3] And how are you? – I am fine, thank you.”

Example [3] shows a distinct discourse character, since it is the second turn of salutation. The speaker puts emphasis on the contrast between Siz and Ben, pushing the routine question “How are you?” to the background. Here, the presence or absence of rising glissando does depend on the discourse situation, and the type of verbal interaction plays a determinant role in the realization of the interrogative intonation. The conclusion of Nash’s intonation analysis seems significant for a better understanding of the conception that Turkish intonation is more strongly influenced by the discourse situation than the morphosyntactic structure. The concept of intonation as system and process rather than as a set of fixed patterns specified by rules for particular kinds of syntactic constructions accounts for the speaker’s interpretations of the message, which can be predicted only within narrow limits. (Nash (1973) 150)

The terminal glissando in [4] derives from the discourse process represented in the adverb of modality acaba.

356

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

[4] - Ne yapmam gerekir acaba? “What should I do, I wonder?”

0

0

The adverb acaba is an epistemic modality marker in order to examine the truth value of a given situation. Example [4] is a question with a certain indeterminism about that situation. In other words, the speaker does not completely understand what he must do. 3.3. Glissando and discourse situation Such indeterminism on the part of the speaker is evident when he questions about the things already referred. Generally speaking, in order that communication may go well, the interlocutor is obliged to identify the things or subjects that the speaker has introduced in the precedent utterances.11 The following questions [5] to [10] are all concerned with the identification of things or subjects mentioned in the immediately preceding contexts. [5] - Bak şu karşıdaki yüksek binayı görüyor musun? - Hangi bina? “- Look, do you see that high building at the other side? – Which building?” [6] – Bugün akşamki partiye geliyor musun? – Ne partisi? “- Will you come to the party tonight? – What party?” [7] – Ne derecede İngilizce biliyorsunuz? – İyi derecede biliyorum efendim. Fransızcanız hangi seviyededir? – Orta seviyededir. – Başka ne gibi yetenekleriniz var? “- What level is your English? – My English level is high. – What level is your French? – At an intermediate level. – What kind of faculty do you have otherwise?” [8] – ... Okulun toplantı salonunda. – Öyle mi? Toplantı salonu nerede? “- ... In the meeting room at school. – Is it? Where is the meeting room?”

11

Cf. “Cooperative Principle” promulgated by Paul Grice.

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

357

[9] – Yeni elemanı gördün mü? İşe bugün başladı. Onu arıyorum. – Nasıl biri? – Yirmi beş-otuz yaşlarında. – Boyu ne kadar? – Bir metre seksen santim kadar. – Saçı ne renk? – Siyah, kısa kıvırcık saçlı. “- Did you see a new comer? He began to work today. I am looking for him. – How old does he look? – 25-30 years old. – How tall is he? – About 180 cm. – What colour is his hair?” [10] – Aylin kalemimi kaybettim. Gördün mü? – Hayır görmedim. Ne renk bir kalemdi? “- Aylin lost my pencil. Did you see it? – No, I did not. What colour was the pencil?”

Because of the question for identifying things already referred to and introduced in a given discourse situation, the question has a lot of illocutionary force to incite the interlocutor to make a reply. According to John Searle’s terminology, this kind of question belongs to a subcategory of “directive” like order. Using a question form in this case, the speaker has the intention to let the interlocutor make an answer, in other words, to let him accomplish an imposed speech act. It is well known that a question occupies a central position of the three fundamental speech acts, i.e. assertion, question and order.12 question

assertion

order

In the semantic interpretation of the question, there are traditionally three distinct approaches: propositional, epistemic-imperative and categorical approaches.13

12

13

cf. Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1991) p.6. “Prototypical speech acts” in Givón (1984) p.248. See also an interesting comment cited from Roman Jakobson (1939), cf. in Modal function of Ivan Fónagy’s “Functions of intonation” in this volume, see p.26. cf. Ferenc Kiefer (1983) p.2. In explaining about three universal speech acts, Givón manifested almost the same way of thinking, Givón (1984) pp.248-251.

358

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

[5] ... Hangi bina ?

H

“Which building?”

L

↑

In the propositional approach, the semantic interpretation of the question brings focus into a close relation between question and assertion. This relation probably originated from their formal affinity like in French: Il vient. vs Il vient? In the propositional approach, the question Hangi bina?, for example, will be interpreted semantically as follows: Tell me which of the following is true: It is building A or building B or ... or building X. On the contrary, the epistemic-imperative approach lays emphasis upon the affinity between the question and order. In this semantic approach, the question Hangi bina? will be paraphrased in the following manner: Bring it about that I know which building it is. We can suppose that questions [5] to [10] with a terminal rising glissando will be interpreted as directive speech acts where the interlocutor is required more or less imperatively to make his reply. 3.4. Terminal low-flat pitch In our corpus, the low-flat pitch appears in the following examples [11] and [12]. [11] Masaya kaç tane tabak lazım? “How many plates are necessary for the table?”

0

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

359

[12] Dün beni niçin aramadın? “Why didn’t you look for me yesterday?”

0

Generally speaking, the terminal low-flat pitch is a typical prosodic trait of an assertive sentence. We suppose that these questions can be interpreted from a propositional viewpoint. In fact, the meaning of [11] and [12] is not a true question, but a quasi-assertion of which semantic content will be evaluated in proportion to the truth value of a given proposition. Consequently, question [11] is a sentence to affirm the necessity of preparing enough plates for the people at the table. Question [12] has an illocutionary function to confirm the fact that the interlocutor did not look for the speaker the day before. This semantic affinity between question and assertion may assign to the interrogatives [11] and [12] an assertive intonation contour, i.e. low-flat pitch. In the same way, the interrogative sentence [13] Nasılsın? can be enunciated as a simple greeting, not to really ask the physical condition of the interlocutor, but rather to confirm his health. [13] Nasılsın?

“How are you?”

0

0

In recapitulating the intonation patterns of wh-questions, a wh-word constitutes the first relevant prosodic position, which is realized with a high-flat pitch and represents the morphosyntactic structure of a given question. The second relevant prosodic position is located at the end of the utterance. And the pragmatic meaning of the sentence is owed to the following terminal intonation pattern, see Table 2.

360

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

Table 2.

