Tone and Intonation in Mambila Bruce Connell Overview

Tone and Intonation in Mambila Bruce Connell Overview 1. Lexical and grammatical tones 2. Declination and final lowering 3. Downdrift and tonal coarticulation 4. Scaling of F 0 in declaratives 5. Polar/ Content questions 1

Mambila is a Bantoid language spoken on both sides of the Nigeria-Cameroon border. The variety investigated here is Ba. 2

Lexical tones in Mambila Level tones and contours combined give 11 surface tone contrasts; 3

Grammatical tones 1. Noun phrases T 1 > T 14; T 2 > T 24; T 3 > T 34, T 21 > T 214; T 31 > 314 4

Grammatical tones 1. Verbal phrases Imperative and negative: T 2, T 21 >T 1; T 3, T 31, T 34 > T 4 Past tense: 2 > 24, 3 > 31 yila (past) 2. 4 5

Declination and final lowering T 2 like-tone sequences 1. Significant overall downtrend. 2. Significant difference between two slopes 6

Declination and final lowering 1. Lower tones are more likely to subject to declination and final-lowering. 2. (F): A slight rise in F 0 on the penultimate syllable relative to the antepenultimate。 7

Downdrift and tonal coarticulation T 1 -T 4 -T 1 -T 4…. H is lowered by a preceding L, e. g. , HLHHH. Downdrift as a cumulative effect of local lowering due to tonal coarticulation? 8

Downdrift and tonal coarticulation T 2 -T 3 -T 2 -T 3…. Downdrift as a cumulative effect of local lowering due to tonal coarticulation? 9

Scaling of F 0 in declaratives T 4 1. Longest sentences do not have the highest initial F 0. 2. Final F 0 is approximately the same. 10 3. The slope is steepest for the short sentence.

Scaling of F 0 in declaratives T 1 No statistical evidence for long sentences having higher initial F 0 11

Polar questions No evidence for pitch signaling polar questions. 12

Content questions No evidence for pitch signaling content questions, 13

Summary 1. Pitch variation plays a minor role in marking Mambila sentence types. 2. Declination and/or final lowering appear to be present in lower tone contexts (tones 3 and 4, and more consistently in tone 4) in both declarative sentences and questions. 3. No intonation in Mambila? 14

Modelling strategies Final lowering: 1. L% for low tones (3 4) or HL% to capture the antepenultimate rising in some cases? 2. H% for high tones? Rejected by the author (individual differences, L% also for T 2, no evidence for H%) Alternatives: 1. Avoid perceptual confusion between tones? 2. Competition between lexical tones and boundary tones 3. Attractor landscapes with two stable states – original lexical tone vs. L%. The degree of tilt towards boundary tones increases from T 1 to T 4. 15

Modelling strategies Declination and downdrift Hypothesis: Competition between current tonal target and the downtrend tendency determines the occurrence (yes/no) of downtrend in the following tonal target. Fneut = 130; Fmin = 110 ; range = 40 ; target = {-range/2, -range/4, range/2} c = {2. 5, 2, 1. 5, 1} % the constant c in the V(x) to determine the tilt If target(i）= -range/2 c= 2. 5 … Endif do the simulation of the non-linear dynamics system output = 1/0? If output = 1 d Fneut = -k* Fneut Else d Fneut = 0 Fneu(i) = Fneut(i-1) + d. Fneut i = 1 : N Target. Hz(i) = Target(i) + Fneut(i) endif 16

NOTES 1. Four level tones that can be combined to yield various surface tonal patterns. 2. Global declination and final lowering: More likely for low tones like T 3 and T 4 --to avoid confusion? 3. Downdrift due to local tonal coarticulation (interaction)? -evidence from alternating tonal sequences. 4. Steeper slopes for longer utterances but initial and final F 0 are fixed for sentences with different length—preplanning effects? Using exponential decay to model this? 17