Tone-based macro-rhythm from the perspective of prosodic typology

Abstract

In the autosegmental-metrical model of intonational phonology [Pierrehumbert, 1980, Ladd, 1996/2008], prosody is defined in terms of the prosodic structure of an utterance and the prominence relations within the structure. Jun (2005) proposed a model of prosodic typology based on the types of prominence-marking and rhythmic/prosodic units. Languages were categorized as Head-prominence when the head of a prosodic unit such as stress is marked prominent (e.g., English, Spanish, Greek), or Edge-prominence when the edge of a prosodic unit such as an accentual phrase (AP) is marked prominent (e.g., Korean), or Head/Edge-prominence when both the head and the edge are marked prominent (e.g., French, Bengali). The rhythmic/prosodic units covered both micro-rhythm (regularity due to the traditional rhythm category, e.g., stress-timed) and macro-rhythm (regularity due to a tonally defined prosodic unit, e.g., AP). Macro-rhythm was proposed to describe the rhythmic nature of a language where stress is not easily perceptible. In this talk, I will show that macro-rhythm is also crucial in describing sub-groups of Head-prominence languages as well as capturing the relationship between the complexity of tonal category and the types of prominence-marking across languages. Combining the prominence types and the f0-based macro-rhythm provides a better way to establish prosodic typology.