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The interaction between metrical structure and tone in Kera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2006

Mary Pearce
Mary Pearce
Affiliation:
University College London and SIL International
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Abstract

This paper examines the cues for and interaction between the metrical and tonal systems of Kera. Kera has no word-level stress, but the heads of its quantity-sensitive iambic feet are cued by duration, intensity and vowel allophony; in addition, foot boundaries are identified by vowel-harmony and tone-spreading domains. The tonal system has three underlying tones, which are enhanced by differences in voice onset time (VOT). Kera demonstrates an interaction between the iambic foot and tone. Words have one or two tones. For words of three or more syllables the tone-bearing unit is the foot, but for shorter words it is the syllable. This dichotomy is accounted for by a faithfulness constraint requiring all tones to surface, which overrides a constraint limiting each foot to one tone. Kera shows that a tonal system can be sensitive to metrical structure, while maintaining a certain independence between the two systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 2006 , pp. 259 - 286
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper is based on Kera data mostly collected during a visit to Chad in January–March 2004, with a few references to field notes taken during 1992–2002. I wish to thank the Kera who enthusiastically provided recordings and to the other members of the Chad branch of SIL International for making these visits possible. I am grateful for the discussions on parts of this paper that I have had with members of the London Phonology Seminar at University College London, particularly the extended discussions with Moira Yip and John Harris, and for the help of Eric Carlson in using Praat. I would also like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Any errors are of course my own responsibility.