Phonetic Fieldwork: Working on Tone

Phonetic Fieldwork: Working on Tone 2010 Summer School on Documentary Linguistics in West Africa (Intermediate)July 19-July 31 2010 What is tone and why work on it? (1) A language with tone is one in which an indication of pitch enters into the lexical realization of at least some morphemes (Hyman 2001: 1368).This definition includes the possibilities of pitch variations being:What is tone and why work on it? (2) lexically contrastiveand/orgrammatically contrastive

and of there being tonal morphemes and/ortoneless syllables What is tone and why work on it? (3) given the phonemic and grammatical importance of tone, it cannot be ignored in a fieldwork situation any more than one might ignore vowels.

a substantial literature exists; the fieldworker should familiarize him/herself with it before undertaking fieldwork. Importance of training in practical phonetics in doing fieldwork on tone one of the most important prerequisites to doing good fieldwork is to have sufficient training in practical phonetics

one needs at least to be able to hear and identify new and unfamiliar sounds, and to have the ability to overcome the phonological filter imposed by ones own language

equally true of both segmental and tonal materialThe importance of tonemost languages are tonal

tone functions at various levelslexical (phonological)grammatical (morphological)pragmaticdeictic Importance of tone: Lexical toneWordToneGlossbHmosquitobHchiefbLcaneTable 1: Contrastive lexical tone in IbibioImportance of tone: Lexical toneWordToneGlossba1defensive trench around village2a type of wild cat (genet?)3begin4a woundTable 2: Contrastive lexical tone in Mambila Importance of tone: grammatical toneMambila Negation1. Affirmativeme yla aI call her/him.1S call 3S

2. Negativeme a yla weI do not call her/him. 1S 3S call NEG Importance of tone: use tone in pragmatic functionEfik1. Verb focusndb mmIm buying water.

2. Post verb focusndb mmIm buying water.

Phonetics of tone: Pitchtone associated with variations in fundamental frequency (F0) or pitch

F0 is the rate of vibration of the vocal foldsvariations can in principle be tonally relevant on any voiced segment (but not all pitch is tone)

pitch is a relative, auditory, characteristic of speech; a given sound is higher or lower in pitch than another sound, rather than high or low in absolute terms Relative nature of pitchmen and women and children have, in general, lower and higher pitched voices respectively

within each group there are individual differences

a given individual may have a higher or lower pitch range than another, and a persons pitch range may vary under different circumstances

such differences are generally not important in a fieldwork situation; they are normalized in the speech perception process Variable nature of pitcha given speaker may use a different pitch range on different occasions, or even within the same occasion, e.g. an elicitation session

various paralinguistic or external influences may trigger such variation

some aspects of pitch variation are potentially problematic in doing field work

one particular problematic area is that intonation is also produced mainly with pitch variations, which may perturb tone realizationsImportance of working with several speakers the problems associated with the relative and variable nature of tone demand that one works with several different speakers; comparing across speakers allows us to extract the common pattern in cases of variabilityPitch and microprosody (1)pitch is analyzed as separate from the segmental streamit is not a feature of the vowel or consonant which carries itbut it is not unaffected by segmental features

consonants on either side of the vowel have a perturbing effect on F0.voiceless obstruents tend to increase F0voiced obstruents lower it

nasals and laterals (and other sonorants), have little effect on F0 Pitch and microprosody (2)vowels also have an influence on F0, known as intrinsic vowel high vowels have a higher F0 than low vowels, ceterus paribus

these factors may have an influence on how tones are perceived and identifiedPhonetics of tone: Durationduration may be relevant to tonal distinctions contour tones may be longer than level tones they are typically comprised of two or more level tonesduration may therefore serve as a secondary cue for tone

few studies have reported durational differences associated with tone in African languages Phonetics of tone: Amplitudeamplitude may be relevant to tonal contrasts

amplitude pertains to the loudness of a given sound relative to neighbouring sounds

so (hypothetically) a given tone may be louder (or quieter) than other tones in the inventory

there is a known relationship between pitch and loudness

little research done on this, especially regarding the languages of Africa Phonetics of tone: Phonation typephonation type (or voice quality) refers to the mode of vibration of the vocal folds

well known contributor to tone contrasts in SE Asian languages, e.g. Vietnamese (creaky voice associated with low tone)

rarely shown to contribute to tone in African languages, though little research has gone so far as to even consider the possibility Eliciting tone: Preliminaries (1)bound together with eliciting other material, principally through lexical eliciation

we elicit wordlists of basic vocabulary; segmental material is transcribed; indication of pitch variations needs to be included

so, to transcribe tone, one must first be aware of the need to transcribe it (see above)Eliciting tone: Preliminaries (2)field work manuals suggest having the informant or language assistant whistle the pitch pattern of the word or phrase being elicited, as an aid to hearing the pitch changes in the absence of distracting segmental materialbut not everyone can whistle well, and it is harder for many people to accurately reproduce pitch differences

