Phonetic Fieldwork: Working on Tone 2010 Summer School on Documentary Linguistics in West Africa (Intermediate) July 19-July 31 2010
Transcript
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Phonetic Fieldwork: Working on Tone 2010 Summer School on
Documentary Linguistics in West Africa (Intermediate) July 19-July
31 2010
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What is tone and why work on it? (1) A language with tone is
one in which an indication of pitch enters into the lexical
realization of at least some morphemes (Hyman 2001: 1368). This
definition includes the possibilities of pitch variations
being:
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What is tone and why work on it? (2) lexically contrastive
and/or grammatically contrastive and of there being tonal morphemes
and/or toneless syllables
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What is tone and why work on it? (3) given the phonemic and
grammatical importance of tone, it cannot be ignored in a fieldwork
situation any more than one might ignore vowels. a substantial
literature exists; the fieldworker should familiarize him/herself
with it before undertaking fieldwork.
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Importance of training in practical phonetics in doing
fieldwork on tone one of the most important prerequisites to doing
good fieldwork is to have sufficient training in practical
phonetics one needs at least to be able to hear and identify new
and unfamiliar sounds, and to have the ability to overcome the
phonological filter imposed by ones own language equally true of
both segmental and tonal material
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The importance of tone most languages are tonal tone functions
at various levels lexical (phonological) grammatical
(morphological) pragmatic deictic
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Importance of tone: Lexical tone WordToneGloss b Hmosquito b
Hchief b Lcane Table 1: Contrastive lexical tone in Ibibio
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Importance of tone: Lexical tone WordToneGloss ba1defensive
trench around village 2a type of wild cat (genet?) 3begin 4a wound
Table 2: Contrastive lexical tone in Mambila
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Importance of tone: grammatical tone Mambila Negation 1.
Affirmative me y la aI call her/him. 1S call 3S 2. Negative me a
yla weI do not call her/him. 1S 3S call NEG
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Importance of tone: use tone in pragmatic function Efik 1. Verb
focus ndb mm Im buying water. 2. Post verb focus ndb mm Im buying
water.
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Phonetics of tone: Pitch tone associated with variations in
fundamental frequency (F0) or pitch F0 is the rate of vibration of
the vocal folds variations can in principle be tonally relevant on
any voiced segment (but not all pitch is tone) pitch is a relative,
auditory, characteristic of speech; a given sound is higher or
lower in pitch than another sound, rather than high or low in
absolute terms
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Relative nature of pitch men and women and children have, in
general, lower and higher pitched voices respectively within each
group there are individual differences a given individual may have
a higher or lower pitch range than another, and a persons pitch
range may vary under different circumstances such differences are
generally not important in a fieldwork situation; they are
normalized in the speech perception process
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Variable nature of pitch a given speaker may use a different
pitch range on different occasions, or even within the same
occasion, e.g. an elicitation session various paralinguistic or
external influences may trigger such variation some aspects of
pitch variation are potentially problematic in doing field work one
particular problematic area is that intonation is also produced
mainly with pitch variations, which may perturb tone
realizations
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Importance of working with several speakers the problems
associated with the relative and variable nature of tone demand
that one works with several different speakers; comparing across
speakers allows us to extract the common pattern in cases of
variability
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Pitch and microprosody (1) pitch is analyzed as separate from
the segmental stream it is not a feature of the vowel or consonant
which carries it but it is not unaffected by segmental features
consonants on either side of the vowel have a perturbing effect on
F0. voiceless obstruents tend to increase F0 voiced obstruents
lower it nasals and laterals (and other sonorants), have little
effect on F0
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Pitch and microprosody (2) vowels also have an influence on F0,
known as intrinsic vowel high vowels have a higher F0 than low
vowels, ceterus paribus these factors may have an influence on how
tones are perceived and identified
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Phonetics of tone: Duration duration may be relevant to tonal
distinctions contour tones may be longer than level tones they are
typically comprised of two or more level tones duration may
therefore serve as a secondary cue for tone few studies have
reported durational differences associated with tone in African
languages
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Phonetics of tone: Amplitude amplitude may be relevant to tonal
contrasts amplitude pertains to the loudness of a given sound
relative to neighbouring sounds so (hypothetically) a given tone
may be louder (or quieter) than other tones in the inventory there
is a known relationship between pitch and loudness little research
done on this, especially regarding the languages of Africa
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Phonetics of tone: Phonation type phonation type (or voice
quality) refers to the mode of vibration of the vocal folds well
known contributor to tone contrasts in SE Asian languages, e.g.
