C(H-Airman, Departmental Committee

1 ISSUES IN THE PHONOLOGY OF PROMINENCE by Scott Meredith B.S., Georgetown University (1983) M.S., The George Washington University (1985) Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY May, 1990 § Scott Meredith, 1990 The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Signature of Author Department of Lingdistics and Philosophy MayJ7, 1990 Certified by I I V k/ ,I V X- Professor Morris Halle Thesis Supervisor Accepted by %-0 1- C(h-airman, DepartmentalPCCfl0,rnnnIr'DA-en^ro L"..f4~ eL%ssor- c mc^L-w-LLa JJ WWayne = tIQAAO%Committee tKTc-,nJIKTOAO'N el ilr L MASSACHUSETTS INSTIUIE OF TECHtOI(JOGY JUN 121990 JUBRARI-ES ISSUES IN THE PHONOLOGY OF PROMINENCE by SCOTT MEREDITH Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on May 7, 1990 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics ABSTRACT A theory of the interaction of phonology and phonetics in the prosodic domains of fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity is developed. Metrical constituent structure in the framework of Halle and Vergnaud 1987 is shown to be the fundamental representation of informetion for these prosodic domains, integrating phonological categories of tone and syllable weight with phonetic parameters of pitch, duration, and intensity. The theory is illustrated by reference to three detailed case studies in the prosody of Tibetan, Beijing Mandarin Chinese, and English. For Tibetan, it is shown that the status of syllable nuclei in abstract metrical structure correlates with complexity of surface tonal realization. For Beijing Mandarin Chinese, it is shown that abstract metrical structure describing the location of stress is partially dependent on lexical tone quality of syllables. For English, it is argued that tonological primitives are not interposed between abstract metrical structure and surface fundamental frequency generation. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Morris Halle, without whom I would not have come to MIT, stayed at MIT, or benefited greatly from my study at MIT. The debt I owe to Morris cannot be summarized here, and can never be repaid, so I will content myself with this statement of profound gratitude. Thanks to Ken Hale for serving on my committee, for providing endless obscure references, and for many subtle hints that always concealed deep insight, when I was subtle enough to pay attention. Thanks to Jim Harris for serving on my committee, and for never missing a chance to explore a potential weakness. Though many weaknesses doubtless remain in this treatment, they cannot be laid at Jim's door. Thanks to Francois Dell, for serving on my committee, and for bringing many very significant points to my attention. Thanks to Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, for serving on my committee and for strong and interesting challenges graciously presented. Thanks to Noam Chomsky, for setting an astonishing example of endeavor and excellence at what must be the limits of intellectual and moral capacity. Thanks to my class: San Duanmu, Michael Hegarty, Lori Holmes, Kate Kearns, Peter Kipka, Itziar Laka, and Anoop Mahajan. Though I am thanking them as a group, I regard each one of them as an outstanding individual and as a life-long friend. Thanks to Dennis Klatt, for teaching me phonetics and challenging me, by example, always to work harder and look deeper. Thanks to my two outstanding phonology professors, who got me some distance toward seeing what it is all about: Donca Steriade and Michael Kenstowicz. Thanks to my two good friends at the AI Lab: Michael Kashket and Eric Ristad. Thanks to Wayne O'Neil and Sylvain Bromberger, for encouragement and services too numerous to mention. Thanks to my teachers: Robert Berwick, James Higginbotham, Richard Kayne, Richard Larson, and Ken Stevens. Thanks to Sharon Manuel at the Speech Lab, for all kinds of phonetic education and friendship. 4 Thanks to all my linguistic schoolmates: Zhiming Bao, Eulalia Bonet, Lisa Cheng, Christopher Collins, Hamida Demirdache, Mika Hoffman, Sabine Iatridou, Bill Idsardi, Peter Ihionu, Betsy Klipple, Utpal Lahiri, Paul Law, Harry Leder, Yafei Li, Kelly Sloan, and Chris Tancredi. Knowing you has been a great privilege. For Tibetan: thanks especially to Ngawang Jorden, for serving as my informant and for teaching me Tibetan and much besides. Thanks also to John Dunne, Masatoshi Nagatomi and Moria Yip. For Chinese: thanks to Zhiming Bao, Lillian Chen, Francois Dell, San Duanmu, and Yunhui Zhao. For English: thanks to Noam Chomsky, Irene Heim, Alec Marantz, Chris Tancredi, and William Poser. Thanks to Dave Boor and Beverly Knystautas. Thanks to IBM corporation for summer funding. Thanks to Shane Snowdon for being there. Thanks to my parents for everything. This thesis is dedicated to Shao-Ti and Shao-Ling, with gratitude for their love and support. 