Terminal intonation pattern of wh-question terminal F0 high-flat pitch rising glissando semantics of the question interrogative directive occurrences in the corpus 19/39 11/39

low-flat pitch assertive 9/39

Three different intonation patterns are attested in the fundamental frequency variation at the end of a given utterance. These three patterns show distinct pragmatic meanings of the question. It is certain that the interrogative meaning is most frequently found in the corpus, i.e. 19 cases out of 39. It is characterized by a terminal high-flat pitch. Terminal rising glissando has something to do with its directive meaning. The directive question has a tendency to demand an answer from the interlocutor. The directive question is generally enunciated in order to confirm or identify the things referred and introduced in the discourse situation, see the examples [5] to [10]. In the third type, the question has a terminal low-flat pitch. Thus, question and assertion share the same intonation pattern. And this type of question is a quasi-assertion or quasi-confirmation of a given proposition, see the examples [11] and [12]. 4. YES/NO-question After the manner of wh-questions in Turkish, two prosodic positions are supposed to be relevant for the intonation structure of yes/no-questions. Two relevant prosodic positions of the yes/no-question [14] Şu anda müsait misin ? “Are you free now?”

L Müsa

H position 1 -it syllable immediately before –mI

L mi

position 2 -sin ? end of utterance

These two relevant positions have the following intonation patterns. We can observe a strong correlation between the prosodic traits of these two positions, see Table 3.

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives Table 3. Intonation pattern of mI-question14 F0 before –mI H L Occurrences 28/42 9/42 F0 at the end of an utterance L ↓ H ↑ Occurrences 21/42 7/42 7/42 2/42 H = high-flat pitch, L = low-flat pitch, ↑ = rising glissando, ↓ = falling glissando

361

↑ 5/42 L 5/42

Pitch patterns oppose each other in these two positions. If the pitch before the interrogative particle -mI is high-flat or rising, the terminal pitch must be low-flat or falling without any exception. On the other hand, if the pitch before -mI is low-flat or falling, the terminal pitch is automatically high-flat or rising. 4.1. Intonation patterns before -mI First, let us start with the rising glissando before -mI. Rising glissando is realized in the following five examples. Three of them are expressions of confirmation such as değil mi “isn’t it?” or tamam mı “is it OK?”. [15] Oldukça uzun bir yolculuk oldu, değil mi ? L H ↓ ↑ L “It was a rather long trip, wasn’t it?”

[16] Peki, İran ile ilgili bana bir tavsiyen var mı ? HLLH ↑ L “OK, do you have anything to recommend me concerning Iran?” [17] ... sen de tabaklara yemek doldur, tamam mı ? H L H L ↑ L “... you too, fill the plates with food, you understand?”

14

Some examples where the extraction of fundamental frequency had not been successful in Prosogramme were systematically excluded from the present analysis.

362

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ [18] Yarın sizin için uygun mu ? L ↑ L “Tomorrow is OK for you?” [19] Bir dahaki sefere birlikte içelim, tamam mı ? L H L H L ↑ L “Let’s drink together at another time, OK?”

However it must be noted that the majority, 28 cases out of 42, have a high-flat pitch before the particle –mI. The analysis of intonation pattern at the end of an utterance is more complex, because all the four types, i.e. L, H, ↑ et ↓, are attested in this position. The occurrence of low or high pitch is however determined by the following rule. The terminal flat pitch must be opposite to the pitch before –mI. Likewise, a kind of tonal chiasmus is realized between the position before –mI and the sentence final position. On the contrary, further explanations must be needed for the falling or rising glissando. 4.2. Glissandos at the sentence final position It is certain that at the end of utterance, falling glissando appears more frequently than a rising one. Here are all seven examples in the corpus. [20] Öyle mi ? (two examples found) LH ↓ “Is it so?” [21] Senay, duydun mu ? HL LH ↓ “Senay, did you hear it?” [22] Salı günü sizin için uygun mu ? L H ↓ “Tuesday is OK for you?” [23] Öğleden sonra olur mu ? L H ↓ “Afternoon is OK?” [24] Benim bilgisayarım sen mi kullandın ? L H L↓ L “Is that you who used my computer?”

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

363

[25] Yeriniz var mı ? L H ↓ “Do you have a place?”

Twenty six cases out of 42 yes/no-questions have a low-flat pitch at the sentence final position. If we add falling glissandos in these numbers, the total amounts to 33 cases out of 42 (78.6%). As we have seen in 3.3, the propositional approach is focused on the formal affinity between yes/no-questions and assertion like Il vient. versus Il vient? in French. The relative high frequency of low pitch at the sentence final position illustrates such affinity between yes/no-questions and assertion in Turkish. Example [20] Öyle mi? is very frequent in spoken Turkish. This type of sentence, in which interrogation and exclamation are amalgamated, is used in order to express the speaker’s emotional feeling against a pre-established situation or the words the interlocutor has just spoken. It expresses various emotions like surprise, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, etc. We can postulate that falling glissando is related to such emotional feelings of the speaker. As for raising glissando, only two examples are attested at the end of yes/no-questions. [26] - Yarın akşam sinemaya gidelim mi ? – Yarın akşam mı ? “- Shall we go to the cinema tomorrow evening? – Tomorrow evening?”

0

0

0

Rising glissando appears at the end of the yes/no-question. This question has a function to confirm the previous words of his interlocutor, yarın akşam “tomorrow evening”. As we have already seen in 3.3., such a question does have an illocutionary power to demand a reply from the interlocutor. Therefore, the question may resemble order. In this discourse situation, rising glissando can be realized not only in wh-questions but also in yes/no-questions. In conclusion, in yes/no-questions in Turkish, we can observe regularly the prosodic chiasmus between the pitch immediately before –mI and the sentence terminal pitch. If the pitch is high-flat or rising before –mI, low-flat

364

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

or falling pitch is assigned to the sentence terminal position, and vice versa. The majority of cases, i.e. 28 out of 42, have high-flat pitch before –mI. So that, according to the rule of Turkish prosodic chiasmus, the pitch pattern will be automatically low-flat at the sentence final position, i.e. 26 out of 42 cases. If we add falling glissandos in these numbers, 33 yes/no-questions out of 42 (78.6%) end with low-flat pitch. 5. Interrogatives without morphosyntactic markers Interrogatives without morphosyntactic markers are frequently utilized in spoken Turkish. In addition, these interrogative sentences have a tendency to express an exclamatory value, surprise or curiosity, etc. This exclamatory value will be considered as an attenuated variant of a directive. Then, the interrogatives solely evoke attention without necessarily expecting a subsequent speech act of the interlocutor. [27] Alo, Emine ? “Hello, Emine?”

