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1. Artistic adaptation of Seenku tone: Musical surrogates vs. vocal music

   https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5578834  

   McPherson, Laura; James, Lucas (January 2021, Contemporary African linguistics)

   Akinlabi, Akinbiyi; Bickmore, Lee; Cahill, Michael; Diercks, Michael; Downing, Laura J.; Essegbey, James; Franich, Katie; McPherson, Laura; Rose, Sharon (Ed.)

   The tonal nature of many African languages has long raised questions about mu- sical expression and the relationship between language and music. The two main areas of inquiry have been the relationship between tone and melody in vocal mu- sic (tonal textsetting) and the role of tone in musical surrogate languages (e.g. talk- ing drums). However, the degree of similarity between these two genres in terms of tonal adaptation has remained an open question. In this paper, we present a case study comparing the role of tone in two musical traditions from the Sambla ethnic group of Burkina Faso: vocal music and a balafon (xylophone) surrogate lan- guage. We show that the two have different systems of tone-note correspondence and level of phonological encoding, indicating that musical adaptation of tone is not monolithic. We suggest that these different systems of tonal adaptation may stem from functional, structural, and cultural differences between the two musical genres. 

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2. Tonal context influences tone-duration interaction: Evidence from Cantonese

   https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0017517  

   Yu, Alan_C_L (March 2023, JASA Express Letters)

   Phonetic typological studies suggest that syllable duration is inversely correlated with the accompanying tone's approximate average f0, and tones with dynamic f0 movement tend to be in longer syllables rather than shorter ones. Systematic instrumental investigations on tone-duration interaction remain scant, however; existing studies might be confounded as tonal context may impact duration realization due to phonetic constraints on tonal movement. This study investigates the effect of tonal environment on the durational realization of tones in Cantonese, showing that tone-dependent duration variation is governed by the tonal context. Implications of these findings for existing phonetic typology concerning tone-duration interaction are discussed. 

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3. Scan-classify-overlay model for Bozo and Bangime nominal tones

   https://doi.org/10.4000/130be  

   Heath, Jeffrey (January 2024, Mandenkan)

   Nominal compounds (N-N) and noun-adjective (N-Adj) sequences share a distinctive morphotonology and behave as (extended) prosodic words in four Bozo languages studied. Input N and Adj stems of various tone melodies are scanned for tonal characteristics that classify the numerous melodies into just two melodic superclasses for initials. Separately, finals are also scanned and classified. The criterial tonal feature varies from language to language and from initial to final; it may be the leftmost tone element or a configuration (level versus contour). Tone overlays are then associated with the initial, the final, or both jointly. In some cases, the lexical melody of the initial is overwritten locally, but is expressed at a distance by determining or at least influencing the overlay on the final.In the neighboring isolate Bangime, a structurally similar scan-classify-overlay system is at work in definite and possessed NPs.In Bozo and Bangime, an overlaid tone pattern may differ from or even invert the (lexical) melody. However, because overlays are associated with melodic superclasses, they allow partial recovery of melodies by listeners. The scan-classify-overlay model is distinct both from ordinary tonal morphophonology (which directly operates on lexical tones) and from true replacive tonal ablaut (which irrecoverably erases melodies). 

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4. From sounds to words: The relation between phonological and lexical processing of tone in L2 Mandarin

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658320941546  

   Ling, Wenyi; Grüter, Theres (July 2020, Second language research)

   null (Ed.)

   Successful listening in a second language (L2) involves learning to identify the relevant acoustic–phonetic dimensions that differentiate between words in the L2, and then use these cues to access lexical representations during real-time comprehension. This is a particularly challenging goal to achieve when the relevant acoustic–phonetic dimensions in the L2 differ from those in the L1, as is the case for the L2 acquisition of Mandarin, a tonal language, by speakers of non-tonal languages like English. Previous work shows tone in L2 is perceived less categorically (Shen and Froud, 2019) and weighted less in word recognition (Pelzl et al., 2019) than in L1. However, little is known about the link between categorical perception of tone and use of tone in real time L2 word recognition at the level of the individual learner. This study presents evidence from 30 native and 29 L1-English speakers of Mandarin who completed a real-time spoken word recognition and a tone identification task. Results show that L2 learners differed from native speakers in both the extent to which they perceived tone categorically as well as in their ability to use tonal cues to distinguish between words in real-time comprehension. Critically, learners who reliably distinguished between words differing by tone alone in the word recognition task also showed more categorical perception of tone on the identification task. Moreover, within this group, performance on the two tasks was strongly correlated. This provides the first direct evidence showing that the ability to perceive tone categorically is related to the weighting of tonal cues during spoken word recognition, thus contributing to a better understanding of the link between phonemic and lexical processing, which has been argued to be a key component in the L2 acquisition of tone (Wong and Perrachione, 2007). 

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5. North Germanic Tonal Accent is Equipollent and Metrical: Evidence from Compounding

   https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.4913  

   Kaldhol, Nina Hagen; Köhnlein, Björn (May 2021, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology)

   null (Ed.)

   For the North Germanic opposition between two tonal accents, it has been claimed that Accent 2 has a lexical tone, that Accent 1 has a lexical tone, that both accents are marked tonally in the lexicon, or that the accent opposition is based on two types of feet. Based on evidence from compounding, we argue that the opposition between Accent 1 and Accent 2 is equipollent, and that this is best expressed in a foot-based approach since each lexical item will necessarily receive a foot. Elaborating on previous metrical work on tonal accent, we assume that binary feet can be built on moras (= Accent 1) or syllables (= Accent 2) and show how this successfully captures compound accentuation in Central Swedish and Urban East Norwegian. Our foot-based analysis is in line with recent work on tonal accent that calls into question the claim that all tonal contrasts within syllables must be due to the presence of lexical tone. In addition, our analysis addresses issues surrounding the phonology of compounds in general, and prosodic effects of compounding in particular. 

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