so, humming is often preferableeveryone can humit involves using the vocal folds (F0) to create pitchEliciting tone: Preliminaries (3)even single words pronounced in isolation (as in wordlist elicitation) constitute an utterance or phrase

so may carry pitch features associated with utterances as opposed or in addition to those of words

therefore it is important to work with longer stretches of speech in addition to isolated formsthis allows the target word to be placed in different contextsEliciting tone: Preliminaries (4)the relative nature of pitch means eliciting isolated words (as in a wordlist) may lead to difficulties identifying tone

it difficult to know which tone indicates a given meaning when words are given in isolation

e.g. in Mambila, ba has four meanings, identified by one of four level tonesbut heard in isolation it may be difficult to distinguish one tone from another

Eliciting tone: using a frameone means solve this problem to is to use a constant frame, with elicited words embedded in this frame

e.g. in Mambila, the plural marker is b, i.e. always with a L tone

so, combining countable nouns with PL allows one to establish tone height relative to L:b ba a woundb ba genetsb ba defensive trenches

Eliciting tone: using a frameusing a longer frame, where the target word can be inserted in the middle may be more desirable, but may not be possible very early in the research

e.g. in Mambila, the sentence say ___ quickly is pronounced entirely on tone one (High), so target words can be inserted in the blank:tue ____ waa chen Eliciting tone: alternating word sequencesthe problem of phrase level effects can be solved by using sentences where the target word can be heard at different places within the phrase; or more simply, by stringing together different tone combinations in different sequences, e.g:ba, ba, ba, ba;ba, ba, ba, ba;ba, ba, ba ba;Etc.How many tone contrasts in a language? (1) the number of contrasts is first and foremost a phonological problem which may not be completely solved in the field

as with segmental material there is no guarantee one will find minimal sets to illustrate the entire tone inventory especially if it is a relatively large one as found in Mambila How many tone contrasts? (2)Hymans definition of a tone language indicates some syllables/words may be inherently toneless

the verbs of many Edoid languages, for example, are inherently toneless

in such languages tone may be found to play a larger role at the morphological or grammatical level than lexically. How many tone contrasts? (3) Levels vs contours a question for phonology, which again may or may not be solved in the field

traditionally, African languages have been known as register tone languages; i.e. the tonal targets are different pitch heights and tones are typically level

contours that exist on the surface are combinations of tones of different levels

nonetheless at some stage in the investigation the underlying nature of the levels must be establishedRecording tonethe basic principles followed in recording tone are the same as those used in recording other speech samples to be included in a documentation: aim for the best quality possible

such recordings are at least dual purposeto provide representative samples for documenting/archivingto provide data suitable for instrumental analysis whether or not the fieldworker him/herself intends to do such work. Experimental fieldwork on tone experimental phonetics and phonology on tone may be done after the basics of the tone system has been established

experimental work typically uses between five and ten speakers, though ideally more:ten speakers, balanced for gender, age and other possible intervening factorswhen working with endangered languages, it is often not possible to have a neatly balanced speaker pool Speech materials for experimental workSpeech materials used must take both of the purposes mentioned into account

an important consideration in developing speech materials for investigating tone is to control for microprosodic effectse.g. the perturbations of F0 created at the consonant-vowel interfaces, which are most severe with voiceless obstruents, and may be avoided, largely if not totally, by using words containing nasals and laterals when possible. Tone research in speech production and perceptionresearch production on tone production (and pitch realization generally) allows us to establish the physical factors that may govern tone production

such research should be combined with investigation into speech perception, to determine the relative perceptual saliency of these physical factors (see e.g. Connell 2001, Ding 2007, Hombert (1988)Some research issues with tone and pitch realizationestablishing the contribution of the different phonetic features which may contribute to tone

determining the relative contribution of tone and other pitch based phenomena to the overall pitch contour of an utterance

the phonetic (and phonological) effect of automatic vs non-automatic downstep

the contribution of tone and other pitch based phenomena in distinguishing questions and statementsSome experimental paradigms in investigating tone and pitchusing prompts: speakers read prepared material

role play: speakers interrogate/respond to each other

map task experiments

perception experiments: hearers identify representatives of different tonesDocumenting/Archiving tone material Little has been said in the literature on language documentation as to what should be included in a documentation with respect to tone material, or how how such material should be prepared/presentedHimmelmann (2006), Himmelmann & Ladd (2008) while dealing with prosody in documentation and in fieldwork respectively, essentially skirt the issue of tone Documenting/Archiving tone material open to discussion, but

certainly recordings, from more than one speaker

representative samples of all contrastive tones and permissible combinations of tones in the language

annotated audio files (e.g. in praat)with waveform and/or spectrogram, pitch trace, annotation tiers

Bibiography

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