As there is no morphosyntactic marker of interrogation, this type of question has a unique relevant position, i.e. the sentence final position. Rising glissando is realized at the end of the utterance in example [27], where to render this sentence a real question, Emine should have meant "Are you there, Emine?", i.e. a question about her presence. In fact, this discourse is not enunciated with the view of confirming the presence of Emine. The sentence can be regarded as a verbal address with an exclamatory value. In other words, calling her name, the speaker evoked only the attention of Emine. The close analysis of the two discourse of Alo? seems interesting.15 A girl is telephoning a computer company to ask about trouble with her PC. The first Alo? is of its routine use to open her conversation and to ask the presence of the interlocutor: "Are you there?". The second Alo? is a corresponding answer. The employee of the computer company could have replied with the same intonation pattern with the first Alo?. But it is realized 15

We owe the interrogative mark of Alo? to our Turkish natives.

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

365

with falling glissando. The second will be interpreted with an assertive nuance: “Hello, I can hear you.” [28] - Alo ? İyi günler. - Alo ? İyi günler efendim,... “- Hello? Good morning. – Hello? Good morning, Madam.”

These examples confirm how important a small nuance is in our daily conversation, which is closely connected with the discourse situation in which the verbal interaction is developing. Nevertheless, our corpus is too small to be representative of several patterns of interrogatives without morphosyntactic markers. Conclusion First of all, it goes without saying that the results obtained here should be minutely checked in a more extended spoken Turkish corpus. Above all, the one to one correspondence between a given prosodic pattern and its pragmatic meaning (interrogative, directive, assertive) needs further empirical foundations. And this working hypothesis must be reinforced by means of serious perception tests. With the preceding reservations in mind, the following inferences have been posited in the present article. As far as the pitch patterns of Turkish interrogative sentences are concerned, we can discern two relevant prosodic positions both for wh-questions and yes/no-questions. The first position represents respectively the pitch level of the interrogative adjective or adverb for wh-questions, and the pitch in the syllable immediately before the interrogative particle –mI for yes/no-questions. Wh-questions and yes/no-questions share the second position which corresponds to the sentence final position, see Table 4.

366

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

Table 4. Prosodic model of Turkish interrogative sentences position 1 (P1) position 2 (P2) WH-question interrogative adjective end of utterance or adverb ......WH .....................................? P1 P2 YES/NO-question

position 1 (P1) position 2 (P2) syllable immediately end of utterance before –mI ......mI .....................................? P1 P2

It is safe to declare that the pitch pattern of the first position has a morphosyntactic function, because with wh-words or -mI, a given interrogative sentence can be distinguished from other types of sentence. On the contrary, the pitch pattern of the second position seems connected with the pragmatic meaning of a given discourse. In the present prosodic model of Turkish interrogatives, polyphonic nuances of interrogative sentences can be derived from the bilateral effects of these two relevant prosodic positions. In addition, in our corpus, some interrogative sentences are attested without any surface morphosyntactic markers, see [27] and [28]. Consequently, these interrogatives lack for the first position and show no more than pragmatic variation based on the pitch pattern of the second prosodic position. Three different intonation patterns are attested at the sentence final position. The three patterns explain distinct pragmatic meanings of the question. The most frequent interpretation is of course that of interrogative, which is represented by final high-flat pitch. Directive meaning has recourse to rising glissando, which may require the interlocutor to give a reply. In our corpus, a typical example of a directive is the question enunciated in order to confirm the things mentioned and already integrated into the discourse situation, see [5]-[10]. In the third type, question and assertion share the same intonation pattern. The question is then marked by a final low-flat pitch. This type of question represents the quasi-declaration or the quasi-confirmation of the veracity of a given proposition, see [11]-[12]. As for yes/no-questions in Turkish, we can regularly observe the prosodic chiasmus between the pitch before –mI and the pitch at the sentence final position. If the pitch before –mI is high-flat or rising, low-flat or falling pitch is automatically assigned to the sentence final position. The majority of cases have high-flat pitch before –mI, the discourse end is thus in low-flat pitch.

Intonation Patterns of Turkish Interrogatives

367

References Demircan, Ömer (2001) Türkçenin ses dizimi, Der Yayınları. Essen, Otto von (1956) “Satzintonation in türkischen Lesetexten”, Zeitschrift für Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG) 106 (N.F.31), 93-116. Fónagy, Ivan (2001) Languages within Language: An evolutive approach, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Fónagy, Ivan (forthcoming) “Functions of Intonation”, in Prosody and Syntax –Cross-linguistic Perspectives–, Kawaguchi Y., Fónagy, I. and Moriguchi, T. (eds.) Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins. Fukumori, Takahiro (2004) An Experimental Phonetics Study of Vowel Harmony in Turkish, Ph.D. Thesis published by Bensei Shuppan, University of Tsukuba. Givón, Talmy (1984) “Colloquium on interrogativity: Plenary session”, Williams S. Chisholm Jr., Louis T. Milic, John A.C. Greppin (ed.), Interrogativity: A colloquim on the grammar, typology and pragmatics of questions in seven diverse languages, Cleveland, Ohio, October 5th 1981 – May 3rd 1982, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 245-254. Grice, Paul (1989) Studies in the way of words, Harvard University Press. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (1991) “Introduction”, Catherine KerbratOrecchioni (dir.) La Question, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 5-37. Kiefer, Ferenc (1983) “Introduction”, Ferenc Kiefer (ed.), Questions and Answers, 1-8. Konrot, Ahmet K. (1981) Towards Understanding Turkish Stress: an acoustic and perceptual study, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Essex. Lees, Robert B. (1961) The phonology of Modern Standard Turkish, Mouton. Mertens, Piet (2004) “Le prosogramme: une transcription semi-automatique de la prosodie”, Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 30, no1-3, 7-25. Nash, Rose (1973) Turkish intonation: An instrumental study, Mouton: The Hague. Nacar-Logie, Nur (1997) “Propriétés intonatives du turc”, Turcica 29, 269-286. Nacar-Logie, Nur (2004) “Intonation du turc en rapport avec l’énonciation”, in Vers une grammaire linguistique du turc (À la lumière des théories actuelles en linguistique française), Arsun (Uras) Yılmaz,, Selim Yılmaz, Mary-Annick Morel, Multilingual: İstanbul, 103-116. Sarıca Mustafa (1997) “Etude intonative de l’interrogation en turc de Turquie”, Turcica 29, 317-341. Sarıca Mustafa ed. (2005) Yeni dilbilim kuramları ışığında Sözlü Dil Yapısı,

