Abstract
Samoan is an ergative-marking, (reportedly) non-tonal Polynesian language in which ergative case is marked segmentally, but absolutive case has been said to be unmarked. This paper shows that in fact, a high edge tone co-occurs with absolutive arguments, based on converging evidence from the phonetic and phonological analysis of intonational patterns in the spoken utterances of a systematically varied set of syntactic structures. This empirical observation raises puzzles that probe the nature of the syntax-prosody interface and the relation between tone and intonation: what is the relation between this absolutive high edge tone and: (i) other case markers in Samoan, which are all segmental?, and (ii) other high edge tones in Samoan that co-occur with fronted expressions and coordination? I propose that: (i) the absolutive high edge tone is a tonal case marker that may be related to an apparently moribund stressed, segmental absolutive particle [ˈia], (ii) the high tones that co-occur with absolutives, fronting, and coordination are all syntactically determined and each inserted in the spellout of distinct syntactic configurations, and (iii) there is another class of edge tones which reliably co-occur with pauses—intonational phrase boundary tones—that are not inserted in spellout but by the phonological grammar. While my proposal may seem surprising at first, I show that it fits the current data better than any alternative.
Highlights
This paper shows that in the ergative-marking, purportedly non-tonal language Samoan, high edge tones reliably co-occur with absolutive arguments,1 which have previously been thought to be unmarked (Chung 1978:54–56; Ochs 1982:649; Collins 2014:94)
What this paper contributes beyond Yu and Özyıldız (2016), Yu and Stabler (2017) is the actual empirical data that a high edge tone co-occurs with absolutive arguments, which is taken for granted in those papers (unpublished, previous versions of this paper are cited as Yu (2016) in Yu and Özyıldız (2016) and Yu (2017) in Yu and Stabler (2017)), as well as a detailed discussion showing that the proposal here fits the current data better than other alternatives
The main empirical contribution of this paper has been to show that high edge tones reliably co-occur with absolutive arguments
Summary
This paper shows that in the ergative-marking, purportedly non-tonal language Samoan, high edge tones reliably co-occur with absolutive arguments, which have previously been thought to be unmarked (Chung 1978:54–56; Ochs 1982:649; Collins 2014:94). What this paper contributes beyond Yu and Özyıldız (2016), Yu and Stabler (2017) is the actual empirical data that a high edge tone co-occurs with absolutive arguments, which is taken for granted in those papers (unpublished, previous versions of this paper are cited as Yu (2016) in Yu and Özyıldız (2016) and Yu (2017) in Yu and Stabler (2017)), as well as a detailed discussion showing that the proposal here fits the current data better than other alternatives These alternatives include proposals from Calhoun (2015, 2017) that: (i) there is no relation between Habs and other case markers because Habs is not a case marker; (ii) instead, Habs Hfront, and Hcoord are some among many sentencemedial prosodic boundary tones (‘H-’) unified by their association to the right edge of phonological phrases. Determined high edge tones in Samoan are inserted in the spellout of specific, distinct configurations (absolutive case marking (Habs), coordination (Hcoord), and fronting (Hfront)). Supplementary materials for this paper can all be found at the OSF repository: https://osf.io/8cvg5/?view_only= e9be8cb15097493897b826f53487e345
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