At the end of the lecture, the candidates are supposed

to be able to answer the following questions:

!What is meant by Autosegmental phonology?

!Into how many categories tone languages can be
classified in terms of the shape of their pitch?
! Is it possible for languages to use tone without being
tonal languages?
!Exemplify the contribution of McCarthy in the
development of autosegmental phonology?
!Tone: The terminology can be a bit
confusing, because “pitch” and “tone” are
used in both language and music. So while
pitch is the relative highness or lowness of a
tone as perceived by the ear, which depends
on the number of vibrations per second
produced by the vocal cords, tone is the use
of pitch in a language to distinguish lexical or
grammatical meaning.
What are tonal
languages?
!A tone language: (or tonal language) is
a language in which words can differ in tones
in addition to consonants and vowels.
In some tone languages tone has a lexical
function ,distinguishing word meaning, as in
Chinese. However, in some other languages
the function of tone is primarily grammatical
as in many African languages.
 Is it possible for
languages to use tone
without being tonal ?
The answer is Yes. English speakers, for
example, can raise their tone at the end of a
sentence to indicate that it’s a question. For a
language to be considered tonal, the meaning
of the word has to be affected by the tone.
The most popular example to cite is the
Mandarin Chinese ma. Depending on the
tone, ma can mean “horse,” “hemp,” “scold”
or “mother.”
! In terms of the shape of their pitch, Tone
languages can be classified into two categories :

Register tone, Contour-tone

or level tone, languages languages

They have relatively steady-state The tones must be described in

pitches, which differ with regard
to being relatively higher or
lower.
Fore example, tone languages
of West Africa.
terms of pitch movements, i.e.,
The tones have fluctuating
pitch.
Fore example, tone languages
of Southeast Asia.
!The nature of phonological representation
!Phonological representations consist of
segmental and suprasegmental representations.
! The segmental representations were thought to
be made up of consonant and vowel segments,
together with empty segments referred to as
syllable, morpheme, word and phrase junctures or
boundaries.
!SPE assumed that phonological representations
are linear, with segments some of them bearing
suprasegmental properties, arranged in a neat
sequence.
 Are tonal properties such as
[high], [low]or [raising] distinct
from segmental
representation?
!Goldsmith (1976) proposed an interesting
answer to such a questions. He proposed that the
division of the speech continuum into 'segments'
may proceed in different ways in different
languages, i.e., it is language-specific. Thus, while
the parameters of place and manner of
articulation, for instance, are normally treated as
segmental properties belonging to individual
consonants, there are languages where these
properties may extend over several segments.
!Autosegmental phonology
!It is a non-linear approach to phonology proposed
by Goldsmith that allows the various articulatory
parameters, such as tone, aspiration, voicing and
nasalisation, to be autonomous and the articulations
that result from them are independent.
! His theory was based on earlier ideas from several
linguists: Bernard Bloch, J. R. Firth and Charles
Hockett.
!In terms of this approach, phonological
representations consist of more than one linear
sequence of segments; each linear sequence
constitutes a separate tier.
! In this theory, the potential independence of the
various phonological parameters is regarded as
crucial, for the following reasons:

1. Contour tones

2. Tone stability

3. Melody levels
1. Contour tones
!It is a combination of two basic tones. For
example, a falling tone is made up with a high tone
followed be a low tone, while a rising tone consists
of a low tone followed by high tone.
! Many of the languages of Southeast Asia are
contour tone languages.
!Two well-known varieties, Mandarin and
Cantonese, have different tones in their
inventories.
(LH) • Raising tone
EX: Mandarin
(HL) • Falling tone
!Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) simply
means that adjacent identical tones are
disallowed. The OCP allows tonal tiers like:

(H), (HL), (L), (LH), (LHL)

