The declarative intonation of Dyirbal an acoustic analysis

Abstract

The results of the analysis show that Dyirbal declarative intonation has two tones - a pitch accent and a boundary tone. The pitch accent is always signalled by a rise in pitch which is reflected in the Fo. The phonetic form of the accent is [LHL]. The F o peak of the pitch accent can occur anywhere within the same syllable as the accent onset or within the following syllable. There appear to be three major locations to which Dyirbal speakers may target their accent peaks - the first and the second vowel/consonant boundaries after the accent onset and in the central portion of the first vowel. The significance, if any, of these peak locations is unknown. The boundary tone is signalled as a rise in pitch on the final syllable of the intonation phrase. The phonetic form of the boundary tone is [H]. The tones are concatenated into intonation phrases which have between one and three pitch accents and which may or may not terminate in a boundary tone. The Fo in the majority of intonation phrases in the corpus has a downward trend between the F o excursions which signal the pitch accents. This downward trend in the F o can be accounted for by declination within the Association Domains of the pitch accents and as downstep from one Association Domain to the next. A form of upstep similar to that of some interrogative and imperative contours is evident in a small number of the syntactically declarative intonation phrases in the corpus. The degree of prominence given to a pitch accent is determined by the amount of emphasis a speaker wishes to give a syllable. The determination of relative pitch accent prominence is not possible without the judgements of native speakers, however it appears that a pitch accent in Dyirbal can be given the most prominence regardless of where it occurs in relation to the other accents in the intonation phrase. There is also evidence in Dyirbal intonation of syllable-lengthening associated with pitch accents and boundary tones in which the duration of vowels is increased by over 50%. The relationship between the syntax, the pragmatic structure and the CHAPTER 6 Conclusion 115 intonational. system of Dyirbal has also been examined in this study. The majority of syntactic clause boundaries in the corpus are marked by a pause and a reset in the F o. Clause boundaries are sometimes also accompanied by a boundary tone and segmental lengthening. Syntactic clauses and intonation phrases have a strong tendency to be coextensive. The word order in Dyirbal is syntactically free. However it is evident from the intonational system that there are certain pragmatic constraints on the word order within an intonation phrase. Eighty-three precents of the intonation phrases in the corpus have the first and final accents on the first syllable of the first and the final words (or in the case of intonation phrases with a single pitch accent, on just the fust word). This suggests that Dyirbal speakers deliberately position the most salient information at the beginning and at the end of an intonation phrase. Which word within a salient constituent receives the pitch accent is determined both by the preferred word order and by an accent assignment hierarchy which ranks word classes by their likelihood to be accented. The boundary tone was shown to play a role in delineating major syntactic boundaries and it was suggested that it may also indicate a strong pragmatic/semantic relationship between two adjacent utterances. Show more