368

Yuji KAWAGUCHI, Selim YILMAZ and Arsun Uras YILMAZ

Multilingual: İstanbul. Tansu, Muzaffer (1941). Türk Dilinin Entonasyonu Tecrübî Etüd, İdeal Basımevi: Ankara. Yılmaz, Arsun (Uras) (1998) Réalisations linguistiques des prédicats d’attribution de propriété en turc contemporain. Etude morphosyntaxique, intonative et énonciative, Ph. D. Thesis published by l’ANRT at Lille, Université de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. Yılmaz, Arsun (Uras), Selim Yılmaz, Mary-Annick Morel (2004) Vers une grammaire linguistique du turc (À la lumière des théories actuelles en linguistique française), Multilingual: İstanbul. Yılmaz, Selim (2000) Le système hypothétique en turc: De la morphosyntaxe à l’énonciation, Ph. D. Thesis published by l’ANRT at Lille, Université de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Index of Proper Nouns 21st Century Center of Excellence (COE) Program “Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics” 239, 268 Ainu 218 America 214 American 103, 107 Australia 214, 217 Australian (English) 38, 107 Bantu 288, 301 Berlin German 108 British 103, 107 British Isles 107 Canada 216 Canadians 107 Celtic 299, 300 Chaga 285, 300 Classical Latin 160 Cocteau’s “La voix humaine” 34 Corneille’s tragedy 34 Czech 38 Debussy’s Palléas et Mélisande 24 Dialog Module 239, 243, 245, 260 East Timor 303 England 107, 214 English 24, 28, 38, 103-122 EP 159-161, 165, 167, 169, 171, 172 Europe 28 European Portuguese 158 French 20, 21, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 35, 106 Galician 171 German 24, 38, 103-122 Germanic 109, 110 Germanic languages 106 Greek 159 Hopi Indians 36

Hungarian 22, 23, 30, 33, 35, 38 IBM France 56 Indo-European languages 33 Indonesia 303, 306 Indonesian 303, 304, 306, 308-310, 320 Institute of Phonetic of the University of Paris 31 Ivatan 332, 334-346 Japan 217 Japanese 26 Javanese 309, 320 Kagoshima 218 Kanto area 202 Kinyambo 298, 299 Latin 109, 159, 160 London 107 Londoners 107 Makonde 285, 288-290, 292, 294, 298, 300 Mandarin Chinese 104 Manx 299 Melisande 24 Middle English 121 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology 127, 136 Montverdi’s Orfeo 23, 24 National Center for University Entrance Examinations 125 National Language Research Institute 241 New Zealand 214, 217 NHK 146-149, 153 Old English 109 Perrault’s fairy tale 34 Philippine-Formosan 327, 328, 330 Plato’s Timaeus 22, 27 Portuguese 157, 162

370

Index of Proper Nouns

PRAAT 351 Prague 112 Prague phonological terminology 32 Prosogramme 351 Romance 109 Romanian 26 Runyankore 286, 287, 301 Russian 38 Saint-Exupéry’s “Le Petit Prince” 32 Scotland 107 Shi 286 Southern Standard 109 Spain 146 Spanish 141-145, 151-154 SPE 158, 172 Sundanese 320 Swiss 107 Tagalog 327, 328, 332, 335, 345, 346

Thai 104 Tokyo 202 Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) 129, 239, 268, 303, 308, 309, 351 TUFS Language Modules 239, 243, 260, 268, 351 TUFS Spanish Conversation Module 144, 145 Turkish 36 Turkish Dialogue Module 351 University of Tsukuba 276 USA 217 Verlaine’s lyrical poem 34 Vogoul 33 Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde 24 Wales 107 Yves Montand 27

Names ABBERTON, E. 34 ABE, I. 24, 26 ABERCROMBIE, D. 106, 108 ADACHI, T. 241, 242, 248-250, 253 AHN, B.S. 265 AINSWORTH, H. 214 ALBRIGHT, A. 297 ALLAN, S. 214 ALTMANN, H. 20, 32 ARISTOXENOS 23, 27 ARMSTRONG, L. 47, 50 ARNOLD, R. 115-117, 119, 120 ARTËMOV, V.A. 19 ARVANITI, A. 193 ASADA, H. 202 AYUSAWA, T. 198, 241, 246, 255, 257, 262 AZUMA, J. 198

BALD, W.D. 117 BALLY, C. 20, 32 BATLINER, A. 32 BECKMAN, M.E. 133, 143, 151, 154, 269 BÉRARD, E. 21, 27, 32, 33 BERRENDONNER, A. 21, 98 BICKMORE, L. 298 BLANCHE-BENVENISTE, C. 21, 22, 66, 98 BLOOMFIELD, L. 28 BOË, L.J. 35 BOERSMA, P. 269 BOLINGER, D. 27, 28, 47, 107 BOULAKIA, G. 28 BRAZIL, D. 215 BROWN, R. 251 BRYZGUNOVA, E.A. 175-179, 191, 194

