1 A TYPOLOGY OF CONTOUR TONE RESTRICTIONS MATTHEW GORDON University of California, Santa Barbara 2 Matthew Gordon Department of Linguistics 3607 South Hall Santa Barbara, CA 93106
[email protected] 3 ABSTRACT This paper presents results of a survey of contour tones in 105 languages with lexical tone. Results indicate an implicational hierarchy of tone bearing ability, whereby long vowels are most likely to carry contour tones, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus a sonorant coda, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus an obstruent coda, followed by open syllables containing a short vowel. It is claimed that this tonal hierarchy is phonetically motivated: syllable types which are phonetically better suited to carrying tonal information are more likely to support contour tones. Languages whose tone distributions superficially appear to fall outside the range of variation predicted on phonetic grounds are demonstrated, upon closer examination, to be unexceptional in their behavior. 4 1 Introduction In many languages, syllables differ in terms of the number of tonal contrasts which they may support (Clark 1983, Hyman 1988). For example, while most languages allow level tones on all syllable types, many restrict contour tones to certain syllable types. Thus, in Kiowa (Kiowa-Tanoan; Watkins 1984), contour tones may only occur on syllables containing long vowels (CVV(C)) and syllables closed by a sonorant coda (CVR) (1a). Contour tones may not occur on open syllables containing a short vowel (CV) or on short-voweled syllables closed by an obstruent (CVO) (1b). (1) Kiowa contour tones (from Watkins 1984) a. kÓu$…l ‘pull off’, ha$… ‘arise’ refl., kÓu$ltO… ‘pull off’ future b.