In tonal languages such as Mandarin, both lexical tone and sentence intonation are primarily signaled by F0. Their F0 encodings are sometimes in conflict and sometimes in congruency. The present... Show moreIn tonal languages such as Mandarin, both lexical tone and sentence intonation are primarily signaled by F0. Their F0 encodings are sometimes in conflict and sometimes in congruency. The present study investigated how tone and intonation, with F0 encodings in conflict or in congruency, are processed and how semantic context may affect their processing. To this end, tone and intonation identification experiments were conducted in both semantically neutral and constraining contexts. Results showed that the overall performance of tone identification was better than that of intonation. Specifically, tone identification was seldom affected by intonation information irrespective of semantic contexts. However, intonation identification, particularly question intonation, was susceptible to the final lexical tone identity and affected by the semantic context. In the semantically neutral context, questions ending with a rising tone and a falling tone were equally difficult to identify. In the semantically constraining context, questions ending with a falling tone were much better identified than those ending with a rising tone. This perceptual asymmetry suggests that top-down information provided by the semantically constraining context can play a facilitating role for listeners to disentangle intonational information from tonal information, but mainly in sentences with the lexical falling tone in the final position. Show less
This study provides a comprehensive look at the tonal system of a Kwa language, including an examination of lexical underlying tone patterns as well as intonational boundary tone and tone which... Show moreThis study provides a comprehensive look at the tonal system of a Kwa language, including an examination of lexical underlying tone patterns as well as intonational boundary tone and tone which signals grammatical meaning without the aid of segmental information. While a number of Kwa languages have been analyzed as having two underlying tones, the author shows that Saxwe has a three-tone system—likely a result of the historical contact between a two-tone Gbe language which had depressor consonant-related lowering effects and a three-tone Yoruboid language.Included in the analysis is a series of phonetic studies of the details of tone implementation in Saxwe. The author examines the phenomena known as automatic downstep and non-automatic downstep and notes the variation that is observed among speakers as they implement downstep. This research will be of interest to Africanists, as well as to those interested in tone and intonation studies. Show less
The thesis discusses Object Shift, weak pronoun shift in the Scandinavian languages, from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages. It is... Show moreThe thesis discusses Object Shift, weak pronoun shift in the Scandinavian languages, from the intonational perspective, by presenting experimental data from all the Scandinavian languages. It is shown that downstep typically occurs in the Object Shift construction but does not occur in the constructions where Object Shift cannot occur. A new hypothesis on Scandinavian Object Shift is presented: the object pronoun moves to cause downstep. Holmberg__s Generalization is accounted for as follows: When main verb movement takes place, the object pronoun moves and causes downstep to eliminate a focal effect on the sentential element(s) after the main verb. In the environments in which downstep must not occur, i.e. in the constructions where the final pitch peak occurs on the (in-situ) main verb, Object Shift does not occur either. A new generalization on Object Shift is also presented: the earlier the pitch gesture occurs, the more likely is Object Shift to occur; the more delayed the pitch gesture is, the more likely is Object Shift to be absent. Object Shift is thus not a dichotomous property, i.e. either present or absent, but a gradient phenomenon in the Scandinavian languages. Show less