Index of Proper Nouns

BÜHLER, K. 19, 26 CARTON, F. 58 CARVALHO, J.B.de. 157, 158, 160-164, 167 CHAO YUEN-REN 60 CHUNG, S.J. 265 CLEESE, J. 118 CLEMENTS, G.N. 286 COUPER-KUHLEN, E. 105-107 COUSTENOBLE, H. 47, 49 CRUTTENDEN, A. 30, 121, 128 CRYSTAL, D. 28, 104, 106 DANEŠ, F. 19, 20 DARWIN, C. 23 DASCĂLU-JINGA, L. 26 DAUER, R.M. 106 DAVIDSEN-NIELSEN, N. 104 DELATTRE, P. 47, 49, 58, 108, 111 DEULOFEU, J. 20-22 DI CRISTO, A. 24, 28, 47, 48 DUEZ, D. 54 EBING, E.F. 303, 306, 321 ESSEN, O. von 21, 350 ESSER, J. 104, 105 EYNDE, K. 66, 69 FAUCONNIER, G.R. 327 FAURE, G. 19 FIEHLER, R. 103-105 FIRBAS, J. 104, 112 FLETCHER, H. 254 FÓNAGY, I. 21-25, 27, 33-35, 38, 49, 58-60 FÓNAGY, J. 21, 31, 32, 34, 36-38 FOUGERON, C. 53 FOURCIN, A.J. 34 FUJISAKI, H. 59, 198, 212 FUKUMORI, T. 349 FURIHATA, M. 310 GEE, J.P. 28, 56

371

GENDROT, C. 51 GIBBON, D. 26 GILES, H. 200, 203 GLEASON, A.H. 20 GORMAN, J. 214 GRAMMONT, M. 25, 48, 49 GREEN, A. 299 GRICE, P. 356 GROSJEAN, F. 25, 28, 54, 56 GUSSENHOVEN, C. 51, 191 GUY, G.B. 214 HAIMAN, J. 36 HALIM, A. 304, 306-310, 312-316, 319, 320 HALLÉ, B.B. 49 HALLIDAY, M.A.K. 103, 104, 106, 107, 109, 112-115, 117, 119-121, 214 HAND, M.H. 24 HANSEN, K. 115-117,119, 120 HARA, K. 212 HARRIS, J.W. 162 HATTORI, S. 198 HAWKINS, J. 104 HAYES, B. 286, 288 HAZAËL-MASSIEUX, M.C. 19 HELBIG, G. 118 HENMI, Y. 205 HIND, A. 22 HIRST, J.D. 22, 24, 28, 48 HJELMSLEV, L. 104 HOUSE, A.S. 28 HUALDE, J.I. 154 HYMAN, L. 285 IGARASHI, Y. 175, 192, 193 IKEGAMI, H. 125-127, 137, 138 INKELAS, S. 285 INOUE, F. 199, 200, 202-205, 208, 210, 213 JAKOBSON, R. 26, 32

372

Index of Proper Nouns

JENKINS, J. 129, 137 JINNOUCHI, M. 213 JONES, D. 117-119 JUN, S.A. 265 KAGER, R. 285 KAISSE, E. 285, 288 KALTENBACHER, E. 108, 110 KANNO, H. 266 KARCEVSKIJ, S. 19 KATAGIRI, K. 252, 253 KAWAKAMI, S. 202, 280 KEIJSPER, C.E. 179 KENSTOWICZ, M. 265 KIBE, N. 218 KIEFER, F. 357 KIMURA, T. 145, 146 KINDAICHI, H. 226 KLIČNIKOVA, Z.I. 19 KNOWLES, G. 103, 105, 109 KO, Y.G. 267 KODZASOV, S.V. 175-177, 194 KOHLER, K. 105, 107, 108, 110, 118 KŌNO, R. 266 KONROT, A. 349 KOOIJ, J.G. 28 KORI, S. 198, 199, 240, 245, 280 KOYAMA, T. 240, 252, 253 KUBOZONO, H. 280 KUDO, M. 237 LADD, R. 28, 59, 191, 192 LAMBRECHT, K. 20 LANGLAIS, P. 54 LASS, R. 296, 297 LAUSBERG, H. 36 LEE, W.R. 19 LEE, H.J. 265 LEECH, G. 104 LEHISTE, I. 28, 50, 59, 107 LEISI, E. 107

LÉON, P.R. 27, 30, 33, 34, 39 LEVINSON, S. 251 LIEBERMAN, P. 28, 52 LIPHOLA, M. 288, 289, 292, 294, 296 LONG, D. 213 LÓPEZ, B. 162 LOVEDAY, L. 24 LUCCI, V. 35, 57 LÜDTKE, H. 160 MAEDA, S. 52 MAEKAWA, K. 198, 280 MAGDICS, K. 24, 25, 35 MAIR, C. 107 MAKAROVA, V. 179, 190, 191 MANUS, S. 288, 289, 293, 295 MARKUS, M. 103, 104 MARTIN, P. 19, 48, 51 MARTINON, P. 21 MARTINS-BALTAR, M. 19, 20, 22, 26, 29, 30, 32 MASUOKA, T. 241, 248-251 MATHESIUS, V. 19 MCGARR, N.S. 20 MCHUGH, B.D. 285 MCARTHUR, T. 103, 109, 112 MCCARTHY, J. 157, 297 MERTENS, P. 351 MEYER, R. 179, 180, 190, 191 MILROY, L. 203 MINDT, I. 104, 112 MIZUTANI, O. 198 MLEINEK, I. 179, 180, 190, 191 MOELIONO, A.M. et al 306 MONNIN, P. 54 MORI, Y. 132-136, 138 MORIGUCHI, T. 345 MUELLER BING, J. 27 NAGASHIMA, S. 59 NAKAJIMA, F. 198

Index of Proper Nouns

NAM, K.S. 267 NASRI, M.K. 54 NEMSER, S. 104 NESPOR, M. 285 NEUSTUPNY, J. 219 NIKOLAEVA, T.M. 177 NISHINUMA, Y. 54 O’CONNOR, J.D. 117 ODDEN, D. 285, 288-292, 294, 295, 298 ODÉ, C. 179, 193 OEHMAN, S. 37 OGINO, T. 200 OH, M. 265 ÖHMAN, S. 59 ONISHI, T. 218 OPPENRIEDER, W. 32 PALMER, H.E. 58 PARK, M.Y. 265 PELLOWE, J. 214 PERLMUTTER, D.M. 327 PERROT, J. 20 PHILIPPSON, G. 286 PICKLER, A.G. 254 PIERREHUMBERT, T. 52, 133, 191, 192, 280 PIKE, K. 28 PILCH, H. 104 POLETTO, R. 286, 287 POTTIER, B. 30 PRINCE, A. 157 PULVERS, R. 214 QUICOLI, C. 162 REDENBARGER, W. 162 RIEMANN, H. 20 RIGAULT A. 19 ROACH, P. 106 ROGERS, E.M. 203 ROMPORTL, M. 19

