15.78, Diss: Lang Description: Bishop: 'Aspects...'

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-15-78. Wed Jan 14 2004. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 15.78, Diss: Lang Description: Bishop: 'Aspects...'

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1)
Date:  Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:54:40 -0500 (EST)
From:  jbrobishop at yahoo.com.au
Subject:  Aspects of intonation and prosody in Bininj Gun-wok

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Tue, 23 Dec 2003 03:54:40 -0500 (EST)
From:  jbrobishop at yahoo.com.au
Subject:  Aspects of intonation and prosody in Bininj Gun-wok

Institution: University of Melbourne
Program: Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2002

Author: Judith Bishop

Dissertation Title: Aspects of intonation and prosody in Bininj
Gun-wok: an autosegmental-metrical analysis

Linguistic Field: Typology, Phonology, Phonetics, Language Description

Subject Language: Gunwinggu (code: GUP)

Dissertation Director 1: Janet Fletcher
Dissertation Director 2: Nicholas Evans

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation presents a qualitative and quantitative analysis of
aspects of the intonation and prosody of an Australian polysynthetic
language, Bininj Gun-wok (BGW; also referred to as Mayali and
Gunwinggu). The theoretical framework is autosegmental-metrical
phonology, as adapted to the description of intonation by
Pierrehumbert (1980), Bruce (1977) and others. The analysis focuses
principally on two dialects, Kuninjku and Manyallaluk Mayali (MM),
with some reference to the Kunwinjku, Kune, Gun-Djeihmi and
Kundedjnjenghmi dialects.

One of the principal motivations for analysing intonation and prosody
in BGW is to provide input to the developing field of
intonational-prosodic typology, from the perspective of a language
which is typologically interesting on at least two counts: its
position in the Australian language family, and its polysynthetic
character. This dissertation provides numerous auditory as well as
visual records relating to the contents of the analysis. The provision
of auditory records is an innovation intended to improve the
accountability of the phonetic analysis and to facilitate typological
comparison.

The content of the chapters is as follows. In Chapter 1, I review the
literature on intonation and prosody in polysynthetic languages (§1.2)
and in Australian languages (§1.3), and highlight findings relating to
possible parameters in intonational-prosodic typology (§1.3). I
outline the grammatical and segmental phonological structures of BGW
(§1.4) and describe the autosegmental-metrical theoretical framework
(§1.5). I then discuss the ToBI model of intonation and prosody
transcription (§1.6), and present the Bininj Gun-wok system of
transcription (§1.7).

In Chapter 2, I discuss the corpus of texts analysed in the
preparation of the dissertation (§2.2). An overview of the basic
intonational contours is presented (§2.3-2.5) and the prosodic
constituent hierarchy of BGW is described (§2.6), drawing on
illustrations from across the six dialects. The intonational grammar
is described in §2.7.

In Chapter 3, I review the literature on metrical structure in stress
accent languages (§3.2), and analyse the organisation and derivation
of metrical structure in the Kuninjku and Manyallaluk Mayali dialects
(§3.3-3.4), and its relationship to the assignment of intonational
pitch accents within the phonological word.

Chapter 4 presents an experiment to determine whether the acoustic
correlates of metrical structure observed in other stress accent
languages are also found in BGW (Kuninjku dialect).

In Chapter 5, I apply a process of elimination to determine whether
variations in the phonetic alignment of high pitch accent targets are
potentially related to distinct phonological categories, or are
conditioned by phonetic or prosodic context (§5.2-5.4). I analyse
patterns of transitional high F0 (§5.5), and discuss their
implications for models of phonetic implementation in BGW.

In Chapter 6, I present arguments for a previously undescribed level
of prosodic constituency in BGW, the phonological phrase, and show how
it is differentiated from other levels of prosodic constituency.

Chapter 7 describes the lexical content of phonological phrases
(§7.3), patterns of 'prosodic integration' of accented words in
phonological phrases, and the distinct phrasing patterns of unaccented
words (§7.4).

Chapter 8 concludes the dissertation, providing an overview of the
principal findings and their implications (§8.1), and discussing
directions for future research (§8.2).

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