Segmental Structure and Tone

Download or read book Segmental Structure and Tone written by Wolfgang Kehrein and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to reevaluate the nature of tone-segment interactions in phonology. The contributions address, among other things, the following basic questions: what tone-segment interactions exist, and how can the facts be incorporated into phonological theory? Are interactions between tones and vowel quality really universally absent? What types of tone-consonant interactions do we find across languages? What is the relation between diachrony and synchrony in relevant processes? The contributions discuss data from various types of languages where tonal information plays a lexically distinctive role, from ‘pure’ tone languages to so-called tone accent systems, where the occurrence of contrastive tonal melodies is restricted to stressed syllables. The volume has an empirical emphasis on Franconian dialects in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, but also discusses languages as diverse as Slovenian, Livonian, Fuzhou Chinese, and Xhosa.