373

ROSSI, M. 47, 59 SABIO, F. 20 SAKAMOTO, A. 136 SAP, J. 36, 38 SARICA, M. 350 SATO, H. 223, 226, 227, 233 SAUSSURE, F. 297 SCHANK, G. 105, 108 SCHOENTHAL, G. 105, 108 SCHWITALLA, J. 103, 104, 105 SCUFFIL, M. 104 SEARLE, J. 357 SELKIRK, E. 48, 285, 286 SHIBATANI, M. 225 SIBATA, T. 204, 218 SILVERMAN, K. 269 SIMON, A.C. 24, 98 SINCLAIR, J. 215 SNEDDON, J.N. 304, 305, 308, 310, 316 SOSA, J.M. 143, 151, 152, 154 STOCKWELL, R.P. 30 SUGITO, M. 133, 224 SUGITOO, M. 198, 201, 239 SVETOZAROVA, N.D. 175, 177, 179, 191 SWEET, H. 298 TAKUBO, Y. 241, 248-251 TANAKA, A. 210, 218 TANIGUCHI, M. 137, 138 TARA, S. 137, 138 TENCH, P. 112 THORSEN, N. 50 TONER, H. 28 TROUVAIN, J. 107, 108 TRUCKENBRODT, H. 285 ULSETH, B. 104 UTIYAMA, M. 268 UTSUGI, A. 265

374

Index of Proper Nouns

VAISSIÈRE, J 48, 50, 52-54, 57-59 VARGA, L. 33 VENDITTI, J.J. 280 VENNEMANN, T. 105 VOGEL, I. 285 WADA, M. 246 WALES, R. 28 WARD, I.C. 50 WEENINK, D. 269 WETZELS, L. 162

WHITWORTH, N. 104, 108 WIEDEN, W. 104 WUNDERLICH, D 20 YOKOYAMA, O.T. 179 YOUNG, R.W. 254 ZANTEN, E.van et al 321 ZEC, D. 285 ZONNEVELD, W. 285

Index of Subjects absence of the conjunction 32 accent 197, 303, 307 accent nucleus 240, 242, 255, 258, 259, 261 accent placement 223-225, 231-233, 235-237 accent without stress 141, 145 accentual patterns 160 accentual phrase 265 accentuation 19, 47, 49 accommodation theory 200 actualization 19 adverbial complement 30 adversative clause 25 aesthetic function 36 allocutive 20 allusive (~emphasis/~function) 22, 26, 27 alternating rhythm 109, 110 alternative question 33 alternative statement 33 ambiguity 28 ambiguous surface structure 28 analogy 288, 296-299 anger 23, 35 anti-topic 20 appellative 19 appellative function 19 appendix contour 73 appositions 91 assertion 32 assertive 359, 360, 365 attitude 21, 23, 38 attitudinal intonation patterns 38 Australian Questioning Intonation 214, 215

autonomous dependency network 93 Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) theory 191 background information 87 baseline 51, 52 basic sentence structure 304 binarisation 89 binary question 33, 38 bottom-up 198, 201 bottom-up intonation 197, 212 boundary 29, 74 boundary level 75 boundary tone 142, 151, 152, 191, 192 breath group 49, 51, 53 broad focus 127 casual speech 108, 121 causal clause 32 causal vs. concessive clause 25 change of vocal attitude 24 character traits 19 cineradiological analysis 24 circonstant externe 30 cleft 88 clitic 78, 327, 346 clause 25, 32 closure 36 cluster-internal prosodic break 90 co-articulation 25 commands 119, 120 comment 306, 308, 314, 319 communicative dynamism 104, 112-114, 122 complaint 23 complex attitude 37 complex intonation pattern 37 compound verb 267

376

Index of Subjects

conative 26 conceptual thinking 26 concessive proposition 25 concomitant role 32 connected elements 80 consonant 20 constant high pitch level 24 constituent 29, 313, 314, 319 constraints 167-172 construction 69, 310 content word 127, 128, 130, 132 context 26 contour 306, 307, 311 contradictions syntactic/prosodic demarcation 21 contrapuntal 21 contrast 19 contrastive emphasis 22 control-question 38 co-ordinate clause 25 copula 304, 305, 308, 309 crasis 108 creaky voice 24 cross-language 47 cross-linguistic 47 culmination 19, 38 dakuon 225-228, 234, 235 declarative 32, 36, 310, 311, 313, 315, 319, 320 decline 212 deep structure 28 default intonation 83 demarcation 20, 30 demarcative function 19, 37, 38 demotivation 38 dependency cluster 67 dependency grammar 66 dependency relation 66 dephrasing 266

dialect 288-290, 292, 295, 297, 300 direct tests 137, 138 directive 357, 358, 365 disambiguate 28, 29 discourse situation 360, 363, 365, 366 discrete judgment 210 discreteness 205 disjunction 33 dislocation 20, 37, 86 dispositif direct 69 distinctive function (role) 21, 26-32, 38 distinctive prosodic marker 22 double-meaning 28, 32 downstep 280 dual analysis 21 duration 48, 54, 55, 58, 313, 335, 342, 344, 345 echo-question 26 emotion 28 emotional and attitudinal involvement 313 emotive contrast 38 emotive function 19 emotive meaning 22 emotive speech 37 emphasis 19, 21, 22, 27, 37 enclitic 327, 328, 332-336, 341, 344-346 endogenous change 213 enumeration 21, 31 enumerative pattern 31 enunciation 19, 20 equational sentence 305 event sentences 128, 130 evolution 38 exclamation 32 exogenous diffusion 213 expressive function 19, 22-24 expressive melodic patterns 38 falling intonation 245-252, 260, 261

Index of Subjects

falling pitch 117 far attachment 29 fear 23 final pause 307 final pitch pattern 21 final stress 71 final syllable 312, 313, 318 final-accented 223 floating tone 290, 291, 293-295 focalization 19 focalized topic 307, 314, 318 focus(ed) 266, 328, 332, 333, 345, 346 foot 106, 109 foreigner talk 216 fujisaki-model 212 function of appeal 26 function of condensation 37 function of demarcation 20 function of identification 33-35 function of integration 19 function of segmentation 19, 20 function of signification 19 function words 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136 fundamental frequency 34, 38, 246, 254 fundamental speech acts 357 generative grammar 157 generative phonology 160 generative theory 171 genre of discourse 19 given information 131, 136 given/new 113 glissando 353-355, 356, 358 glottal configuration 23 glottal level 38 glottal tension 23 grammatical function 28 half question 215 han-dakuon 226

