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Contrastive tonal alignment in falling contours in Shilluk*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

Bert Remijsen  and
Otto Gwado Ayoker
Bert Remijsen*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Otto Gwado Ayoker*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

It has been assumed that tonal alignment is not contrastive in contour tones(e.g. Hyman 1988, Odden 1995, Yip 2002). However, Remijsen (2013) and DiCanioet al. (2014) have recently reported evidence for thisconfiguration. In relation to this controversy, we report on an acousticanalysis of the tone system of Shilluk. The dataset is built around the contrastof Low vs. Early-aligned High Fall vs.Late-aligned High Fall vs. High in closed monosyllabic stemswith a short vowel. The results support the hypothesis that tonal alignment iscontrastive in falling contour tones in Shilluk: the two falling contours differconsistently and significantly in terms of tonal alignment, relative both to oneanother and to phonetically similar level-tone configurations. The fallingcontours do not differ significantly in terms of a number of other phoneticparameters (F0 height, size of F0 change, duration).

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 435 - 462
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

We thank the speakers who participated in the recording sessions. Theyare (in addition to the second author): James Peter Othol, Paulino OkanChol, Anesa Nyacam, Musa Kuku Jago, Emmanuel Antony Deng, Emmanuel JohnAdung, Alexander Otwongo Ajak, Francis Boywomo Opiti, Tupac Laa Wol,William Amum Onwar, Amum Obwony and Elia Otham Wan. We also gratefullyacknowledge the Summer Institute of Linguistics and the British Council,both in South Sudan, for enabling the first author to carry outfieldwork research there. We thank Carlos Gussenhoven and Vincent vanHeuven, as well as the editors, associate editor and three anonymousreviewers at Phonology, for valuable feedback onearlier versions, and Udita Sawhney for help with proofreading. Bothfieldwork data collection and the involvement of the second author weremade possible through financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation,which funded this research as part of the project ‘Tonalplacement: the interaction of qualitative and quantitative factors(ToPIQQ)’, coordinated at the University of Cologne byMartine Grice and Anne Hermes. We gratefully acknowledge theirsupport.

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