The role of vowel length and pitch in Xhosa sentence type intonation

IF 0.4 Q4 LINGUISTICS Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus-SPiL Plus Pub Date : 2022-12-01 DOI:10.5842/62-2-894
Eva-Marie Bloom Ström
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Abstract

This paper is a first study of intonation across different sentence types in Xhosa. A recent increase in intonation research of African languages, including Bantu, has shown that intonation involves the manipulation of several distinct prosodic features such as vowel length and voice, next to pitch (Downing and Rialland 2017a). Xhosa is a tonal language as many other African languages, meaning that the use of pitch for intonational purposes interacts with the use of lexical and grammatical tone. Moreover, other means are employed than pitch rise to distinguish different intonational phrases. For example, previous research shows that polar questions in Xhosa are indicated by reducing the lengthening of the penultimate vowel of a phrase, which is long in declaratives (Jones 2001). This paper expands on such previous studies and includes the intonation of different kinds of questions and focus constructions in order to sketch a more complete picture of Xhosa intonation. It shows that the manipulation of penultimate lengthening plays an important role in distinguishing different phrases, in combination with declination and final lowering of pitch. Also, devoicing the last vowel to a whisper indicates end of the intonation phrase. Understanding the interaction of tone, intonation and phonological phrasing is important for understanding the grammatical structure and discourse pragmatics of Bantu languages.
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元音长度和音高在科萨语句式语调中的作用
本文首次对科萨语不同句式的语调进行了研究。最近,对包括班图语在内的非洲语言的语调研究有所增加,研究表明,语调涉及对几种不同韵律特征的操纵,如元音长度和声音,仅次于音高(Downing和Rialland 2017a)。科萨语和许多其他非洲语言一样是一种声调语言,这意味着音调的使用与词汇和语法语调的使用相互作用。此外,除了提高音高外,还采用了其他方法来区分不同的语调短语。例如,先前的研究表明,科萨语中的极性疑问句是通过缩短短语倒数第二个元音的长度来表示的,而在陈述句中,倒数第二个元音的长度很长(Jones 2001)。本文在前人研究的基础上,对科萨语的语调进行了进一步的研究,并纳入了不同类型的问题和焦点结构,以期对科萨语的语调有一个更全面的了解。结果表明,倒数第二段的拉长手法与衰落和最后的降音相结合,在区分不同的乐句方面起着重要的作用。另外,把最后一个元音发成耳语表示语调短语的结束。理解声调、语调和语音的相互作用对于理解班图语的语法结构和语篇语用具有重要意义。
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CiteScore
0.60
自引率
0.00%
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0
审稿时长
24 weeks
期刊最新文献
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