Whether tone should be represented in writing, and if so how much, is one of the most formidable challenges facing those developing orthographies for tone languages. Various researchers have attempted to quantify the level of written ambiguity in a language if tone is not marked, but these contributions are not easily comparable because they use…

Linguists tend to believe that total complexity of human languages is invariable. In order to test this hypothesis empirically, we need to calculate the complexity in different domains of language structure: phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. In this paper I provide some guidelines for documenting tonal systems and evaluating their complexity. I…

An analysis of tone in language begins with the observation that the structural approach taken in segmental phonology, analyzing complex tones in terms of sequences of level tones, is not necessarily appropriate with tone languages. A different approach is proposed, a "dynamic-tone" theory that represents tone contours entirely in terms…

Discusses Tone sandhi, the tone changes undergone by tone-bearing syllables in juxtaposition, in several Chinese dialects. The tone group is examined as a syntatico-semantic unit in Fuzhou and Mandarin and as a syntactic boundary-marker in Shanghai and Xiamen. The theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed. (20 references) (JL)

This paper reports on a case study of a Cantonese-speaking child age 2 and considers the implication of tone acquisition for tone studies in general, and Cantonese tonology in particular. (NCR)

A study of Emai, an Edoid language of south-central Nigeria, focuses on the system of constraints governing tonal processes. Specifically, it examines the ways in which general processes of low tone raising and high tone lowering are realized in domains constructed by verbs and by preverbal auxiliary and adverbial constituents. Sequentially…

This collection of papers from the Summer Institute of Linguistics contains the following articles: (1) "Texmelucan Suprasegmental Phonology," by C. H. Speck; (2) "Some Discourse Features in Siberian Yupik Eskimo," by D. C. and M. R. Shinen; (3) "The Particle t'ah in Slavey Discourse," by C. Harrison and V. Monus; (4) "The Point-Line Dimension in…

The chief purposes of this book are the illustration of an analytical approach to tone languages, a methodology based upon recent linguistic advance, and the presentation of firsthand data on Mixteco and Mazateco, languages which represent two very different structural arrangements of linguistic tone. Part 1 describes some of the types of…

The four 1996 issues of this journal contain the following articles: "Sketch of Autosegmental Tonology" (H. Andrew Black); "System Relationships in Assessing Dialect Intelligibility" (Margaret Milliken, Stuart Milliken); "A Step-by-Step Introduction to Government and Binding Theory of Syntax" (Cheryl A. Black);…

This is a longitudinal study of a child's acquisition of Mandarin phonology between the ages of 1;2 and 2;8. During this period, the child was much less verbal than many children reported in other child phonology studies. The study consists of two parts. The first part is a description of the child's "proto-language," in which he used…

Papers in phonology, psycholinguistics, and syntax include: "Discriminating between Syntactic and Semantic Processing: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials" (Kim Ainsworth-Darnell); "The Syntactic Structure of Chinese Formal Focus" (Qian Gao); "Employing a Multimodal Logic in an Approach to German Pronoun Fronting"…

This volume contains a selection of 27 papers presented at the Sixth Conference on African Linguistics. The papers cover a very wide range of topics, and are organized into three sections: (1) Historical and Comparative Studies; (2) Phonology; and (3) Syntax. The conference program, the program of the symposium on African language, culture and…

Papers include: "Length and Structure Effects in Syntactic Processing"; Nantong Tone Sandhi and Tonal Feature Geometry"; "Event Reference and Property Theory"; "Function-Argument Structure, Category Raising and Bracketing Paradoxes"; "At the Phonetics-Phonology Interface: (Re)Syllabification and English Stop…

This document consists of the four issues of this quarterly linguistics and language research serial issued during 1992. Typical significant articles include: "The Indispensable Tape Recorder" (Geoffrey Hunt); "Analysis of Tone Systems" (Eunice V. Pike); "Sentence Repetition Testing for Studies of Community Bilingualism: An Introduction" (Carla F.…

Selected papers include: "From Core to Periphery: A Study on the Directionality of Syntactic Change in Japanese" (Kaoru Horie); "On the Extension of Body-Part Nouns to Object-Part Nouns and Spatial Adpositions" (Yo Matsumoto); "Noun Classes: Language Change and Learning" (Maria Polinsky, Dan Jackson);…