Recent projects I've done (or am involved in currently) related to Sgaw Karen intonation and tone...

1. Tone and
Intonation in
Sgaw Karen
Luke West
Individual Project (LIN496H1) &
MA Forum

2. Language Overview
 Karenic language family
 Grouped within Tibeto-Burman, though their specific
classification is unclear (Thurgood & LaPolla 2003)
 Prenominal Genitives, but SVO Word Order
 Sgaw Karen:
 1,480,000 million speakers as of 1983 (Lewis 2013)

3. Language Overview
 6 tones contrasting in pitch and phonation
 Voicing and aspiration contrasts in (some) stops
 Ɣ , θ , ʝ , h vs. ɦ
 ml- bɣ- sɣ- jw-
 No codas

4.  All but the first tone are marked in the orthography

5. My Interest:
Tone and Intonation in Sgaw
 Individual Project (2013):
 How do lexical tone and intonation interact?
 Impressionistic/phonetic analysis and conclusion…
 Tonal interaction still unclear
 Neutral tone in Sgaw (Forum paper):
 How do tones interact in connected speech?
(assuming the existence of neutral-tone syllables…)
 Are certain tones more susceptible to neutralization?
 Do reduced-tone syllables have a tonal target?

6. Basis for Investigation
 Abramson (1979) on Thai
 “in non-emotive speech, three terminal pitch junctures, found at
major syntactic breakpoints, carry much of the sentence
intonation…”
 Kim, Y. (2005) on Kuki Thaadow
 Lexical tones not overridden by intonational pitch differences.
Instead, speakers are seen to encode information through the
addition of boundary tones and the manipulation of register.
 Register in tone-languages is the equivalent of pitch accents in
non-tonal languages
 Brunelle, Oi and Daly (2012) on Eastern Cham
 Evidence for prosodic words, as well as phonological and
intonational phrases
 Encoded functions seem to affect the last syllable of phonological
and intonational phrases (though minimally)
 How is emotive information encoded in Sgaw?
 What effect does intonation have on lexical tone?

7. Individual Project:
Data Collection
 Two words of each different tone
 Three different types of sentences:
 Encoding different meaning at the sentence level
 Sentence final particles (SFPs)
 Place tokens in carrier phrases with 3 different
intonational patterns
 E.g. statement, question, surprise

8. Individual Project:
Intonation
 Different “emotive” sentences were elicited by
presenting different scenarios (in English)
e.g. “…Your friend having come home from a luxurious hotel,
you ask your friend “what was dinner like?”, expecting to hear
an opulent account of the cognac and caviar. The friend
nonchalantly replies, “I ate rice”. Astonished, you shout “you
ate rice?!”.”
 Statement
 Question
 Surprised Question (incredulity)

9. Individual Project:
Intonation Results
 Sentence Final Particles (SFPs) present for interrogative, and
incredulous questions, but not for statements
 SFPs can be stacked (like Cantonese)
SFP SFP
nə ɔ˨ me̤˧ lɔ˦ ne˨˧˥
You ate rice (only) (?!) “You only ate rice?!”
nej˨˧ sɪk˨-dzɔ˧˦ fɑːn˨ zɛ˥ mɛ˥
You ate-PERF rice (only) (?!) “You only ate rice?!”
(你食咗飯啫咩？！)
Sgaw
Cantonese

10. Individual Project:
Intonation Results
 …or can stand alone (like Cantonese)
e.g. “You put sand in the rice?!”
nə tʰɤ˦ nʉ̰˦ mɛ̰˨ lɤ˦ me̤˨ ə ko˦ pṳ˨ ne˨˧˥
you put sand LOC rice LOC SFP
nej˨˧ (dzan˥ haj˨) ba:j˧˦ sa:˥ haj˧˦ fa:n˨ tow˨ mɛ˥
you (really) put sand LOC rice LOC SFP
(你真係擺沙喺飯度咩？！)
Sgaw
Cantonese

11. Individual Project:
Intonation
 …but how many can stack? e.g.
SFP SFP SFP
haj˨ kam˧˦ kɛ˧ laː˧ maː˧
be so (assertion) (relevance) (obvious answer)
“[Of course] it’s been this way!” (係噉嘅啦嘛！)
 …can SFPs function like topic markers? (West 2013)
e.g. Cantonese topical fronting (40021.cha line 902)
*CHI: how˧˦ høŋ˥ aː˧˩ dzʊk˦-dzʊk˥
very fragrant PART rice porridge
“Very fragrant, [this] rice porridge.” (好香呀，粥粥）
Cantonese

