Explores the concept of tone, its physical properties and intricate patterning in phonology, to unravel key 'mysteries' that have been subject to great debate in the field.

Publisher Description

This book is a revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation that was submitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983. Although much of the analysis and argumentation of the dissertation has survived rewriting, the organization has been considerably changed. To Paul Kiparsky and Morris Halle, lowe a major debt. Not only has it been a great privilege to work on phonology with both of them, but it is hard to imagine what this piece of research would have looked like without them. (They, of course, may well imagine a number of appropriate ways in which the work could be different had I not been involved .... ) In addition, special thanks are due to Ken Hale, the third member of my thesis committee. Our discussions of a variety of topics (including tone) helped me to keep a broader outlook on language than might have otherwise been the result of concentrating on a thesis topic.

Yongning Na, also known as Mosuo, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Southwest China. This book provides a description and analysis of its tone system, progressing from lexical tones towards morphotonology. Tonal changes permeate numerous aspects of the morphosyntax of Yongning Na; they are not the product of a small set of phonological rules, but of a host of rules that are restricted to specific morphosyntactic contexts. Rich morphotonological systems have been reported in this area of Sino-Tibetan, but book-length descriptions remain few. This study of an endangered language contributes to a better understanding of the diversity of prosodic systems in East Asia. The analysis is based on original fieldwork data (made available online), collected over the course of ten years, commencing in 2006.

This volume includes papers by leading figures in phonetics and phonology on two topics central to phonological theory: tones and phonological features. Papers address a wide range of topics bearing on tones and features including their formal representation and phonetic foundation.

This volume presents 14 experimental studies of lexical tone and intonation in a wide variety of languages. Six papers deal with the discriminability or the function of intonation contours and lexical tones in specific languages, as established on the basis of listener responses, as well as with brain activation patterns resulting from the perception of tonal and intonational stimuli. The remaining eight papers report on detailed phonetic findings on a variety of tonal phenomena in a number of languages, including declination in tone languages, final lowering, consonant-tone interactions and pitch target alignment.

Tone: A Linguistic Survey is a nine-chapter text that considers the phonetics and phonology of tone from both a synchronic and a diachronic point of view. The first chapters deal with the physiological and perceptual correlations of tone. These chapters also describe the interactions of tonal and nontonal features. The succeeding chapters provide the phonetic basis for phonological tonal phenomena. These topics are followed by discussions of the physical and physiological aspects of tone, the number of possible contrastive tones in a language, and a suprasegmental representation of tones based on linguistic evidence. This text also summarizes the kinds of tone rules found in languages and the important syntactic function played by tone in a number of the world's languages, particularly those in Africa. The final chapters look into the general and specific principles that constrain historical tone change. This book will prove useful to students with phonology course.

Tone is about melody and meaning, inflection is about grammar, and this book is about a bit of both. The contributions to this volume study possible and sometimes complex ways in which the tones of a language engage in the expression of grammatical categories. There is a widespread conception that tone is a lexical phenomenon only. This is partly a consequence of the main interest in tone coming from phonology, while the main interest in inflection has stemmed from segmental morphology. Similarly, textbooks on inflection and textbooks on tone give very few examples of the inflectional use of tone, and such examples are often the same ones or too similar. This volume aims to broaden our understanding of the link between tone and inflection by showing that there is more to tone than meets the eye. The book includes general chapters as well as case studies on lesser known languages of Asia, Africa and Papua New Guinea, with a special focus on the Oto-Manguean languages, a large and diverse linguistic stock of Mexico that inspired Kenneth Pike’s 1948 seminal work on tone. Most of the contributions to this volume provide first-hand data from recent fieldwork that stems from important language documentation activities.

The fully updated, new edition of the bestselling introduction to phonetics and phonology The Sounds of Language presents a comprehensive introduction to both the physical and cognitive aspects of speech sounds. Assuming no prior knowledge of phonetics or phonology, this student-friendly textbook clearly explains fundamental concepts and theories, describes key phonetic and phonological phenomena, explores the history and intersection of the two fields, offers practical advice on collecting and reading data, and more. Twenty-four concise chapters, written in non-technical language, are organized into six sections that each focus on a particular sub-discipline: Articulatory Phonetics, Acoustic Phonetics, Segmental Phonology, Suprasegmental Phonology, the Phonology/Morphology Interface, and Variation and Change. The book's flexible modular approach allows instructors to easily choose, re-order, combine, or skip sections to meet the needs of one- and two-semester courses of varying levels. Now in its second edition, The Sounds of Language contains updated references, new problem sets, new examples, and links to new online material. The new edition features new chapters on Lexical Phonology; Word Structure and Sound Structure; and Variation, Probability, and Phonological Theory. Chapters on Sociolinguistic Variation, Child Language Acquisition, and Adult Language Learning have also been extensively updated and revised. Offering uniquely broad and balanced coverage of the theory and practice of two major branches of linguistics, The Sounds of Language: Covers a wide range of topics in phonetics and phonology, from the anatomy of the vocal tract to the cognitive processes behind the comprehension of speech sounds Features critical reviews of different approaches that have been used to address phonetics and phonology problems Integrates data on sociolinguistic variation, first language acquisition, and second language learning Surveys key phonological theories, common phonological processes, and computational techniques for speech analysis Contains numerous exercises and progressively challenging problem sets that allow students to practice data analysis and hypothesis testing Includes access to a companion website with additional exercises, sound files, and other supporting resources The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Second Edition, remains the ideal textbook for undergraduate and beginning graduate classes on phonology and phonetics, as well as related courses in linguistics, applied linguistics, speech science, language acquisition, and cognitive science programs.