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Intonation Systems: a Survey of Twenty Languages

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Intonation Systems: a Survey of Twenty Languages Intonation Systems Intonation Systems A Survey of Twenty Languages EDITED BY DANIEL HIRST AND ALBERT DI CRISTO CNRS Laboratoire Parole et Langage Institut de Phonétique, Université de Provence PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building. Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, United Kingdom http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011–4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1998 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1998 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Times [DJH] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data Intonation Systems. A Survey of Twenty Languages / edited by Daniel Hirst and Albert Di Cristo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 39513 5 (hardback) ISBN 0 521 39550 X (paperback) 1. Intonation (Phonetics). 2. Grammar, Comparative and general – Phonology. 3. Linguistic typology. I. Hirst, Daniel 1946– II. Di Cristo, Albert ISBN 0 521 39513 5 (hardback) ISBN 0 521 39550 X (paperback) Contents Organisation of the chapters page vii List of contributors viii Preface by Alan Cruttenden xi Acknowledgements xii 1 A survey of intonation systems DANIEL HIRST and ALBERT DI CRISTO 1 2 Intonation in American English DWIGHT BOLINGER 45 3 Intonation in British English DANIEL HIRST 56 4 Intonation in German DAFYDD GIBBON 78 5 Intonation in Dutch JOHAN ’T HART 96 6 Intonation in Swedish EVA GÅRDING 112 7 Intonation in Danish NINA GRØNNUM 131 8 Intonation in Spanish SANTIAGO ALCOBA and JULIO MURILLO 152 9 Intonation in European Portuguese MADALENA CRUZ-FERREIRA 167 10 Intonation in Brazilian Portuguese JOÃO ANTÔNIO DE MORAES 179 11 Intonation in French ALBERT DI CRISTO 195 v Contents 12 Intonation in Italian MARIO ROSSI 219 13 Intonation in Romanian LAURENT¸ IA DASCA˘ LU-JINGA 242 14 Intonation in Russian NATALIA SVETOZAROVA 264 15 Intonation in Bulgarian ANASTASIA MISHEVA and MICHEL NIKOV 278 16 Intonation in Greek ANTONIS BOTINIS 291 17 Intonation in Finnish ANTTI IIVONEN 314 18 Intonation in Hungarian IVAN FÓNAGY 331 19 Intonation in Western Arabic (Morocco) THAMI BENKIRANE 348 20 Intonation in Japanese ISAMU ABE 363 21 Intonation in Thai SUDAPORN LUKSANEEYANAWIN 379 22 Intonation in Vietnamese ÎÕ THE° DUNG, TRÏN THIEN HUONG and GEORGES BOULAKIA 398 23 Intonation in Beijing Chinese PAUL KRATOCHVIL 421 References 437 Index of names 479 Subject index 487 vi Organisation of the Chapters In order to facilitate comparisons across languages, almost all the chapters in this volume*, including our introductory chapter (A survey of intonation systems), are organised following the same general outline as follows: 1. Background. 1.1 General prosodic characteristics of the language. 1.2 Theoretical background and approach. 2. Description of intonation patterns. 2.1 Description of a basic non-emphatic pattern. 2.2 Mode and expressivity. 2.3 Focalisation and contextual effects. 2.4 Phrasing and textual organisation. 2.5 Other patterns (e.g. stereotyped or stylised patterns). 3. Comparisons with other intonation systems. 3.1 Comparisons with other dialects. 3.2 Comparisons with other languages. 4. Implications and conclusions. * The chapters which do not follow this outline are Chapter 2 (Intonation in American English by Dwight Bolinger) and Chapter 23 (Intonation in Beijing Chinese by Paul Kratochvil), see notes at the beginning of these chapters. vii Contributors ISAMU ABE Department of Liberal Arts, Asia University, Tokyo; Language Research Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology SANTIAGO ALCOBA Departamente de Filologia Espanola, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona THAMI BENKIRANE Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Fez † DWIGHT BOLINGER Department of Linguistics, Harvard University ANTONIS BOTINIS Department of Linguistics, Philosophical Faculty, University of Athens GEORGES BOULAKIA Laboratoire de Phonétique UFRL, Université de Paris VII MADALENA CRUZ-FERREIRA Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore LAURENT¸IA DASCA˘ LU-JINGA Institutul de Cercetari Etnologice ¸si Dialectologice, Bucharest ALBERT DI CRISTO Institut de Phonétique, Université de Provence, CNRS Laboratoire Parole et Langage ÎÕ THE° DUNG ILPGA, Université de Paris III; University of Ho Chi Minh-Ville IVAN FÓNAGY Institut d'Etudes Linguistiques et Phonétiques, Paris EVA GÅRDING Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, Lund University DAFYDD GIBBON Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, Universität