How many ?

Suprasegmentals • Often pretty clear : ‘dad’ 1 , ‘banana 2 • What about these 1 or two syllables? (and syllables) – ‘tower’ vs. ‘hour’; ‘hire’ v. ‘higher’ • /"t#w$/ or /"t#w%r/ , /"h#j(%)$/? – ‘feel’ : ["&!] or [&%!] ?

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Syllables boundaries

• General idea of syllable is easy • We have rules for English… but that seems more • Phonetic details are not so clear like phonology than – Native speakers can disagree – May be as much about phonology as phonetics • But we seem to need to refer to syllables for • Easy to harder questions: understanding occurrences of some allophones – How many syllables? – E.g. dark [!] at end of syllable, clear [l] elsewhere – Where are syllable boundaries? • Chicken and egg phenomenon? – What are the phonetic (physical) properties of – Hard to do detailed phonetics without reference to syllables? phonology

2 4 Phonetic properties Rogers haiku example p 271

• Hypothesis: Syllable centers are sonority or /ha-ru-ta-tsu ja ‘Spring starts; (loudness??) peaks 'i-n-ne-n fu-ru-ki new year, old rice – Maybe, but we need to exclude sibilants or ‘spa’ will be two syllables ko-me-go 'o-o/ five quarts’ – No accepted phonetic interpretations (physical definitions) of sonority work • Breaks down when we consider ‘lightning’ vs. ‘lightening’ – Ladefoged suggests we need a measure of ‘prominence’ that includes duration as well as sonority

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Morae Isochronicity (equal timing)

• The : • Persistent claims of differences among languages – Some languages may have ‘timing units’ intermediate of ‘equally timed units’ between syllables and segments (Cs and Vs) • Claim: Roughly equal time interval between • Japanese seems to care about the mora – Syllables in syllable-timed languages (French, Spanish) – A single short vowel with or without an onset – Morae in mora-timed languages (Japanese, Finnish??) consonant (C)V is one mora – Stressed syllables in -timed languages (English, – But (C)V: with long vowel or other Germanic languages) – (C)VN with coda nasal count as 2 morae • Measurements show rough tendencies • Experiments with speaking in time to metronome seems to be consistent

6 8 Suprasegmentals Finnish C(:) and V(:)

• Roughly 5 things referred to as suprasegmental • s##tt## [s()t)()] ‘to be able’ – or quantity (long v. short Cs and Vs) • s##t# [s()t(] ‘be able’ – (pitch differences mark word differences) • s#t# [s(t(] ‘one hundred’ – Pitch accent (somewhere between stress and tone) • s#t## [s(t()] ‘it is precipitating’ – Stress (some syllables more ‘prominent’ than others) – (pitch patterns associated with whole • kuk# [ kuk(] ‘who’ phrases) • kukk# [ kuk)(] ‘flower’ • kuuk#usi [ ku)k(usi] ‘month’

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Length (quantity) Lexical tone

• Many languages have systematic difference • Tone languages: languages that use stylized between long and short consonants and pitch differences to signal different words vowels with same ‘quality’ – The majority of the worlds languages are tone • Long ones sometimes called ‘geminates’ languages (twins) – The mechanism that accomplishes this can be called: • Examples: • ‘tone’, ‘lexical tone’ or ‘lexically distinctive tone’ Italian long vs. short consonants – /fato/ v. /fatto/ = [f#t)o] ’fate’ v. ’done’

10 12 Two major types Ways to mark tone

• tone languages • Several variations – A few ‘steady’ or level tones – Numbers in pitch range is popular • High v. low – E.g. a high tone might be 5, a low tone 1, • High v. mid v. low • A low mid rising tone might be 3-5 • Contour tone languages • Official IPA is via ‘tone glyphs’ – Some level tones (low, high, mid – Some that have ‘contours’ i.e., they change pitch (e.g.. • Vertical line (trunk) at right represents range Low -rising, high falling’) – Horizontal line to left (branch) indicates level tone – May have quite a few patterns: 4-7 not uncommon – More complex tones suggested by position and shape of the left branch

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Nupe: (Nigeria) Mandarin /ma/ + tone Famous example one more time A Register Tone Language Description Wade-Giles IPA Pinyin gloss

High level ma1 m( m#- ‘mother • Word IPA Tone Meaning • ba! ba ! high to be sour High rising ma2 m( m#, ‘hemp’ • ba ba " mid to cut Low-falling ma3 m( m#+ ‘horse’ • ba" ba # low to count rising

Low falling ma4 m( m#* ‘scold’ rising

14 16 Wikipedia’s tone chart for mandarin Tones 1-4 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Pinyin_Tone_Chart.png Pitch Accent

High range of speaker’s pitch • Pitch accent is a phenomenon somewhere between lexical tone and stress systems • Lexical tone: any syllable can have almost any tone • Pitch accent: only certain specific syllables in a word get special tone (e.g. one high level pitch per word) – Japanese pitch accent somewhat more complex Low range of speaker’s pitch • Pitch accent roughly determines where in a word certain tone switches take place (see Rogers p 277)

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Modifications of tone Stress • Stress prominence tied to word or phrase • Not just a fixed musical pitch or melody • Some languages have predictable stress, – Relative to speaker’s range (soprano vs. basso) – E.g. Finnish always on first syllable. – Can be tied to end of word • Several other phenomena complicate the • Ultimate, penultimate, antepenultimate realization of tone – Can be more complex but still fully predictable – Language specific phonological patterns • Some (English) have stress as a distinctive • -- gradual lowering of pitch of all tones property • - specific syllables trigger shift of pitch range – ‘insult’ noun vs.. verb. – Intonation can affect pitch patterns globally • Some languages may have only phrasal stress – E.g. French: last syllable of a phrase is stressed 18 20 What is stress? Summary

• Ladefoged says it involves extra effort on • Suprasegmentals are an important part of language part of speaker • The phonetics of the phenomena is not well – Push air out harder understood yet – Laryngeal adjustment to raise pitch • Many distinct phenomena involve overlapping acoustic properties (pitch, amplitude, duration) – Hold vowel longer • Not clear what the articulatory source is nor how • Has complex set of acoustic cues to parse out the acoustic consequences – Not fully understood

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Intonation

• Intonation is use of pitch to signal meaning differences at the level of an entire phrase or sentence • Study of intonation is almost a separate branch of phonology – Phonetic details are hard to grasp – I can’t explain what I don’t understand.

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