Tone and

Intonation in

Sgaw Karen

Luke West

Individual Project (LIN496H1) &

MA Forum

Language Overview

Karenic language family

Grouped within Tibeto-Burman, though their specific

classification is unclear (Thurgood & LaPolla 2003)

Prenominal Genitives, but SVO Word Order

Sgaw Karen:

1,480,000 million speakers as of 1983 (Lewis 2013)

Language Overview 6 tones contrasting in pitch and phonation

Voicing and aspiration contrasts in (some) stops

Ɣ , θ , ʝ , h vs. ɦ

ml- bɣ- sɣ- jw-

No codas

All but the first tone are marked in the orthography

My Interest:

Tone and Intonation in Sgaw

Individual Project (2013):

How do lexical tone and intonation interact?

Impressionistic/phonetic analysis and conclusion…

Tonal interaction still unclear

Neutral tone in Sgaw (Forum paper):

How do tones interact in connected speech?

(assuming the existence of neutral-tone syllables…)

Are certain tones more susceptible to neutralization?

Do reduced-tone syllables have a tonal target?

Basis for Investigation Abramson (1979) on Thai

“in non-emotive speech, three terminal pitch junctures, found at major syntactic breakpoints, carry much of the sentence intonation…”

Kim, Y. (2005) on Kuki Thaadow

Lexical tones not overridden by intonational pitch differences. Instead, speakers are seen to encode information through the addition of boundary tones and the manipulation of register.

Register in tone-languages is the equivalent of pitch accents in non-tonal languages

Brunelle, Oi and Daly (2012) on Eastern Cham

Evidence for prosodic words, as well as phonological and intonational phrases

Encoded functions seem to affect the last syllable of phonological and intonational phrases (though minimally)

How is emotive information encoded in Sgaw?

What effect does intonation have on lexical tone?

Individual Project:

Data Collection

Two words of each different tone

Three different types of sentences:

Encoding different meaning at the sentence level

Sentence final particles (SFPs)

Place tokens in carrier phrases with 3 different

intonational patterns

E.g. statement, question, surprise

Individual Project:

Intonation

Different “emotive” sentences were elicited by

presenting different scenarios (in English)

e.g. “…Your friend having come home from a luxurious hotel,

you ask your friend “what was dinner like?”, expecting to hear

an opulent account of the cognac and caviar. The friend

nonchalantly replies, “I ate rice”. Astonished, you shout “you

ate rice?!”.”

Statement

Question

Surprised Question (incredulity)

Individual Project:

Intonation Results Sentence Final Particles (SFPs) present for interrogative, and

incredulous questions, but not for statements

SFPs can be stacked (like Cantonese)

SFP SFP

nə ɔ˨ me˧ lɔ˦ ne˨˧˥

You ate rice (only) (?!) “You only ate rice?!”

nej˨˧ sɪk˨-dzɔ˧˦ fɑːn˨ zɛ˥ mɛ˥

You ate-PERF rice (only) (?!) “You only ate rice?!”

(你食咗飯啫咩？！)

Sgaw

Cantonese

Individual Project:

Intonation Results …or can stand alone (like Cantonese)

e.g. “You put sand in the rice?!”

nə tʰɤ˦ nʉ˦ mɛ˨ lɤ˦ me˨ ə ko˦ pu˨ ne˨˧˥

you put sand LOC rice LOC SFP

nej˨˧ (dzan˥ haj˨) ba:j˧˦ sa:˥ haj˧˦ fa:n˨ tow˨ mɛ˥

you (really) put sand LOC rice LOC SFP

(你真係擺沙喺飯度咩？！)

Sgaw

Cantonese

Individual Project:

Intonation …but how many can stack? e.g.

SFP SFP SFP

haj˨ kam˧˦ kɛ˧ laː˧ maː˧

be so (assertion) (relevance) (obvious answer)

“[Of course] it’s been this way!” (係噉嘅啦嘛！)

…can SFPs function like topic markers? (West 2013)

e.g. Cantonese topical fronting (40021.cha line 902)

*CHI: how˧˦ høŋ˥ aː˧˩ dzʊk˦-dzʊk˥

very fragrant PART rice porridge

“Very fragrant, [this] rice porridge.” (好香呀，粥粥）

Cantonese

Individual Project:

Intonation Parallel in Sgaw? (Brunelle et al. 2011, pg. 119)

“And the python transformed himself into a human…”

Same /ne5/ as SFP in surprised questions?

