1. Tone in Sherpa (Sino-Tibetan) Joyce McDonough 1, Rebecca Baier 2 and Michelle Gregory 3 1 University of Rochester, 2 University of Maryland, 3 Pacific Northwest National Lab

3. In a recent monograph, Kelly (2004) states that tone is contrastive in Sherpa: a word level contrast between two falling tones, one which begins higher than the other, overlaid with a stress system. Goal of this study is to find instrumental support for this observation. We used Kelly’s word list of the tonal contrasts in mono- and bi-syllabic words. Note: Kelly’s study was done in the lower Solo-Khumbu valley. We expect differences.

4. DATA: 4 native speakers (3 male, 1 female) (a 5 th speaker’s data was not used) isolated words in citation forms (4 speakers) short conversational utterances (1 speaker (female)) we recorded citation forms from native speakers by working with a Sherpa consultant who facilitated the elicitation of the contrasts ( ser meaning ‘cloud’, versus ser meaning ‘cough’) short descriptions of activities that included particular lexical items were elicited (How do you make chang ?)

8. The same bi-modal distribution pattern was present in all speakers, even in Sp3 who had a rising rather than falling pattern and a narrow pitch range. Note that the rising pattern in Sp3 was a rise to the H level of this H tone words. Sp2 Sp3

17. H L-L% * nga la chang tsi « rup gano H L-L% * tsˆ « rup citation utterance medial H H-H% * « ß´rwå H fall H rise Alignment of accent determined by position in utterance, stress and intonational specification. intonation: ToBI notation Best handled by a theory that incorporates temporal (alignment of target) information into representation.