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SUMMARY:Tone contrast maintenance driving phonological change in intonatio
 n grammars - Prof Carlos Gussenhoven (Department of Linguistics\, Radboud 
 University Nijmegen)
DTSTART:20080131T170000Z
DTEND:20080131T183000Z
UID:TALK7832@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Christopher Lucas
DESCRIPTION:Central Franconian dialects of German and the contiguous Limbu
 rg dialects spoken in Belgium and the Netherlands have a lexical tone cont
 rast comparable\nto that of Norwegian and Swedish. Like Scandinavian\, the
 se dialects have a binary contrast located in the stressed syllable of wor
 ds\, referred to as accent 1 vs. accent 2. Unlike Scandinavian\, the contr
 ast occurs regardless of the position of the stressed syllable in the word
 \, and is also found on monosyllables. A sufficient number of these dialec
 ts have now been analysed within the autosegmental-metrical model of Pierr
 ehumbert (1980) for a reconstruction of the development of their tone syst
 ems to be feasible. It\nplaces the tonogenesis around 1300 in Cologne\, wi
 th the development of a lexical H-tone in monosyllabic singular forms of n
 ouns whose plurals are segmentally identical\, as in [weexH - weex] ‘roa
 d -roads’. Two subsequent phonological changes are shared by all the dia
 lects\, including that of Cologne\, while a number of\n changes distinguis
 h Cologne on the one hand from East Limburgian and on the other from Centr
 al and West Limburgian. Further developments distiguish dialects within ea
 ch group.\n\nIn addition to a wealth of information about the tonal gramma
 rs and their genetic relations\, a number of conclusions can be drawn whic
 h vary in the extent to which they are applicable to language in general. 
 Of these\, the following will be defended:\n\n1. West Germanic languages\,
  and hence presumably also the dialect of Cologne before the tonogenesis\,
  have complex intonation systems. The introduction of\nthe lexical tone co
 ntrast put a strain on the intonational system\, as it was to be maintaine
 d in a large number of intonational contexts. The resulting changes effect
 ively reduced the number of different intonation contours to two\, and led
  to a typologically unexpected form of the question intonation\, a rise-fa
 ll (L* HL%\, developing from H* H%). Subsequent developments yielded varyi
 ng numbers of intonation contours\, one in West-Limburgian\, two in East L
 imburgian\, and three in Cologne. Most of the changes we have identified c
 an be motivated on the grounds of contrast preservation or enhancement for
  the lexical tone\, often at the expense of intonational contrasts.\n\n2. 
 Natural phonological processes that cannot have developed from any corresp
 onding phonetic tendencies may arise in grammars during language acquisiti
 on. For instance\, lowering of the question intonation used for accent 2 l
 ed to an interpretation of earlier (H*H) HL% as (L*L) HL% (where the paren
 theses mark off the stressed syllable). This necessitated the introduction
 \nof an assimilation rule changing the lexical H to L after L*\, since in 
 other contexts it continued to show up as H. A comparable segmental case i
 s Standard\nDutch progressive devoicing of fricatives after obstruents\, a
 s in de [z]on - met [s]on ‘the sun - with sunshine’\, which historical
 ly arose from selective\nvoicing of word initial fricatives in contexts ot
 her than after obstruents. Rule inversion is part of a wider class of even
 ts.\n\n3. Adult speakers can change their phonetic implementation rules an
 d can decide to use a different phonological form for specific lexical ite
 ms\, but typically do not change their grammars. The motivation for change
 d phonetic behaviour in adults is unrelated to the motivation for the spec
 ific way in which the new\nphonetic forms are interpreted during L1 acquis
 ition and to the new shape of the tonal grammar that arises. For instance\
 , truncation of a  fall-rise-fall to a fall-rise\, which had an articulato
 ry motivation\, led to a change in the sequencing of lexical and intonatio
 nal tones\, yielding a large number of new pitch shapes in East Limburgian
 .
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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