The Tonal and Intonational Phonology of Lhasa Tibetan Keh Sheng Lim A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Philosophy degree in Linguistics Department of Linguistics Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies University of Ottawa © Keh Sheng Lim, Ottawa, Canada, 2018 Abstract This dissertation provides a comprehensive description of the tonal and intona- tional phonology of Lhasa Tibetan (LT) in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework. It is based on recorded data elicited from members of the Tibetan-Canadian com- munity in Ottawa and Toronto. The first two chapters of the dissertation contain background information about LT, a summary of previous research on LT tones and intonation, and an overview of the theoretical framework and conceptual tools used in the rest of the dissertation. The third chapter deals with word tonology. I establish that the prosodic struc- ture of LT brings evidence for four main constituents at or below the word level: a) the mora encodes vowel length contrasts, b) the syllable is the tone-bearing unit (TBU), c) the prosodic word, which is maximally binary, delimits the appli- cation of most tonal processes, and d) the prosodic word group, which matches grammatical words, is the domain of downstep. This prosodic structure provides evidence against the universality of the Prosodic Hierarchy (Selkirk, 2002; Nespor and Vogel, 2007) in that it has no phonological phrase, but has two word-level constituents. I then argue that LT has three lexical tones (H, LH, and L) – L being limited to some suffixes – and propose that these lexical tones are subject totone rules applying within the prosodic word and the prosodic word group. These tone rules are similar to those proposed by Duanmu (1992), but have been improved to accurately predict the tone patterns of long polysyllabic words. Based on phonetic evidence, I also come to the conclusion that LT no longer has stress, and that the stress pattern found in other Bodic varieties has been reinterpreted as a part of the tonal system. The fourth chapter analyses phrasal prosody. I argue that LT forms intona- tional phrases around clauses and marks them with final lengthening, pitch reset, and a limited set of boundary tones (H% and L%). Although communicative func- ii tions and information structure are mostly realized by means of final particles and morphosyntactic devices in LT, I show that boundary tones, focal tones, and deac- centing interact with word tones to form complex melodic patterns. In the fifth chapter, I present a phonologically-based F0 synthesis modelto verify the adequacy of the proposed Autosegmental-Metrical model of LT. This F0 synthesis model consists of three main components: a) the tonal targets defined in previous chapters, b) an F0 interpolation component based on the PENTA model (Xu, 2004), and c) an evaluation component allowing a comparison of the F0 con- tours of real LT utterances with resynthesized F0 contours of the same utterances. The F0 synthesis model is able to generate F0 contours that approximate the F0 contours of real LT recordings, suggesting that the proposed phonological model adequately captures the overall tonal and intonational phonology of LT. iii Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to Jurme Wangda, my Tibetan friend, teacher, and consul- tant. With his generous contribution of time, he helped me to connect with all of the Tibetan participants in this research. I am grateful to my Tibetan participants for their kindness and patience during the research, and for helping me to under- stand their language. I would particularly like to remember one of the participants, who will not have the opportunity to see the results of his contribution. His speech data, along with the data from the others, forms the foundation of this research. I will always be indebted to all of my participants for sharing their language and hospitality with me, and giving me a glimpse of their great culture. My work would have gone nowhere had it not been for the instruction and guidance of Dr. Marc Brunelle at the University of Ottawa—my supervisor for the last nine years. Marc never hesitated to critique my writing when it was not clear, and helped me to keep my thoughts organized. If what I have written is comprehensible, it is due to his nuanced insightful comments on each and every draft. It was a privilege to have Marc as my supervisor. His relentless commitment to his students is exemplary and I am very grateful to him. I would like to thank Dr. Andrés Salanova, who provided valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this dissertation. Dr. Salanova’s encouragement and friendship are deeply appreciated. I would also like to express my gratitude towards my committee members: Dr. Lev Blumenfeld, Dr. Andrés Salanova, Dr. Kevin McMullin, and Dr. Nancy Caplow. They have provided significant insights and critiques that not only im- prove the quality of this dissertation but also inspire future research topics. I would like to specifically thank Dr. Nancy Caplow for generously contributing her exper- tise in verifying the Tibetan data in this dissertation. Her feedback has adverted some significant embarrassments and has helped me improved the readability of transcriptions for other researchers. iv Much of my early interest in tonal phenomena came through Dr. Keith Snider, professor of Linguistics at the Canada Institute of Linguistics. He introduced me to tonal phenomena, which have been central to my research interests for the good part of the last decade. He encouraged me to pursue my doctorate, and I am forever grateful to him. I would also like to thank my editor, Lyra Magloughlin, for her invaluable help in spotting grammatical and stylistic infelicities in my original manuscript. Even with the support of all these people I could never have completed this dissertation without the support and encouragement of my wife, Mabel Lee. I am forever in debt to you! I am also grateful to our children, Magdalene and Jared, who have shown great understanding and patience. Last but not least, I would like to sincerely thank my parents, Kim Tee and Chian Seng, who have always supported my endeavours. v Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Lhasa Tibetan (LT) . 4 1.1.1 Sociostylistic registers . 6 1.1.2 History of the development of Written Tibetan (WT) . 6 1.1.3 Modern research in Tibetan . 8 1.2 Phonological and morphological sketch of LT . 10 1.2.1 Segmental inventory . 10 1.2.2 Transcription of Written Tibetan . 11 1.2.3 Syllable structure . 12 1.2.4 Morphology . 13 1.3 Tonogenesis in LT . 17 1.3.1 Tone in traditional Tibetan grammar . 20 1.3.2 General path to tonogenesis in LT . 21 1.3.3 Recent studies on Tibetan tonogenesis . 24 1.3.3.1 From stress to tone . 24 1.3.3.2 Homonym rate and tonogenesis . 25 1.4 Organization . 27 2 Previous linguistic research on word tone, stress, and intonation in LT 28 2.1 Previous research on word tone . 28 2.1.1 Two-tone analyses . 31 2.1.2 Four-tone analyses . 34 2.1.3 The tonal analysis of polysyllabic words . 36 2.1.3.1 Tone Sandhi of polysllyabic words . 36 2.1.4 Prosodic structure of polysyllabic words . 40 2.2 Previous research on word stress . 44 2.3 Previous research on intonation . 45 2.3.1 Prosodic Structure . 46 2.3.2 Autosegmental Metrical (AM) Theory . 49 2.3.3 Previous work on the interaction between tone and intona- tion in LT Monich (2011) . 53 2.3.4 LT Speech synthesis . 56 vi 3 The word tonology of LT 58 3.1 Word stress in LT . 58 3.1.1 Meredith (1990) . 60 3.1.2 Monich (2011) . 61 3.2 Word tonology of LT . 65 3.2.1 Tones of affixes . 66 3.2.2 Prosodic structure of LT . 67 3.2.2.1 The mora (µ)...................... 68 3.2.2.2 The syllable (σ) .................... 68 3.2.2.3 The prosodic word (!) . 69 3.2.2.4 The prosodic word group (Ω) . 72 3.2.3 Revised Lhasa Tone Rules (RLS) . 73 3.2.3.1 RLS in monosyllabic and disyllabic words . 73 3.2.3.2 Application of RLS in polysyllabic words . 77 3.3 Experiment I: Surface realization of the tones of LT words . 83 3.3.1 Methods . 83 3.3.1.1 Subjects . 83 3.3.1.2 Stimuli . 85 3.3.1.3 Procedure . 90 3.3.1.4 Equipment . 90 3.3.1.5 Measurements . 90 3.3.2 Results and discussion . 91 3.3.2.1 Surface realization of tones in LT words . 91 3.4 Experiment II: Status of word stress of LT words . 98 3.4.1 Methods . 98 3.4.1.1 Stimuli . 98 3.4.1.2 Measurement . 99 3.4.2 Results and Discussion . 100 4 The intonational phonology of LT 106 4.1 The intonational phrase and its cues . 107 4.2 Communicative functions and boundary tones . 110 4.2.1 Continuative intonation . 112 4.2.2 Non-continuative intonation . 114 4.2.3 Interrogatives . 117 4.3 Information structure . 119 4.4 Spelling chant melody . 127 4.5 Tonal inventory of Lhasa Tibetan . 130 5 F0 Synthesis Model of LT 131 5.1 Criteria for an adequate F0 synthesis model . 132 5.2 Overview of various F0 synthesis models . 133 5.3 Selection of the F0 synthesis model . 135 vii 5.4 Quantitative Target Approximation (qTA) . 138 5.5 LT F0 synthesis model (LTF0) . 141 5.5.1 Tone target component . 142 5.5.2 Interpolation component . 143 5.5.2.1 Individual pitch range .