Vietnamese (creaky voice associated with low tone) rarely shown to
contribute to tone in African languages, though little research has
gone so far as to even consider the possibility
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Eliciting tone: Preliminaries (1) bound together with eliciting
other material, principally through lexical eliciation we elicit
wordlists of basic vocabulary; segmental material is transcribed;
indication of pitch variations needs to be included so, to
transcribe tone, one must first be aware of the need to transcribe
it (see above)
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Eliciting tone: Preliminaries (2) field work manuals suggest
having the informant or language assistant whistle the pitch
pattern of the word or phrase being elicited, as an aid to hearing
the pitch changes in the absence of distracting segmental material
but not everyone can whistle well, and it is harder for many people
to accurately reproduce pitch differences so, humming is often
preferable everyone can hum it involves using the vocal folds (F0)
to create pitch
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Eliciting tone: Preliminaries (3) even single words pronounced
in isolation (as in wordlist elicitation) constitute an utterance
or phrase so may carry pitch features associated with utterances as
opposed or in addition to those of words therefore it is important
to work with longer stretches of speech in addition to isolated
forms this allows the target word to be placed in different
contexts
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Eliciting tone: Preliminaries (4) the relative nature of pitch
means eliciting isolated words (as in a wordlist) may lead to
difficulties identifying tone it difficult to know which tone
indicates a given meaning when words are given in isolation e.g. in
Mambila, ba has four meanings, identified by one of four level
tones but heard in isolation it may be difficult to distinguish one
tone from another
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Eliciting tone: using a frame one means solve this problem to
is to use a constant frame, with elicited words embedded in this
frame e.g. in Mambila, the plural marker is b, i.e. always with a L
tone so, combining countable nouns with PL allows one to establish
tone height relative to L: b ba a wound b ba genets b ba defensive
trenches
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Eliciting tone: using a frame using a longer frame, where the
target word can be inserted in the middle may be more desirable,
but may not be possible very early in the research e.g. in Mambila,
the sentence say ___ quickly is pronounced entirely on tone one
(High), so target words can be inserted in the blank: tue ____ waa
chen
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Eliciting tone: alternating word sequences the problem of
phrase level effects can be solved by using sentences where the
target word can be heard at different places within the phrase; or
more simply, by stringing together different tone combinations in
different sequences, e.g: ba, ba, ba, ba; ba, ba, ba, ba; ba, ba,
ba ba; E TC.
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How many tone contrasts in a language? (1) the number of
contrasts is first and foremost a phonological problem which may
not be completely solved in the field as with segmental material
there is no guarantee one will find minimal sets to illustrate the
entire tone inventory especially if it is a relatively large one as
found in Mambila
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How many tone contrasts? (2) Hymans definition of a tone
language indicates some syllables/words may be inherently toneless
the verbs of many Edoid languages, for example, are inherently
toneless in such languages tone may be found to play a larger role
at the morphological or grammatical level than lexically.
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How many tone contrasts? (3) Levels vs contours a question for
phonology, which again may or may not be solved in the field
traditionally, African languages have been known as register tone
languages; i.e. the tonal targets are different pitch heights and
tones are typically level contours that exist on the surface are
combinations of tones of different levels nonetheless at some stage
in the investigation the underlying nature of the levels must be
established
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Recording tone the basic principles followed in recording tone
are the same as those used in recording other speech samples to be
included in a documentation: aim for the best quality possible such
recordings are at least dual purpose 1.to provide representative
samples for documenting/archiving 2.to provide data suitable for
instrumental analysis whether or not the fieldworker him/herself
intends to do such work.