377

height of pitch 117 hierarchy of functions 37, 38 hierarchy 331 HLH* tone 145, 146, 149, 150, 154 IK 178, 179 illocutive 20 imitative function 27 immediate constituent 304 imperative 26, 32 implicative pattern 27 incomplete ending 250, 251, 254, 259261 indirect tests 137, 138 Information structure 65 initial high pitch 132, 133, 136 initial stress 71 initial-accented 223, 227-229, 232-235 injunction 32 intensity 21, 48, 54, 58, 108, 110 interrogation 21, 22 interrogative 306, 310, 319, 320 interrogative utterance(s) 241-245, 247262 interrogativeness 315, 316, 318-320 intonation 103-105, 111, 114, 117, 197, 303, 306, 308, 310, 315, 317, 319, 320 intonation as a movement 22 intonation group 70 intonation nucleus 127, 129, 132, 136 intonation pattern 21, 25, 303, 310 intonation phrase 280 intonational phrase 265 Intonational (topic-comment) structures 307, 315 ironic intonation pattern 27 irony 24 isochronous 109 isochrony 106, 107 Isomorphic sentences 198

378

Index of Subjects

jumping intonation 218 juncture 21, 29 language dependent 33 laryngeal constriction 24, 27, 35 laryngealization 29 laryngograph 34 left dislocation 86 left projection 20 legato 24 length 103, 105, 108, 111, 113, 122 lengthening 21 level tone of introductory phrase 20 lexical accent 349 lexical polysemy 28 lexical stress 78 lexical tone 289-295 lexicon 157 liaison 21 linguistic changes 197 linguistic relativism 199 linker 330, 339, 343 live speech 19, 35 logical function 33 longing 23 loudness 103, 105, 110, 111, 113, 122 low intensity 22 ludic function 36, 37 macro-syntactic unit 21, 22 macrosyntax 105 marked comment 307, 308, 315 markedness 157, 168, 171, 172 medium pace 22 melodic arch 21, 30, 35 melodic clichés 21, 32, 36, 38 melodic movement 21 melodic pantomime 36 melodic pattern 21 melodic phrases 49, 51, 53 melodic rhymes 21

mental tension 31 meta-linguistic 28, 30 metaphony 162, 163, 167 metrical structure 38 mid pitch level 22 minimal discourse unit 98 modal function 19, 32, 338, 341, 343, 344 modal intonation patterns 38 modal particle 30, 120 modality 20, 33 monotony 22 moods 38 mora 204, 223, 224, 225, 228, 233, 234 mora tone 233, 234, 236 morpheme 20 morphological constraint 171 morphology 121, 288, 299-301 morpho-syntactic level 20 morpho-syntactic role 19 morphosyntactic structure 350, 355, 359 movement of the body 22 multivariate analysis 206 musical language 24, 36 musical pattern 36 musical performance 36 natural fall 212 near attachment 29 negation 272 neutral sentences 128 new dialect forms 203 nominal sentence 303-305, 307-310, 318-320 non-clitics 78 non-nominal sentence 305, 307, 308, 316 non-syntactically motivated intonation 313, 320 nuclear-stress placement 125, 127, 129,

Index of Subjects

130, 136-138 nucleus 111, 113-117, 121 obligatory prosodic boundary 86 on-going 197 optimality theory (OT) 157, 158, 171, 172 oral mimetic 38 order(ing) 330-332, 334, 335, 345 paralanguage 199 parenthetical 28, 91 particle 327, 328, 330, 332, 333 pause 29, 311, 312 pause-group 306-308 penult 307, 308, 312, 313, 317 penultimate syllable 312, 318 performance factors 47 perlocutive 20 pharyngeal constriction 24, 25 phatic 26 phonetic differences 175-180, 183, 184, 188-190, 194 phonological constraints 157, 171 phonological interpretation 175, 176, 191 phonological rules 157 phonology-syntax interface 285, 288, 291, 297, 298, 300 phonostyle 34 phonostylistic model 33 phrase 20 phrase tone 191-194 pitch 103, 105, 108, 110-122, 307, 308, 310-314, 319, 320, 335, 336, 339, 344-346 pitch accent 47, 142, 143, 146, 151, 154, 180, 191-196 pitch contour (PC) 309-318 pitch level (PL) 22, 72, 306-309, 312314, 317

379

pitch movement (PM) 35, 307-309 pitch pattern 306-308, 310-312, 315, 318-320 politeness 24 polysemy 28 pragmatic meaning 359, 365, 366 pragmatic remarks 22, 28, 30 pragmatics 104 pre-contour 307, 312 predicate-subject (P-S) 310, 313, 314, 317-320 predicative function 19, 25, 26 predictability of total changes 35 predictive approach 92 presentational function 20 primary contour 307 primary vocal symbol 23 primary-modal function 19 proclitic 327, 328, 332-334 professional style 34, 38 projection 20 projective tonal gesturing 23 Prominence 198 pronominal approach 66, 69 prosodic boundary 77 prosodic disambiguation 28 prosodic divergences 34 prosodic expression of modality 33 prosodic features 34, 104 prosodic grouping 76, 77 prosodic hierarchy 285, 300 prosodic level 25, 28 prosodic means 21 prosodic pattern 35 prosodic phrase 49, 52-54, 57, 265 prosodic signal 33 prosodic strategy in both languages 35 prosodic structure 29, 265 prosody 103-105, 107, 121, 197

