A Study of the Prosody in Seediq
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Liu, Yeh-Hsin
Abstract
This thesis aims to shed light on both lexical and post-lexical prosody in Tgdaya Seediq, a Formosan indigenous language. Seediq has been suggested as paroxytonal in phonological linear studies (Li, 1977, 1991; Yang, 1976), but the suprasegmental features of its lexical accent have not yet been fully recognized, nor has the post-lexical interaction between prosody and sentential formations. Thus three major research questions are to be answered: (1) What are the crucial acoustic properties of lexical accent in Seediq? (2) How does lexical prosody interact with post-lexical prosody with respect to phonetic and phonological representations? (3) How does prosody interact with other areas of grammar in the scope of intonation? The answers to these three questions further leads to the proposal of continua in prosodic typology. Six native speakers of Seediq participated in this empirical study: syllabic rime data from selected lexicon are compared across accented conditions by acoustic measurements and quantitative methods; and designed sentences of different sentence types are examined in line with ToBI framework and cross-analyzed in the qualitative approach. First, four major prosodic properties, i.e. fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity, and vowel quality, are scrutinized based on nine detailed acoustic parameters. The experiments indicate that accented rimes in Seediq are characterized by F0 features (higher F0 mean, milder F0 slope, and late F0 peak alignment) as well as non-F0 features (higher intensity, varying vowel dispersion, and relative spectral stability under the influence of syllabic position and onset environment) in contrast with non-accented rimes, revealing a cross-border integration of lexical-accentual mechanisms between conventional stress accent and non-stress (pitch) accent languages. Second, sentence data provide the basis for the transcription model of S_ToBI, which centers on the intonational pitch contour, and reveal a high correspondence of F0 realization between post-lexical high tone target and lexical accent. In addition, post-lexical pitch accents allow for extra specifications, such as tailing low tone, upstepping, downstepping, and peak delay; whereas the required accent shift, triggered by final monosyllabic insertion in yes-no questions, may outrank the paroxytonal principle to fulfill the local pitch modification on the final disyllable. Third, the intonation patterns of basic sentence formations, i.e. declarative, interrogative (yes-no and wh-word questions), negative, and imperative, display essential distinctions in boundary tones and the realization of peak pitch prominence, suggesting a strong interplay between prosody and syntax. Yes-no questions show terminal half-falling or sustained high pitch contour while all other sentence structures exhibit full pitch fall; and peak prominence is regularly realized on the predicate-final major lexical item. Semantic focus is highlighted only in declarative topicalization and wh-word questions given the prosodic prominence on topicalized initial subject and wh-words on non-fixed syntactic position. Finally, the present findings in Seediq suggest a potential two-dimensional continuum on the phonetic and lexical domains based on Ladd’s (1996) prosodic typology. Because of its fused acoustic strategies (F0, intensity, vowel quality) between stress-accent and non-stress accent types, Seediq may be situated near the middle on the phonetic continuum. Then considering the potential tonal specifications and accent shift in addition to the mostly faithful paroxytonal pattern in the sentential scope, Seediq may be posed near the lexical pitch end on the lexical continuum without overlooking its moderate share of the post-lexical pitch function. In conclusion, this prosodic sketch of Seediq enriches the prosodic inventory of Formosan prosodic studies, and it ventures to propose a non-polarized two-dimensional continuum in the interaction between phonetic and lexical typologies based on both acoustic and phonological evidence, in the hope of making contribution to the advancement of prosodic typology across linguistic families. The pioneer ToBI adoption for the Formosan prosody is also hoped to provide an efficient basis for cross-linguistic comparison as well as a systematic reference for the future research.
Subjects
Seediq
prosody
lexical accent
intonation
acoustic
typology
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