The Interaction of Tone with Voicing and Foot Structure

This book investigates the topics of tone, vowel harmony, and metrical structure, with special reference to Kera, a Chadic language spoken in Chad and Cameroon. Kera is a tone language where a change in the pitch of the word can make a difference to its meaning. Drawing on a decade of experience living and working with the Kera, Mary D. Pearce looks at both the phonetics and phonology to examine how tone interacts with the vowel quality and rhythm of the language. The implications arising from this research are relevant for phonologists and Africanists far beyond the boundaries of Chad and should be useful to anyone working on languages with interesting tonal and rhythmic properties.

Mary Pearce is currently Associate International Linguistics Coordinator for SIL International and a linguisitc consultant for SIL in Chad. She also teaches at the Université de N'djameéna in Chad and is affiliated with University College London.

Acknowledgments ix

Chapter 1 – Introduction 1

1 Tone, Voicing and Foot Structure in Kera 1
2 Claims of this Book 2
3 Kera Background 7
4 Basic Phonology and Morphology 8

4.1 Consonants 8
4.2 Vowels 9
4.3 Prosodic structure 10
4.4 Quantity sensitivity 11
4.5 Tone and voicing 11
4.6 Kera morphology 12

5 Theoretical Basis 16
6 Conclusion 18

Chapter 2 – Foot Structure 19

1 Introduction 19

1.1 Basic facts 20

2 Foot Structure and Arguments for a Foot 22

2.1 Deletion and lengthening of vowels in /CVCV/ words 22
2.2 Duration 39
2.3 Vowel quality 44
2.4 Intensity 54
2.5 Vowel harmony 55
2.6 Tone spreading 56
2.7 Perception 57
2.8 Syllabic nasals 58
2.9 Epenthetic vowels 59
2.10 Minimal binarity requirement 60
2.11 Conclusion concerning Kera foot structure 65

3 Obstruent Release 66
4 Conclusion 69

Chapter 3 – Vowel Harmony and Foot Interaction 71

1 Tone, Voicing and Foot Structure in Kera 71
2 Summary of Types of Harmony 75

2.1 Epenthesis 76
2.2 Height harmony 79
2.3 Fronting/Rounding harmony 85
2.4 Fronting 87
2.5 Motivation for right to left directionality 88
2.6 Total harmony 90

3 Vowel Harmony and Domains 94

3.1 Vowel harmony domains 94
3.2 Final stray syllables 96
3.3 Other non-parsed elements 100

4 Acoustic Measurements and Discussion 102

4.1 Vowel harmony or co-articulation in Kera? 102
4.2 Examples of vowel harmony types 106

5 Motivation for Vowel Harmony in Kera 113
6 Literature on Vowel Systems and Vowel Harmony 115
- 6.1 Templatic systems 115
- 6.2 The foot as a domain 117
- 6.3 Chadic prosodies 117
- 6.4 Direction and dominance 120
7 Conclusion 121

Chapter 4 – Tone and Foot Interaction 123

1 Introduction 123
2 Basic Facts of Kera Tone 125

2.1 Consonants and tone interaction 127

3 Survey of Tone and Foot Interaction 131

3.1 Across language interaction of tone and feet 132
3.2 Interaction of tone and feet in Chadic languages 133
3.3 Kera Tone and Foot Interaction 134

4 Further Spreading of Tones Between Roots and Suffixes 143

4.1 Nouns 143
4.2 Inalienable Nouns 143
4.3 Verb suffixes 146
4.4 Effects of the suffixes -n and -T 150
4.5 Diachronic account for verbs 153

5 Discussion of the Tone Bearing Unit 154
6 Conclusion 156

Chapter 5 – Tone and Voicing Interaction: Experimental Evidence 157

1 Introduction 157
2 Voicing and Tonogenesis 158

2.1 VOT contrasts 158
2.2 Tonogenesis 159
2.3 Depressor consonants 166

3 Tonogenesis and Depressor Consonants in Chadic 167
4 Kera Tonogenesis 175
5 Relative Contribution of VOT and F0 in Kera: Perception Experiments 181

5.1 Perception test method 182
5.2 Perception test results—comparison of languages 183
5.3 Perception test results—comparison of Kera populations 193

6 Measurements on Production of VOT and F0 across Kera Groups 200

6.1 Overall trends in production 200
6.2 Normalized graphs 202
6.3 Is the tonal contrast maintained in sonorant words? 211
6.4 Is French pronunciation affected in Kera speakers? 212
6.5 Is VOT varying with F0 or tone? 214

7 Discussion 217

7.1 Enhancement 218
7.2 What difference does gender make? 224
7.3 Is there a critical age? 233

8 Conclusion 240

Chapter 6 – Tone and Voicing Interaction: Theoretical Issues 243

1 Introduction 243
2 Claims of Voice Spreading in Kera 245
3 Counter-Evidence for Voice Spreading Claim 247

3.1 Counter-evidence from affixes 247
3.2 Counter-evidence from French loans 252
3.3 Counter-evidence from statistical analysis of lexicon 253

4 Laryngeal Feature Models 257

4.1 Description of laryngeal gestures 257
4.2 Laryngeal features and models 262

5 Grammar of Kera Diachronic and Synchronic Stages 274

5.1 Diachronic stages of Kera development 274
5.2 Synchronic Kera dialects 277

6 Issues Raised 281

6.1 The reanalysis of M tone 281
6.2 Extending the analysis to the foot 281

7 Conclusion 295

Chapter 7 – Conclusion 297

A Inalienable Nouns 301
B Further VOT/F0 Voicing Judgment Tests 303
C Statistical Analysis of Lexicon 307
D Kera Folk Tale 309
E Optimality Theory Analysis 335

1 Non-Footed Epenthetic Vowels (Chapter 2) 335
2 Vowel Harmony Constraint Ranking (Chapter 3) 340
3 OT Analysis of Tone with Laryngeal Features (Chapter 6) 340
4 Two Underlying Tones 342
5 Foot as FBU 347
6 Disyllabic Feet with Two Tones 349

F Verb Paradigms 355

References 389

October 2013

The Interaction of Tone with Voicing and Foot Structure

Contents