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Experimental fieldwork on tone experimental phonetics and
phonology on tone may be done after the basics of the tone system
has been established experimental work typically uses between five
and ten speakers, though ideally more: ten speakers, balanced for
gender, age and other possible intervening factors when working
with endangered languages, it is often not possible to have a
neatly balanced speaker pool
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Speech materials for experimental work Speech materials used
must take both of the purposes mentioned into account an important
consideration in developing speech materials for investigating tone
is to control for microprosodic effects e.g. the perturbations of
F0 created at the consonant- vowel interfaces, which are most
severe with voiceless obstruents, and may be avoided, largely if
not totally, by using words containing nasals and laterals when
possible.
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Tone research in speech production and perception research
production on tone production (and pitch realization generally)
allows us to establish the physical factors that may govern tone
production such research should be combined with investigation into
speech perception, to determine the relative perceptual saliency of
these physical factors (see e.g. Connell 2001, Ding 2007, Hombert
(1988)
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Some research issues with tone and pitch realization
establishing the contribution of the different phonetic features
which may contribute to tone determining the relative contribution
of tone and other pitch based phenomena to the overall pitch
contour of an utterance the phonetic (and phonological) effect of
automatic vs non- automatic downstep the contribution of tone and
other pitch based phenomena in distinguishing questions and
statements
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Some experimental paradigms in investigating tone and pitch
using prompts: speakers read prepared material role play: speakers
interrogate/respond to each other map task experiments perception
experiments: hearers identify representatives of different
tones
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Documenting/Archiving tone material Little has been said in the
literature on language documentation as to what should be included
in a documentation with respect to tone material, or how how such
material should be prepared/presented Himmelmann (2006), Himmelmann
& Ladd (2008) while dealing with prosody in documentation and
in fieldwork respectively, essentially skirt the issue of tone
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Documenting/Archiving tone material open to discussion, but
certainly recordings, from more than one speaker representative
samples of all contrastive tones and permissible combinations of
tones in the language annotated audio files (e.g. in praat) with
waveform and/or spectrogram, pitch trace, annotation tiers
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Bibiography Blicher, D. L., R. L. Diehl & L. B. Cohen
(1990). Effects of syllable duration on the perception of the
Mandarin Tone2/Tone3 distinction: evidence of auditory enhancement.
Journal of Phonetics 18, 3749. Connell, B. (2000). The perception
of lexical tone in Mambila. Language and Speech 43, 163182.
Connell, B. & A. Akinlabi (2008). Phonetics and Phonology in
Language Documentation. Plenary paper presented at the WALC,
Winneba Ghana. Ding, P. S. (2007). The use of perception tests in
studying the tonal system of prinmi dialects: A speaker-centered
approach to descriptive linguistics. Language Documentation and
Conservation 1.2, 154181. Himmelmann, N. P. (2006). Prosody in
language documentation. In Gippert, J., N. P. Himmelmann & U.
Mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter. 163181 Himmelmann, N. P. & D. R. Ladd (2008).
Prosodic Description: An introduction for fieldworkers. Language
Documentation and Conservation 2.2, 244274. Hombert, J.-M. (1988).
Tonper, un test de perception pour langues tonales: application au
bulu. Pholia 3, 169182.
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Hyman, L. M. (2001) Tone systems. In Martin Haspelmath et al
(eds.) Language Typology and Language Universals. Berlin: De
Gruyter, 136779. Hyman, L. M. (2009). Elicitation as experimental
phonology. In Sol, M.-J., P. S. Beddor & M. Ohala (eds.)
Experimental Approaches to Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 724. Kelly, J. & J. Local (1989). Doing Phonology.
Manchester: Manchester University Press. Laver, J. (1980). The
Phonetic Description of Voice Quality. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Perrin, M. (1991). The tone system in Mambila:
some further comments. SIL: Yaound. Rose, P. (1988). On the
non-equivalence of fundamental frequency and pitch in tonal
description. In Bradley, D., E. J. A. Henderson & M. Mazaudon
(eds.) Prosodic Analysis and Asian Linguistics: to honour R.K.
Sprigg. Pacific Linguistics, C-104. 55 82. Thurgood, G. (2002).
Vietnamese and tonogenesis: Revising the model and the analysis.
Diachronica 19, 333363. Whalen, D. H. & Y. Xu (1992).
Information for Mandarin tones in the amplitude contour and in
brief segments. Phonetica 49, 2547. Zee, E. (1978). Duration and
intensity as correlates of F0. Journal of Phonetics 6, 213
220.