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oUoooU1. Introduction
(Follow this link to review the elementary introduction given in the phonetics course.)
A great many (perhaps even the majority) of languages are tone languages, either lexical tone languages like Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese, or grammatical tone languages, as in many African languages. Pitch accent languages (e.g. Japanese, Swedish, Croatian) represent an intermediate case, in which there are many contrasts between words marked by a difference in the pitch pattern.
2. Autosegmental Theory
Several properties of tone led to the development of Autosegmental Phonology, which is now an established part of the mainstream generative theory of phonological representations. There are several characteristics to be noted:
2.1. Tones are represented on a different tier from segments. Evidence: Tone stability: tones are not lost even if the segments they were formerly associated with are deleted or altered. e.g. Margi hù `fire' + árì (definite) => hwà´ri (Roca and Johnson p. 407). I.e. Low + High => Rising. Similar data from many other languages gives evidence that Falling tones can be decomposed into High + Low. This also illustrates the fact that ...
2.2. Contour tones are composed of simple (High, Low or Mid) tones.
Evidence (1): Where such a contour tone (H+L or L+H) tone
is found on a short vowel, the mapping between tones and vowel slots
is two-to-one. (Strictly segmental theories cannot cope with that.) Evidence
(2): In tone assimilation rules, an X+Y contour behaves
like an X as far as earlier tones are concerned, and like a Y as far
as later tones are concerned, e.g. Suzhou Chinese (data cited by Kenstowicz
1994: 381):
| hiã | mae | hy | tcin | hiã | mae | hy | tcin | |
| /\ | /\ | /\ | | | /\ | / | / | /\ | |
| LM | LM | LM | H | => | LM | L | ||
| Isolated word glosses: | Compound word gloss: | |||||||
| `lamb' | `wool' | `wrap' | `scarf' | `wool scarf' | ||||
2.3. Tones can undergo sandhi rules, independently of segments.
(See example above.) These may be apparently quite arbitrary, especially
if they are dissimilatory, rather than assimilatory, e.g. Mandarin Chinese
tone 3 sandhi:
| lao | Li | mai | hao | jiu | ||||||||
| lo |
li | maI | xo |
doU |
lo |
li | maI | xo |
doU |
|||
| /\ | /\ | /\ | /\ | /\ | => | /\ | /\ | /\ | /\ | /\ | ||
| LM | LM | LM | LM | LM | MH | MH | MH | MH | LM | |||
| `old' | `Li' | `buys' | `good' | `wine' | Fast rate pronunciation | |||||||