Bielefeld viii Contributors NINA GRØNNUM Institute of General and Applied Linguistics, University of Copenhagen JOHAN ’T HART Instituut voor Perceptie Onderzoek, Eindhoven DANIEL HIRST Institut de Phonétique, Université de Provence, CNRS, Laboratoire Parole et Langage TRÏN THIEN HUONG Laboratoire de Phonétique UFRL, Université de Paris VII ANTTI IIVONEN Department of Phonetics, University of Helsinki PAUL KRATOCHVIL Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge SUDAPORN LUKSANEEYANAWIN Department of Linguistics, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok †ANASTASIA MISHEVA Bulgarian Language Institute, Sofia JOÃO ANTÔNIO DE MORAES Department of Linguistics, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro JULIO MURILLO Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona MICHEL NIKOV Department of Romance Studies, University of Sofia MARIO ROSSI Institut de Phonétique, Université de Provence, CNRS Laboratoire Parole et Langage NATALIA SVETOZAROVA Department of Phonetics, University of St. Petersburg ix Preface Because I had not been called upon to write a preface of this sort before, when asked to do so I did a rapid trawl along my bookshelves looking at prefaces. I found that prefaces to multi-authored works were either written by the editors themselves or were included as tributes in volumes which were in the nature of festschrifts to esteemed scholars. It is a tribute to this book that it falls into neither category but still greatly deserves a preface. The editors present here a unique advance in the study of intonation. Books which have presented systematic comparisons of many languages or of grammars or of phonologies have been available for at least the last decade. But the enormous problems to be faced in achieving anything comparable for intonation have meant that no-one has dared to take on the task. Indeed the editors probably did not initially realise the enormity of this task and hence how long the gestation period would be (I have myself seen two earlier versions which were considerably different). What we have now is a volume which enables intonationists and others to compare languages systematically on the variables which are the important ones in intonational comparison, e.g. what is the unmarked contour for simple, declarative sentences and what marks the contours for various types of question and for non-finality? This comparison shows up intonational differences but at the same time also brings out the considerable similarities in intonational form and function across languages. This highlighting of differences and similarities has been achieved despite the plethora of theoretical approaches which the individual authors have brought to the subject. Moreover the editors also introduce their own theory-neutral transcription system for intonation, which is used by many of the contributors to the volume and hence makes comparison easier. The information contained in the articles has been expertly surveyed by the editors in their Introduction, which itself will become obligatory reading for all those interested in the typological and theoretical study of intonation. This book will be a sourcebook for all cross- linguistic researchers. It represents a landmark in the study of intonation. ALAN CRUTTENDEN Manchester xi Acknowledgements This book has been a very long time in the making – it is now over ten years since we first circulated a questionnaire on the intonation of different languages. We should like to take this opportunity of thanking the authors for having agreed to take part in the project in the first place and then for accepting the numerous revisions and changes of plan that we sprang on them. We should particularly like to thank Antonis Botinis, Eva Gårding, Dafydd Gibbon, Hans ’t Hart and Nina Grønnum for constructive suggestions and help at various stages in the preparation of the manuscript. Eva Gårding generously remarked: "As it happens, Swedish intonation has not changed so much during the last decade!" We were extremely sad to learn of the loss of two of our contributors: Dwight Bolinger and Anastasia Misheva. We should like to dedicate this volume to their memory and to that of our teacher and friend Georges Faure who, we know, would have been proud to see this publication by two of his former students. Over the years the list of people we should like to thank has grown so long that it is impossible for us to name them all here. The editorial staff of Cambridge University Press was remarkably patient, helpful and encouraging. Our thanks first to Penny Carter for her enthusiasm for the project right from the beginning, then to Marion Smith, Catherine
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