Lecture
Iterative tone spreading and experimentally testing tonal spread
- Date
- Monday 17 April 2023
- Time
- Location
-
- Room
- Verbarium zaal (1.04)
Abstract
This talk looks at two dominant tone spreading patterns of the Bantu language Bemba and presents a case of mutually-feeding iterativity in phrasal phonology where a single High tone in an initial phonological phrase can surface on each lexically toneless syllable of subsequent phonological phrases, in cases of multiple complementation. The talk considers cases of bounded and unbounded spreading and how these contrast between different dialects of Bemba spoken in different regions. The talk explore how an earlier process of binary spreading in the Bemba heartland may have been altered to ternary spread in other dialects, which is phonologically rare and unexpected. The talk discusses how these two distinct tonal spreading patterns relate to phonological phrasing. The talk also finally presents an experimental study aiming to evaluate to what extent derived tonal patterns are cognitively represented in contrast to lexical tone, and also specifically, whether a ternary domain is cognitively real and uniquely cued by speakers.