Word-prosodic typology

Abstract

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2005) To appear in Bert Remijsen & Vincent J. van Heuven (eds), Special Thematic Issue of Phonology, “Between Stress and Tone” (submitted July 2005, revised November 2005) Word-Prosodic Typology Larry M. Hyman University of California, Berkeley If stress is monarchic, and length oligarchic, we may say that tone is democratic. (Greenberg & Kaschube 1976:9) Introduction Over the past several decades, many linguists have made pronouncements on how prosodic systems should be typologized. While no other area of phonological typology has attracted as much attention, it is not clear how much consensus there is on where things currently stand. Linguists sometimes speak or write on the subject with great conviction, but the views that are expressed often conflict on both general and specific issues, e.g. whether all human languages must have “stress”, whether the prosodic system of Tokyo Japanese is “tonal” vs. “accentual”, and so forth. In this paper I attempt to sort out some of the complexities of word-prosodic typology. I begin in §2 with a brief discussion of problems inherent in doing typology, particularly when applied to phonology. In the next two sections I give brief definitions of tone (§3) and stress-accent (§4), followed by a longer section (§5) which addresses the more problematic notions of “accent” and “pitch-accent”. I argue that the highest-level typological cut consists of identifying two prototypes, one with stress-accent, the other with tone. While it is possible to define these prototypes and establish a set of properties that typically cooccur in each, establishing a third pitch- accent prototype is more elusive. This is, in part, because languages which have been identified as pitch- accent freely “pick and choose” between the prototypical properties of stress-accent systems vs. tone systems. In other words, there are many intermediate word-prosodic systems which are not best seen as discrete types. While most of the discussion centers around typological issues resulting from structural or systemic difference, §6 addresses the role of phonetics in typologizing prosodic systems. §7 provides a brief conclusion. * Typology Since the concern of this study is to address the typology of word-prosodic systems, it seems appropriate to begin by asking the questions: What is typology? phonological typology? word-prosodic typology? Concerning the first question, Hagege (1992:7) provides a traditional definition of typology as “... a principled way of classifying the languages of the world by the most significant properties which distinguish one from another.” Vajda (2001) answers the second question in a similar fashion: “...it is possible to classify languages according to the phonemes they contain.... typology is the study of structural features across languages. Phonological typology involves comparing languages according to the number or type of sounds they contain.” It is significant that the above definitions speak of classifying LANGUAGES rather than subsystems of languages. In any case, only certain parameters impress linguists enough to establish language types: Within phonology, there is a class of “click languages”, but not “implosive languages”, “open syllable languages”, but not “onset languages” (meaning that every syllable has to have an onset). The question is whether there is any reality in classifying languages rather than analyzing the properties of the relevant subsystems. This issue is particularly pronounced in the area of prosody, where the practice of distinguishing “stress languages” from “tone languages” is well- established and has encouraged some to propose additional types: “pitch-accent language”, “restrictive tone language”, and so forth. However, as Greenberg (1974:14) notes, “the same data can be utilized either for a typology of linguistic properties or a typology of individual languages.” A major aim of this study is to show that there is considerably more diversity in prosodic systems than such labels have thus far distinguished. Most phonologists would probably agree that there is little, if any, difference between doing phonological typology vs. phonological theory. At the very least, it is unlikely that one can do insightful This paper was first presented as an invited talk at the conference Between Stress and Tone (BeST). I would like to thank Bert Remijsen and Vincent Van Heuven for the invitation and those in attendance for their helpful comments. I have particularly profited from extended discussions with Carlos Gussenhoven and Jose Hualde on the tone vs. accent question and good Bantu exchanges with David Odden and Gerard Philippson. I also would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very thoughtful comments on the original manuscript.