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The Interaction of Prominence, Rhythm, and Tone in Medumba.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	The Interaction of Prominence, Rhythm, and Tone in Medumba./
Author:	Franich, Kathryn Hannon.
Description:	1 online resource (210 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-05(E), Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International79-05A(E).
Subject:	Linguistics. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9780355519495

The Interaction of Prominence, Rhythm, and Tone in Medumba.
Franich, Kathryn Hannon.

The Interaction of Prominence, Rhythm, and Tone in Medumba. - 1 online resource (210 pages)

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-05(E), Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Includes bibliographical references

This dissertation aims to examine the following questions: Do all languages have asymmetries in relative syllable prominence? And, how best can a linguist determine relative syllable prominence in a language they do not speak natively, particularly if acoustic correlates of prominence are sparse? To answer these questions, I present results from a series of speech production experiments utilizing the speech cycling paradigm (Cummins & Port 1998), in which subjects repeat sentences in time to a metronome at progressively faster rates. Previous results using the paradigm have shown that speakers from a wide variety of languages align prominent syllables in their respective languages with certain positions within the repetition cycle, namely lower-order fractions of the cycle such as the halfway point. This work has shown that stressed syllables in languages like English, Arabic, and Portuguese behave similarly to "accented" syllables in languages like Korean and Japanese in terms of relative alignment in phrase repetition. But what about languages which display no clear phonetic evidence of stress or accent? The present work addresses this question by examining speech cycling results in the Med0mba, a Grassfields Bantu language with a robust system of lexical tone but which displays little phonetic evidence of stress or accent. Findings indicate that Medumba does display evidence of prominence asymmetries at the word and phrase levels. Specifically, stem-initial syllables are found to exhibit relatively greater prominence than stem-final and non-stem syllables, and syllables occurring in the head position of an intonational phrase are found to exhibit relatively greater prominence than phrase-medial syllables. No differences in the behavior of high tone vs. low tone syllables was found; syllables of either tone could display relatively greater or lesser prominence depending on the prosodic context. Rather, the relationship between tone and prominence is shown to be indirect: as suggested by prior work, high tones can be attracted to positions which are metrically prominent. Crucially, the present work shows that metrical prominence displays similar behavior across languages regardless of whether they have stress. Thus, it is argued, a single notion of metrical prominence (independent of stress) should be applied across languages.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2018

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9780355519495Subjects--Topical Terms:

557829
Linguistics.
Index Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

The Interaction of Prominence, Rhythm, and Tone in Medumba.
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100 1 $a Franich, Kathryn Hannon. $3 1184029
245 1 4 $a The Interaction of Prominence, Rhythm, and Tone in Medumba.
264 0 $c 2017
300 $a 1 online resource (210 pages)
336 $a text $b txt $2 rdacontent
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500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-05(E), Section: A.
500 $a Advisers: Alan C.L. Yu; John A. Goldsmith.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.) $c The University of Chicago $d 2017.
504 $a Includes bibliographical references
520 $a This dissertation aims to examine the following questions: Do all languages have asymmetries in relative syllable prominence? And, how best can a linguist determine relative syllable prominence in a language they do not speak natively, particularly if acoustic correlates of prominence are sparse? To answer these questions, I present results from a series of speech production experiments utilizing the speech cycling paradigm (Cummins & Port 1998), in which subjects repeat sentences in time to a metronome at progressively faster rates. Previous results using the paradigm have shown that speakers from a wide variety of languages align prominent syllables in their respective languages with certain positions within the repetition cycle, namely lower-order fractions of the cycle such as the halfway point. This work has shown that stressed syllables in languages like English, Arabic, and Portuguese behave similarly to "accented" syllables in languages like Korean and Japanese in terms of relative alignment in phrase repetition. But what about languages which display no clear phonetic evidence of stress or accent? The present work addresses this question by examining speech cycling results in the Med0mba, a Grassfields Bantu language with a robust system of lexical tone but which displays little phonetic evidence of stress or accent. Findings indicate that Medumba does display evidence of prominence asymmetries at the word and phrase levels. Specifically, stem-initial syllables are found to exhibit relatively greater prominence than stem-final and non-stem syllables, and syllables occurring in the head position of an intonational phrase are found to exhibit relatively greater prominence than phrase-medial syllables. No differences in the behavior of high tone vs. low tone syllables was found; syllables of either tone could display relatively greater or lesser prominence depending on the prosodic context. Rather, the relationship between tone and prominence is shown to be indirect: as suggested by prior work, high tones can be attracted to positions which are metrically prominent. Crucially, the present work shows that metrical prominence displays similar behavior across languages regardless of whether they have stress. Thus, it is argued, a single notion of metrical prominence (independent of stress) should be applied across languages.
533 $a Electronic reproduction. $b Ann Arbor, Mich. : $c ProQuest, $d 2018
538 $a Mode of access: World Wide Web
650 4 $a Linguistics. $3 557829
655 7 $a Electronic books. $2 local $3 554714
690 $a 0290
710 2 $a ProQuest Information and Learning Co. $3 1178819
710 2 $a The University of Chicago. $b Linguistics. $3 1183976
773 0 $t Dissertation Abstracts International $g 79-05A(E).
856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=10636508 $z click for full text (PQDT)