But it disallows structures like *(HH) or

*(HLHLLH).
2. Tone stability

It is a phenomenon found in tone

languages. Asegment can be deleted while
leaving behind the specification of tone
height. This specification is found on a
neighboring segment, often creating a
contour tone.
3. Melody levels
Afurther type of argument for the autosegmental
approach is the existence of MELODYLEVELS. There
are languages where a given pitch configuration is
linked to certain morphemes or words or
grammatical constructions regard- less of the
number of consonant and vowel segments which
they contain. Aclassic example of this is Mende.
Most of the words that containing one morpheme
in this language have these tone patterns (H),
(HL), (LH), (LHL)
How does autosegmental
phonology differ from SPE
phonology?
The main concerns of autosegmental phonology
differ from those of SPE.
!In the SPE model, the main preoccupation was
with rules that modify feature specifications in
different ways; with the ways in which rules
mapping underlying onto surface representations
interact and with the degree to which underlying
representations may differ from surface
representations.
!In autosegmental phonology, on the other hand, the focus
shifts to ways in which phonological rules can change the
ORGANISATION of phonological representations.
!It investigates the consequences of having more complex
structures and articulation than a linear string of segments
can address.
!It goes beyond the place and manner of articulation and
focuses on stress, tone, and vowel and nasal harmony.
!Finally, in autosegmental phonology, phonological
representations are regarded as complex arrays of (in
principle independent) elements arranged on different
levels or TIERS.
!The autosegmental model deals with several
separate linear sequences; because of this, a
phonological representation is depicted in Four
distinct tiers:
1. Segmental tier (or skeletal tier) contains the features
that define the segments articulated in the
phonological representation.

2. Timing tier contains timing units that define

the lengths of segments in the phonological
representation.
3. Stress tier contains the features that show
the distribution of stress in the phonological
representation.
4. Tone tier contains the features that show
the distribution of tones in the phonological
representation.
Tone and Intonation
!Intonation is about how we say things rather
than what we say. It describes how the voice
rises and falls in speech.
!Tone languages also have intonation. One
common intonation effect found in many
register tone languages is tone terracing.
!Terracing involves several related phenomena:
downstep, downdrift and upstep.
!Downdrift Is the automatic lowering of pitch in a
phonological phrase when ever a high tone is preceded by
a low tone. So downdrift creates a falling intonation
contour in the phonological phrase.
!Downstep is phonetically non-automatic
lowering. The underlying low tone that causes
the lowering does not occur in the phonetic
representation.

!Upstep is the converse of downstep. It is the

raising of the pitch of a tone so that it is
phonetically a step higher in pitch than the
preceding token of the same tone.
!Intonation contours are associated with
particular sentence types. In many languages
falling intonation is associated with declarative
sentences while rising intonation is associated with
interrogative sentences.
!Pitch-accent
The languages that share the characteristics
of both STRESS languages ,like English, and
TONE languages, like Chinese, are called Pitch-
accent languages. These languages tend to fall
into two categories:
!Those with a single pitch-contour on the
accented syllable, such as Japanese.
!And those in which more than one pitch-
contour can occur on the accented syllable, such
as Swedish.
!Vowel harmony
It is the process whereby within a certain designated
domain, usually a word, all vowels are required to
share one or more phonological properties.
Vowel harmony is of theoretical interest for two
reasons:
1. Because of what it reveals regarding the ‘slicing’
phenomenon.
2. It highlights the nature of phonological
representations because of the way in which it
functions partly as a segmental and partly as a
suprasegmental property.
!Nasalization

!It is another phonological parameter that can be

suprasegmentalised. The specification [+nasal] is
an integral part of nasal consonants (all possibly
nasal
vowels).
!In some languages, like Desano, this feature is
extracted from the segmental tier and placed on
the autosegmental tier so that it characterizes
several syllables or morphemes or even entire
words.
!Morphemic tier
!John McCarthy proposed an important
development by showing that the derivation of
words from consonantal roots in Arabic could be
analyzed autosegmentally.
!In Arabic, words may be formed by modifying
the root itself internally and not by connecting
of affixes, root compounding, or conversion.
McCarthy's proposal is that the verb is made up of
co-existent representations on three separate tiers:

• Its consonantal segments, the meaning of

Root lexeme (ktb= write).
Tier

• Aprosodic template associated with a

Skeletal particular meaning or grammatical function.
Tier

• It involves grammatical information: tense,

Melody voice, aspect, number, derivational functions.
Tier
!Learning to identify the root of the Arabic word is
important. It will often help you guess the meaning
of words, thus increasing your vocabulary and
comprehension.