Suprasegmentals 1 Flashcards
Syllable
No acoustic or articulatory definition (phonological abstraction that depends on analysis)
‘Chest-pulse’ theory of syllables
Every syllable corresponds to one contraction of the rib cage
* No experimental evidence
Syllables in the Orthography
Segment based writing systems were invented only once, while syllable-based writing systems arose independently multiple times, including from segment-based writing systems
Sonority
inherent loudness of a segment
Factors that impact loudness
phonological environment, speech rate, distance from source, speaker, etc.
Sonority tends to increase toward a syllable ______ and decrease afterwards
nucleus
Sounds from highest to lowest sonority
- Low vowels
- High vowels
- Liquids
- Nasals
- Fricatives
- Stops
isochrony
relative timing of adjacent units, depends on the language (syllable-timed or stress-timed)
Syllable-timed languages
- each syllable is approximately the same distance apart
- Spanish, French
Stress-timed languages
each stressed syllable is approximately the same distance apart
* English, Dutch
Pairwise Variability Index (PVI)
measure of the consistency in duration between adjacent units
* Typically applied to syllables
Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) is ___ if each pair of adjacent units is equal in duration
0
The greater the average mismatch in duration for adjacent units, the _____smaller/larger the PVI
Larger (usually less than 1)
PVI calculation
For each pair of adjacent units, divide the difference in their duration by their average duration and average the result
Pitch Accent
Distinguishing low and high tone on certain syllables
* phonological property
Technically, pitch accent languages are ______ languages
Tonal (but often separated from ‘true’ tonal languages)
-Often transcribed the same way as tone
Stressed syllables can be either:
- Accented (high pitch)
- Unaccented (low pitch)
_______ syllables are lower pitch than ______ syllables
Unstressed : lower pitch than stressed syllables
What do the Tone vs Pitch Accent vs Stress systems have in common ?
They all describe the distribution of phonologically conditioned pitch in the word
Differences between the Tone vs Pitch Accent vs Stress systems
Stress is obligatory, (min. 1 per word) , and culminative (max. 1)
* Pitch accent is either obligatory or culminative
* Tone in (true) tonal languages is neither culminative nor obligatory
Lexical Tone is ______common/uncommon
Common (around half of languages)
Tonogenesis
when a language develops a lexical tone distinction
There are (very slight) correlations between consonantal manner, voicing and the pitch of…
an adjacent vowel
vowels after voiceless stops are _____lower/higher in f0 than after voiced stops
Higher
When a consonantal manner or voice distinction is lost in a language, the syllable contrast can be maintained in …
the pitch of the vowel
E.g. [ba] vs [pa] → [pa] (L) vs [pa] (H)
Stress system is similar to tone system, but …
tone system has two distinctions : low and high
Intonation
syntactic structure, semantic type, pragmatics, speaker attitude, emotion, etc. as manifested in pitch
Stress
phonological prominence as manifested in pitch
Lexical tone
target pitch is specified in the underlying representation of every word
In all cases, the ___ is modulated by the speaker’s range
f0
How thickness of vocal folds impact tone
Thicker vocal folds = high tone for you will be lower than high tone for someone with thinner vocal folds
Resting Pitch
Depends on vocal fold length and weight
* Adult men: approx. 100 – 200 Hz
* Adult women: approx. 175 – 375 Hz
Children have a higher f0
Phonological tone (e.g. H vs L) is adjusted based on …
the speakers pitch range
The same f0 can correspond to different … for different speakers
target tones
Pitch range varies by speaker but tends to be greater for speakers with ____lower/higher resting f0
Higher
Difference between singing and tonal languages
where high and low are depends on the pitch range in tonal languages
Tianjin Mandarin Tone
Morphemes are specified for tone
- Segmentally : 4 identical morphemes, but different in terms of tone (and pitch)
tone bearing unit
A voiced segment, probably sonorant, that carries the pitch information (most often a vowel)
- Where the tone is realized
(host for the tone, not the tone itself)
The more sonorous a segment, the more likely it is to be …
Tone bearing
Tones vs segments in the mental lexicon
tones and segments are separate in the mental representation and behave independently : in the mental lexicon, each entry has segmental information, syntax, semantics, etc. but the prosody (tone) has to be different from the segment
Because transcription is guided by phonology, we only need __ to describe the languages of the world (infinite pitch targets in reality)
5
Tone levels
- A language with 3 tones would be described as low, mid and high (terms that are evenly spread out)
- More than 3 tones : extra low, low, mid, high, extra high
Tone accents
placed over the TBU
Tone letters
placed after the word/syllable
Traditional notation of tone
Terminology used in historical descriptions of the language
* Language dependent : tone 1 for mandarin isn’t the same for other languages
* E.g. Mandarin tones: T1(˥), T2(˧˥), T3(˧˩˧), T4(˥˩)
Register Tone
Each TBU is realized with a particular point in the speaker’s pitch range
* Single pitch target per TBU
Most register tone languages distinguish between ___ tones
2-3
* Languages with more than 3 register tones are rare
Register tone languages are often contrasted with _____ tone languages
Contour
Contour Tone
Each TBU is associated with a pitch contour
- Contour tone : start at one position, end at another position
Multiple pitch targets : The number of pitch targets per TBU can be 2 or 3
Number of contrastive tones in a contour tone language
4 in Mandarin, 5 in Thai, 6 in Cantonese
* Usually less than 10
notation of contour tones
Contour tones are just combinations of register tones
* HL falling = /â/ or /a˥˩/
Circonflex does not mean low high low, just high low (falling)
Vietnamese Contour Tones
A1 [ma˦] ‘ghost’
A2 [ma˧˨] ‘not yeat’
B1 [ma˨˦] ‘cheek’
B2 [ma˨] ‘rice seedling’
C1 [ma˧˩˨] ‘tomb’
C2 [ma˧˨˥] ‘code’
Tone on the Spectrogram
Can turn on automatic pitch tracking in Praat, or approximate the pitch by looking at the spacing of striations in the spectrogram or pulses in the waveform
True or false : tonal languages also use pitch to convey non-lexical information
True
(pitch targets have to be consistent within the TBU and across adjacent TBUs but can vary beyond that)
Pitch in lexical tone is dependent on…
both on the speaker and the context (only requirement is that high tone should be perceptually higher than low tone and vice versa )
Declination
When the absolute pitch decreases throughout the utterance
* High tone at the end of an utterance is usually lower than high tone at the beginning : True for all languages
* Corresponds to the cross-linguistic tendency for statements to have falling pitch
Sandhi
Systematic changes in tone conditioned by adjacent tones are called sandhi (coarticulatory effects )
E.g. no adjacent same tones (better for tone 2 followed by tone 3)
