Past Event

Consonantal Tone and the Typology of Tone Systems

Dr. Marc Brunelle
Assistant Professor, Linguistics
(University of Ottawa)

* In collaboration with: Pittayawat Pittayaporn, Chulalongkorn University Gwendolyn Hyslop, Australian National University.

Many African and Papuan tone languages have special classes of consonants (depressors/elevators) that insert a tone, or block or favour the spreading of neighbouring tones (Bradshaw, 1999; Tang 2008; Lee 2008). The tonal effects of these consonants are clearly phonological, as they often interact with other phonological processes or are limited to specific licensing positions. In a handful of these languages (Musey, Masa, Nguni), there is even a contrast between H and L consonants, which is reminiscent of the register contrasts found in Southeast Asian languages. In this talk, we group and reanalyze these phenomena as consonantal tone and show how they can be integrated in current models of tonogenesis. We also use arguments based on phonetic naturalness to show why consonantal tone is relatively rare, why it only spreads to post-consonantal vowels and why it apparently never develops on codas.

About the Presenter

Dr. Marc Brunelle received his PhD from Cornell University in 2005, and taught at the University of Michigan before coming to the University of Ottawa. His research interests center on the phonology and phonetics of tone and intonation, especially in Southeast Asian languages.