12. Individual Project:
Intonation
 Parallel in Sgaw? (Brunelle et al. 2011, pg. 119)
“And the python transformed himself into a human…”
 Same /ne5/ as SFP in surprised questions?
 Orthographically the same
 Very different contours (to be explained)

13. Individual Project:
Analysis
 Does the pitch and/or phonation of tonal tokens change
in different intonational environments?
 Pitch differences measured in Praat
 Reduced breathiness would show lower H1-H2 value
 Reduced creakiness would show higher H1-H2 value

14. Individual Project:
Results
 Citation form (left) and circumpositioned form (right) look similar
python LOC python LOC
“python” “in the python”

15. Individual Project:
Results
 Differences in intonation for statement, question, etc.
You put sand LOC rice LOC SFP
 “(Did) you put the sand in the rice (? / ?!)”

16. Individual Project:
Conclusion
 Unanswered questions…
 Many variables present (difficult to isolate effects of
intonation)
 How do tones interact at the word level? Beyond?
 How big are prosodic phrases?
 Some interesting leads:
 SFPs may be where most of the emotive information is
encoded (judging by sentence-level pitch contours)
(just based on impression)
 Pitch of lexical tones overridden in certain environments,
e.g. when listing words in citation form, all tones rise to
meet a “listing contour” like in English (unlike Cantonese).
e.g. at end of some intonational phrases (like Cantonese)

17. Individual Project:
Intonation
 Parallel in Sgaw? (Brunelle et al. 2011, pg. 119)
“And the python transformed himself into a human…”
 Same /ne5/ as SFP in surprised questions?
 Orthographically the same
 Very different contours (to be explained)

18. Tone and Intonation in Sgaw
 Individual Project (2013):
 How do lexical tone and intonation interact?
 Impressionistic/phonetic analysis and conclusion…
 Tonal interaction still unclear
 Neutral tone in Sgaw (Forum paper):
 How do tones interact in connected speech?
(assuming the existence of neutral-tone syllables…)
 Are certain tones more susceptible to neutralization?
 Do reduced-tone syllables have a tonal target?

19. Neutral Tone:
Data Collection
 Examples of tones
Monosyllabic
Disyllabic
 Strings of neutral tones
Look for any target pitch approximated across neutral
tones (Chen 2006)
 Onomatopoeia, Reduplication

20. Neutral Tone:
Analysis
 Neutral-tone syllables show differences in pitch
 What causes this variation?
i. Spreading ii. Interpolation iii. Target*
σT σ0 σT σT σ0 σT σT σ0 σT
Tx Ty Tx Ty Tx T? Ty
H L H L H L
˥ ˥ ˩ ˥ ˩ ˥ ˧ ˩
*Evidence for target in Mandarin neutral tone (Chen 2007)

21. Works Cited
Abramson, A. S. (1979a). Lexical tone and sentence prosody in Thai. In E. Fischer-
Jorgensen, J. Rischel, & N. Thorsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International
Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Copenhagen: Univ. of Copenhagen. Vol. 2, Pp. 380-387.
Brunelle, M., Oi, M., & Daly, T. (2012) Eastern Cham prosodic phrasing and intonational
phonology. in SEALS. Ottawa: University of Ottawa. Vol. 22, Agay, June 1st.
Chen, Y. & Xu, Y. (2006) Production of weak elements in speech—Evidence from F0
patterns of neutral tone in Standard Chinese. In Phonetica, 63 (2006), pp. 47–75
Drum Publications. Drum Reference Of Karen Language Database. In Dictionary. Drum
Publications, Online website: www.drumpublications.org/dictionary
Finkeldey, J. (2010). Tone and Phonation Types in Sgaw Karen. University of Ottawa. In
Sgaw Karen Papers (2011), pp. 25-35
Kim, Y. (2005). Some observations on the intonational phonology of Kuki Thaadow, a
Tibeto-Burman tone language. UC Berkeley.
Thomas, D. & Brunelle, M. (2010). The tale of Kinoe and Nomie. University of Ottawa. In
Sgaw Karen Papers (2011), pp. 188-123
Tone and
Intonation
in Sgaw
Karen