2011). an Investigation of Tone in Walungge. Phd Thesis, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies
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Bartram, Cathryn Virgina (2011). An investigation of tone in Walungge. PhD thesis, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies). http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/14184/ Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. AninvestigationoftoneinWalungge Cathryn Virginia Bartram Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Linguistics 2011 Department of Linguistics School of Oriental and African Studies University of London I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: Date: 2 Abstract This dissertation is an investigation of tone in Walungge from an acoustic, a phonological, and a perceptual perspective. The acoustic analysis includes an investigation of pitch, duration, phonation, and voicing, all of which are correlates of tone. Not only does pitch vary according to the underlying tone of the word, but also according to the syllable shape. This is investigated and accounted for. Phonation and duration are shown to vary as the pitch rises and falls. The underlying tone of the word affects the VOT of some obstruents but not others. Stress also has an effect, with pitch and duration being higher on stressed syllables. From the phonological perspective of tone, there are two main considerations in this dissertation. The first is the interaction between voicing and tone. Because of their correlation, there is a question of whether or not voicing is phonologically contrastive. Voicing is analysed as noncontrastive, following which the phonological nature of the consonant3tone interaction is discussed. The second main consideration is the derivation of the surface rises and falls when the language is analysed as having 4ust one underlying tone per word. The concept of a tonal foot is proposed. This, along with boundary tone insertion, accounts for all surface patterns. Tone is also considered from a perceptual perspective. Because V T, pitch and phonation are all cues as to the tone of a word, experiments were carried out to investigate their relative salience. Similarly, because the surface tone pattern and the phonological length of a vowel correlate, perception experiments were carried out to investigate the relative salience of the pitch melody versus the vowel duration. This dissertation contains a body of language data, acoustic measurements, phonological analysis and perceptual considerations, all of which contribute to the understanding of tone in Tibetan languages. 3 Acknowledgements There are many people to whom I owe a great deal of thanks. 6y thanks must first go to the wonderful people of Lungthung, langchung 7ola, 8angma, 7unsa and 9yabla, who welcomed me into their villages, showed me hospitality and friendship as we sat round the fireplace drinking salt tea, and willingly answered my many questions about their language. In particular I would like to thank 9ippa and 8angi who gave me a room in their house, fed me, and made me feel part of their family. I am also extremely grateful to Phomo, Pasang 9ippa, 9ippa, 8angi, both Tashis and Phuttik who were willing for their voices to be recorded, and who showed incredible patience in answering all my questions and repeating and re3repeating language data. The forty people who participated in the perception tests also deserve my thanks. This dissertation would not have been possible without the help, support and encouragement of my supervising committee. :ustin 0atkins, 6onik Charette, and Peter Austin. :ustin has been a wonderful supervisor, giving me extremely helpful advice particularly with all the acoustic and perception test analysis, and putting up with reading and re3reading all my draft chapters. 1o matter how much I piled on him, he read it and returned it with very helpful comments. I am extremely grateful for 6oni);s input particularly on the phonology sections of this dissertation, and for Peter’s wealth and breadth of experience in so many aspects of linguistics and fieldwork. I am also grateful to 1athan Hill for his insights and help with the comparison of 0alungge to 0ritten Tibetan, to Bernard Howard for his help with recording equipment, and to Sophie Salffner and Anja Choon for their friendship and input. There are a number of friends in 1epal I also wish to thank. Pemba, Peter, 9hawang, Rose and Di)ki have all on different occasions given me companionship on the trails in northern Taple4ung. Pemba and Peter have shown incredible willingness and patience as they helped me to gather the data and to make recordings. Lobden and Doma are the best friends that I could ever ask for. This PhD was made possible by postgraduate studentship from the AHRC. 5 Tim, 6atthew, :osh and Samuel all deserve my thanks. They have been four wonderful sons who have put up with their mother trying to 4uggle being both a student and a mother. Tim and 6atthew need a lot of thanks for the way they have been willing to help with their younger brothers even when they have had their own studies and commitments to attend to. :osh and Samuel have been willing to let me go to 1epal whilst they have been looked after by their grandparents or at school. I am grateful to my parents, Russell and 7illian 2eist. 6um has willingly travelled halfway around the world to look after grandsons so as I could make trips to 1epal, and Dad has been prepared to let her go. This far exceeds the duties of grandparents. 6y parents3inlaw, Bryan and lwen Bartram, have also far exceeded the duties of grandparents; they also have willingly looked after grandsons so as I could get to 1epal. They have been parents to me, not parents3inlaw. 2inally, there is one person to whom I owe a great deal, but who will not be reading this. 0ithout his encouragement, I would never have applied to do a PhD. 0hen I started my 6A at S AS as a precursor to doing the PhD, he was willing to 4uggle his work with being a house3husband, looking after the boys, and cooking meals, to allow me to commute into S AS and to work on my 6A in the evenings. 0hen I applied for the PhD I never envisaged that he wouldn’t be there beside me. The road has been very hard, but with the love and encouragement of friends and family I have managed to complete this dissertation. This PhD, then, is in loving memory of Steve. 5 Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 5 Abbreviations and terminology ....................................................................................... 18 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 22 1.1 Introduction and outline .................................................................................. 22 1.2 Introduction to 0alungge ............................................................................... 25 1.3 Classification ................................................................................................... 31 2 Tone in Tibetan languages ....................................................................................... 36 2.1 Definition of tone ............................................................................................ 36 2.2 The Chao system of tone letters ..................................................................... 36 2.3 Tonogenesis ..................................................................................................... 38 2.4 Register ............................................................................................................ 39 2.5 Examples of register and tone in Tibetan languages ...................................... 41 2.5.1 Initial consonant clusters and register ...................................................... 41 2.5.2 bstruent voicing and register .................................................................. 43 2.5.3 Summary ................................................................................................... 46 2.6 Pitch and tone contours ................................................................................... 48 2.7 Controversy in the analysis of tone in Tibetan languages ............................. 52 2.7.1 bstruent voicing or register contrast ...................................................... 52 2.7.2 Tone Contours and/or vowel length ........................................................