Orthographically the same

Very different contours (to be explained)

Individual Project:

Analysis

Does the pitch and/or phonation of tonal tokens change

in different intonational environments?

Pitch differences measured in Praat

Reduced breathiness would show lower H1-H2 value

Reduced creakiness would show higher H1-H2 value

Individual Project:

Results

Citation form (left) and circumpositioned form (right) look similar

python LOC python LOC

“python” “in the python”

Individual Project:

Results Differences in intonation for statement, question, etc.

You put sand LOC rice LOC SFP

“(Did) you put the sand in the rice (? / ?!)”

Individual Project:

Conclusion Unanswered questions…

Many variables present (difficult to isolate effects of

intonation)

How do tones interact at the word level? Beyond?

How big are prosodic phrases?

Some interesting leads:

SFPs may be where most of the emotive information is

encoded (judging by sentence-level pitch contours)

(just based on impression)

Pitch of lexical tones overridden in certain environments,

e.g. when listing words in citation form, all tones rise to

meet a “listing contour” like in English (unlike Cantonese).

e.g. at end of some intonational phrases (like Cantonese)

Individual Project:

Intonation Parallel in Sgaw? (Brunelle et al. 2011, pg. 119)

“And the python transformed himself into a human…”

Same /ne5/ as SFP in surprised questions?

Orthographically the same

Very different contours (to be explained)

Tone and Intonation in Sgaw

Individual Project (2013):

How do lexical tone and intonation interact?

Impressionistic/phonetic analysis and conclusion…

Tonal interaction still unclear

Neutral tone in Sgaw (Forum paper):

How do tones interact in connected speech?

(assuming the existence of neutral-tone syllables…)

Are certain tones more susceptible to neutralization?

Do reduced-tone syllables have a tonal target?

Neutral Tone:

Data Collection

Examples of tones

Monosyllabic

Disyllabic

Strings of neutral tones

Look for any target pitch approximated across neutral

tones (Chen 2006)

Onomatopoeia, Reduplication

Neutral Tone:

Analysis

Neutral-tone syllables show differences in pitch

What causes this variation?

i. Spreading ii. Interpolation iii. Target*

σT σ0 σT σT σ0 σT σT σ0 σT

Tx Ty Tx Ty Tx T? Ty

H L H L H L

˥ ˥ ˩ ˥ ˩ ˥ ˧ ˩

*Evidence for target in Mandarin neutral tone (Chen 2007)

Works Cited

Abramson, A. S. (1979a). Lexical tone and sentence prosody in Thai. In E. Fischer-Jorgensen, J. Rischel, & N. Thorsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Copenhagen: Univ. of Copenhagen. Vol. 2, Pp. 380-387.

Brunelle, M., Oi, M., & Daly, T. (2012) Eastern Cham prosodic phrasing and intonational phonology. in SEALS. Ottawa: University of Ottawa. Vol. 22, Agay, June 1st.

Chen, Y. & Xu, Y. (2006) Production of weak elements in speech—Evidence from F0 patterns of neutral tone in Standard Chinese. In Phonetica, 63 (2006), pp. 47–75

Drum Publications. Drum Reference Of Karen Language Database. In Dictionary. Drum Publications, Online website: www.drumpublications.org/dictionary

Finkeldey, J. (2010). Tone and Phonation Types in Sgaw Karen. University of Ottawa. In Sgaw Karen Papers (2011), pp. 25-35

Kim, Y. (2005). Some observations on the intonational phonology of Kuki Thaadow, a Tibeto-Burman tone language. UC Berkeley.

Thomas, D. & Brunelle, M. (2010). The tale of Kinoe and Nomie. University of Ottawa. In Sgaw Karen Papers (2011), pp. 188-123

Tone and

Intonation

in Sgaw

Karen