380

Index of Subjects

pseudo-questioning intonation 215 punctuation 21 Quantificational Theory Type 3 206 question 32, 33, 119, 120 questions without morphosyntactic marker 352 QW interrogative sentence 310, 316- 320 raising 21 reduction 108, 109 regulated rhythmic 36 representation 19, 27 representative function 19 reproduce movement 27 rheme 112-114, 116, 119, 121 rhetoric syntagm 21 rhythm 47, 49, 103, 106-109 right dislocation 87 right projection 20 rise-fall 201, 212 rise-fall intonation 197 rising intonation 245-251, 253, 254, 257, 260 rising pitch 117 rising tone 120 rising-falling intonation 245-248, 252255, 257, 260-262 rising–falling tonal pattern 32 saturated 69 secondary-modal function 19 segmental tone 233, 234, 236, 237 segmentation into morphemes 20 seion 225-228, 234, 235 semantic tests 24 semi-natural corpus 351 semiotic status 30 semitone (ST) 254 sense-group 49 sentence 98 sentence pattern (type) 110, 111, 113,

304, 310, 319, 320 sentence-mode 306 sequential voicing 225-227 shiriagari 198 social attitudes 23, 38 social background 33 social milieu (relation) 19, 26 speaker identification 33 special significance of intonation 20 speech act 19, 20, 121 speech melody 22, 38 speech therapy 48 speed 34 spontaneous conversation vs. lecturing 35 sprechtempo 105 Sp-ToBI 141-143, 146, 151, 154 stereotype 34 strangled voice 24 stress (~timed/~timing) 30, 47, 71, 103, 108, 109, 118, 157, 158, 160, 161, 165, 166, 171, 172, 335, 344 stress pattern 160, 162, 167, 171 stresses without accent 141, 144 stylistic characteristics 34 subglottal pressures 23 subject-predicate (S-P) 304, 309-311, 313-316, 318-320 subordination 31 suggesting opinion 26 superposition 37, 59, 60 suprasegmental 335, 344 suprasegmental features 105 suprasegmental phonology 103 suprasegmental stress 111 surface forms 157 surface structure 28 syllabic quantity 158 syllabic weight 160 syllable 312, 313, 318

Index of Subjects

syllable duration 108, 110 syllable structure 108 syllable weight 160 syllable timing 108 symbolic action 37 symbolization 23, 37 syntactic ambiguity 29 syntactic category 133, 134, 136 syntactic constituants 28 syntactic structure 20 syntactically motivated intonation 306, 319, 320 syntax 104, 105, 116, 121, 157, 285, 288, 291, 292, 298-300 synthesis-by-rule 49 tag (~-question) 311, 315-317, 319, 320 teaching 48 template 158, 162, 164, 165 templatic constraint 164 templatic morphology 167 tender speech 38 tenderness 23 tension and relaxation 23 tension / resolution game 36 tentative pause 307 theme 112-114, 116, 121 thème and propos 20 theme/rheme 104, 112-117 ToBI 141, 142, 154 tonal emphasis 22 tone 47, 72 tone group 111-117, 120, 121 topic 20, 87, 306-308, 313, 315-318 topic-comment 307, 315 transfer 125, 133, 134, 136 translation 68 triangular French enumerative pattern 31

381

unaccented 223-225, 228, 231-236 underlying representation 157 underlying structure 28 unfocalized topic 307, 308, 315 unification 19 unmarked 164, 166, 168 unmarked comment 307, 308, 315 unmarked pattern 172 unmarked sentence structure 304 uptalk 197, 214, 215 usage 169 Valency arguments 68 valency grammar 66 Valley Girl talk 214 verb kernel 69 verbal communication 19 verbal genre 35 virtual pause 21 vocal characterology 34 vocal folds 36 vocal pantomime 36 vocal pretend action 37 vocal style 34 vocal substitute 35 vocative 26 voice quality (register) 47, 48 vowel 21 vowel devocalization 230-232, 235 wh question (WHQ) 144, 145, 175-195, 243, 350, 352, 353, 359, 363, 365 word order 113-115, 121 word stress 104, 108-111, 122 yes-no interrogative 307, 310, 315, 316, 319 yes-no question (YNQ) 175-194, 307, 310, 315, 352, 360, 363, 365, 366

Contributors 383

Contributors Ivan FÓNAGY Eva BÉRARD

(1920-2005) Hungarian Academy, C.N.R.S. Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology, University of Paris 3 Jacqueline VAISSIÈRE Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology, University of Paris 3 Alexis MICHAUD Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology, University of Paris 3 Piet MERTENS Department of Linguistics, University of Leuven Manfred MARKUS English Institute, Innsbruck University Hiroko SAITO Faculty of Foreign Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Takuya KIMURA Faculty of Arts, Seisen University Joaquim Brandão de CARVALHO Department of Linguistics, University of Paris 8 Yosuke IGARASHI Laboratory for Language Development, RIKEN Brain Science Institute Fumio INOUE Faculty of Languages and Cultures, Meikai University Ｈｉｒｏｋａｚｕ SATO Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology Mieko TAKADA Ph.D. candidate, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Takako AYUSAWA Director, Japanese Language Education, Akita International University Akira UTSUGI Ph.D. candidate, University of Tsukuba Hideki NOMA Graduate School of Area and Culture Studies, Tokyo Universityof Foreign Studies Cédric PATIN Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology, University of Paris 3 Annie RIALLAND Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology, University of Paris 3 Masashi FURIHATA Faculty of Foreign Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI Faculty of Humanities, Shizuoka University Yuji KAWAGUCHI Faculty of Foreign Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Selim YILMAZ Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Marmara University Arsun Uras YILMAZ Faculty of Litterature, Istanbul University

In the series Usage-Based Linguistic Informatics the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 4 3 2 1

YOSHITOMI, Asako, Tae UMINO and Masahi NEGISHI (eds.): Readings in Second Language Pedagogy and Second Language Acquisition. In Japanese Context. Forthcoming KAWAGUCHI, Yuji, Ivan FONÁGY and Tsunekazu MORIGUCHI (eds.): Prosody and Syntax. Crosslinguistic Perspectives. 2006. v, 383 pp. TAKAGAKI, Toshihiro, Susumu ZAIMA, Yoichiro TSURUGA, Francisco MORENO-FERNÁNDEZ and Yuji KAWAGUCHI (eds.): Corpus-Based Approaches to Sentence Structures. 2005. vi, 317 pp. KAWAGUCHI, Yuji, Susumu ZAIMA, Toshihiro TAKAGAKI, Kohji SHIBANO and Mayumi USAMI (eds.): Linguistic Informatics – State of the Art and the Future. The ﬁrst international conference on Linguistic Informatics. 2005. viii, 363 pp.