5 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Chapter 1: Tone, Stress, and Intonation ................ 8 1.1 Introduction: The Sources of Phonological Prominence ................................... 8 1.2 Universals of Phonetic Interpretation of Metrical Constituent Structure ............... 13 1.2.1 Fundamental Frequency ....................... 13 1.2.2 Duration and Length ................... ... 22 1.2.3 Gesture ................................... 27 1.3 Overview of the Case Studies .................. 31 1.3.1 Tibetan ..................................... 31 1.3.2 Beijing Mandarin Chinese .................... 36 1.3.3 English Intonation .......................... 38 1.4 Summary ....................................... 40 Chapter 2: Tibetan Tone and Stress ..................... 42 2.1 Introduction .... ............................... 42 2.2 RST Nouns .............. ............. ... 44 2.2.1 The Tonal Inventory of RST Monosyllabic Nouns ......................................0aa 0a a a a a 0 44 2.2.1.1 Syllable Coda Quality ..................... 44 2.2.2.2 Glottal Stop Coda p........................ 47 2.2.1.3 Surface Tone Properties ................... 48 2.2.1.4 Distribution of Tonal Shapes .............. 49 2.2.1.2.1 High Register Tone Shapes ........... 51 2.2.1.4.1.1 The Level Class ....................... 52 2.2.1.4.1.2 The Falling Class ..................... 53 2.2.1.4.2 Low Register Tone Shapes ................ 53 2.2.1.5 Phonological Form of Tone Specifications... 54 2.2.2 Tone Patterns of Compound Nouns ............. 57 2.2.2.1 Disyllabic Compounds .................. .. 57 2.2.1.1 Tonal and Segmental Effects of Compounding. 58 22.2.2.1.2 A Restriction on TonalOOutput .......... 61 2.2.2.1.3 Metrical Dependencies (MSi) ............. 63 2.2.2.1.4 Disyllabic Compound Derivations ......... 65 2.2.2.2 Trisyllabic Compounds ..................... 71 2.2.2.2.1 Morphological Types .. .................. 71 2.2.2.2.22 Pitch Interpolation ..................... 72 2.2.2.2.3 Trisyllabic Compound Derivations ........ 74 2.2.2.2.4 Rise Insertion ............................ 79 2.2.2.3 Quadrisyllabic Nouns ............. ......... 81 2.2.2.3.1 Quadrisyllabic Noun Derivations ......... 81 2.2.3 Stresz tatterns of Nouns .................... 84 2.2.3.1 Relation of Stress Metrics to Abstract Tonal Metrics ...................... ...... 85 2.2.3.2 Basic Units of Stressability .............. 86 2.2.3.3 Parameters of Noun Stress (MS2) ........... 89 2.2.3.4 Noun Stress Derivations .................. 90 2.2.4 Head-shifting Determiners in NP Syntax ...... 95 2.3.1 Verbal Complex Tone ......................... 105 2.3.1.1 The Verb Stem ........................... 105 2.3.1.2 Metrical Dependencies ..................... 106 2.3.1.3 Verb Stem Alternations: Level/Fall ......108 2.3.1.4 Verbal Complex Tone Derivations ........... 110 2.3.1.5 Classification of Affixes ................. 113 2.3.1.6 The Honorific Auxiliary Verb [nan] ........ 114 2.3.1.7 Negation in the Verbal Complex ............ 122 2.3.2 Verbal Complex Stress ....................... 126 2.3.2.1 Verbal Complex Stress Parameters .......... 126 Chapter 3: Lexical and Phrasal Stress in Beijing Mandarin ................................... 132 3.1 Introduction ................................... 132 3.2 The Tone/Stress Correlation ................... 133 3.2.1 The Tones of Beijing Mandarin ............. 133 3.2.2 The Relative Strength of Tones .............. 134 3.2.3 Formalization of Stress .............. 136 3.2.4 Derivations ................................. 138 3.3 Alternative Approaches ........................ 144 3.3.1 Universal Phonetics ......................... 145 3.3.2 Independence of Stress and Tone 7 ........... 147 3.4 Compound Noun Stress ........................ 149 3.4.1 Compound Noun Stress Parameters ............. 150 3.4.2 NP Derivations .............................. 151 3.4.3 Four-syllable Compounds and Stress Clash .... 154 3.5 An Alternative Treatment (Yip 1989) ........... 165 Chapter 4: On the Representation of Intonation in Linguistic Theory ................................. 171 4.1 Introduction .................................. 171 4.1.1 The Focus Model .......... 171 4.1.1.1 Focus Structure, Accent Placement, and Interpretation ........................... 172 4.1.1.2 A Focus Structure Derivation ............ 175 4.1.1.3 The Formulation of Accent Placement ....... 179 4.2 The Intonation Model .......................... 184 4.2.1 Laryngeal Generation ........................ 184 4.2.2 Relation

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