Differential sensitivity for frequency was compared between six native speakers of a tone language, Mandarin Chinese, and six native speakers of a nontone language, English. Subjects judged whether variable tones, at increments within the frequency range of a level tone-phoneme category, sounded the same or different in pitch than standard tones…

In some Chinese dialects, most regular syllables keep their underlying tones, but in others, the initial syllable determines the tonal pattern of a multisyllabic expression. The Mandarin and Shanghai dialects best represent this contrast. The article criticizes 1993 research on the subject, proposing that Chinese is both mora-counting and…

Examines tone perception in Mambila, a Benue-Congo language with four level lexical tones. A categorization experiment was run to determine some of the salient aspects of the perceptual nature of these tones. Results are discussed in light of what is known about universal tendencies of tone systems and the historical development of the Mambila…

Over half the world's population speaks a tone language, yet infant speech perception research has typically focused on consonants and vowels. Very young infants can discriminate a wide range of native and nonnative consonants and vowels, and then in a process of "perceptual reorganization" over the 1st year, discrimination of most…

The correlation between individual level tones and vowel duration in Standard Thai was investigated. The study was prompted by the discrepancy between Gandour's 1977 claim that the pitch value of the three relatively level tones in Thai is negatively correlated with vowel duration and Roberson's 1982 disagreement with this hypothesis. The result…

This paper argues that a domain-based approach can be used to explain the complex tonal structure of Xhosa nouns by means of a single H tone spread rule. The argument proposes an H tone-motivated domain structure for every noun type, referred to as Tone Domains (TDs), with the number of TDs determined by the number of lexical H tones in a given…

A DESCRIPTION OF THE GBAYA PEOPLES LIVING IN THE DISTRICT OF BOSSANGOA IN THE NORTHWESTERN PART OF THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC IS PRESENTED IN THE INTRODUCTION TO THIS COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF THE GBAYA LANGUAGE. (THE LANGUAGE IS SPELLED VARIOUSLY BEA, GBEA, AND GBAYA.) IN THREE SECTIONS, THE FIRST PART OF THE TEXT DEALS WITH THE PHONOLOGY AND…

The present study is a pilot phonemic analysis which attempts primarily to establish an inventory of phonemic contrasts in Bemba. Also referred to as Chibemba, the term Bemba is used to cover several regional variants of the language. (The variant examined in this study is known as "Central Bemba," spoken in the Kasama District and contiguous…

This intermediate text in Susu is intended to provide the student of Susu with further practice on the grammatical constructions learned in the Basic Course. (See related document AL 001 956.) It is also intended to provide the student with some practice in reading Susu, and to help him gain some appreciation of the cultural life of the Susu in…

Studies the relationship between Chinese culture and the use of homonyms and their avoidance in Chinese. (Author/AM)

Suggests that the departing tone in Chinese arose not through the loss of the final "h," but through a glottalized phonation stage that is still observable. Historical sources supporting this theory are presented, and an account of the development of middle Chinese tones into Mandarin is proposed. (SED)

This paper focuses on tonal alternations in the Urhobo noun phrase. Urhobo is an Edoid language spoken extensively in Delta State, Nigeria. The language has two basic tones, high and low, plus a phenomenon of downstep, both automatic and non-automatic. The noun phrases examined include the noun + noun associative construction, the noun + relative…

Argues for underlying tones as opposed to accentual diacritics or metrical representations in Standard Lithuanian nominals. Support for tonal representations come from analyses of (1) the general status of diacritic accents, (2) tonal stability under segment-deletion and demorification in Lithuanian, and (3) data from a Zhemayt dialect. (Contains…

We present an acoustic study of segmental and prosodic properties of words produced by a female speaker of Chinese with left-hemisphere brain damage. We measured the location of the point vowels /a, e, @?, i, y, o, u/ and determined their separation in the vowel plane, and their perceptual distinctivity. Similarly, the acoustic properties of the…