PHONOLOGICAL DOCUMENTATION METHODS

COLLEEN M. FITZGERALD THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON

AIMS To illustrate the importance of native speaker intuition in phonological and prosodic documentation. To highlight how to pay attention to meta-discussions or gestures that illuminate prosody and phonology more generally. To outline a methodology in eliciting judgments for sound documentation.

•  The methods are also valuable for cultivating assistance on challenging aspects of sound for the field worker and are useful in language teaching for revitalization.

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ORGANIZATION OF THE TALK

Prosody: • what it is • what it does

Prosody in the Americas Elicitation techniques for rhythmic/prosodic judgments Sorting/Tone Implications and conclusions

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PROSODY: CUES FROM THE PHYSICAL WORLD

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Features such as pitch, loudness, duration and vowel quality fall under the umbrella of prosody.

•  Pitch: Fundamental frequency •  Loudness: Amplitude or intensity •  Duration: Length of vowels and/or consonants •  Vowel Quality: the particular vowel (for example, [e] vs. [ɛ] vs [æ]

vs [əә])

These cues relate to categories we might label stress, accent or prominence. However…

•  These cues can work as a group or a subset to mark stress. •  The cues can also mark other phonological categories (pitch as

correlate for tone).

•  Ultimately, think of these cues as the physical dimension of prosody.

PROSODY: COGNITIVE REPRESENTATIONS

Prosodic phonology theorizes about the organization of those cues into higher-level groupings such as moras, syllables, feet, words, and phrases.

•  Duration of consonants and vowels is formalized by the unit of a mora (one mora for a short vowel, two for a long vowel)

•  Moras are grouped into the syllable. •  Syllables are organized into the foot. Feet indicate grouping and

relative prominence. •  Other evidence for prosodic organization includes phonological

alternations, native speaker intuitions, and distributional restrictions and cooccurrence patterns for segments.

Prosodic representations are the cognitive dimension of prosody.

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PROSODY IN THE AMERICAS

The indigenous languages of the Americas have played a critical role in prosodic typology, with regard to the development of metrical stress theory.

Nearly all iambic languages (weak-strong or right-headed) come from the Americas (Hayes 1995: 269).

Rice (2010) notes two important factors: •  the complex morphological structure associated with Native

American languages •  "the phonetic manifestations of accent in North American

languages are varied, with it often realized as a combination of pitch, duration, and amplitude, and it can also be manifested as simply duration or, frequently, simply pitch."

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SOURCE LANGUAGES FOR THE TECHNIQUES Tohono O'odham: a Uto-Aztecan language, with approximately 9,000 speakers in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico (drawing from Fitzgerald 1997, 1999 especially) Choctaw: a Muskogean language, spoken in Oklahoma and Mississippi, with approximately 4,000 speakers in OK (Linn 2004) Represents work with native speakers in both cases Cherokee: an Iroquoian language spoken in Oklahoma and the Carolinas Also supplement with a number of other examples coming from other languages, especially Native American languages

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ELICITATION TECHNIQUES Tapping (syllable count) judgments

Syllable breaking/separation judgments

Reiterant speech

Corrections Comparisons

Hand gestures

Facial cues

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SYLLABLE-COUNT JUDGMENTS: TAPPING

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! In Tohono O'odham (from Fitzgerald 1999)

USEFULNESS OF TAPPING Syllable count judgments are key to determining what syllables are metrically visible to native speakers. Start on easy/transparent sequences. Tapping on every syllable gives us a total count. Fewer taps indicate assessment of groupings or relative prominence. Not all vowels are created equal…excrescent vowels can behave in a wide range of ways with regard to phonological processes;. This is also a way to test hypotheses on more marked sequences in a language and speakers' ease in categorizing them. For example, consonant release (versus a schwa) in coda position, vowel-glottal-vowel sequences and on the nature of devoiced vowels.

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INVISIBILITY OF EXCRESCENT VOWELS

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! In Tohono O'odham (from Fitzgerald 1999)

INVISIBILITY OF EXCRESCENT VOWELS In Choctaw, Broadwell (2006: 16) notes that /k/ and /h/ are both frequently followed by a schwa-like vowel or 'slightly colored by the quality of the preceding vowel' preceding a voiced consonant.

Such vowels appear to be excrescent in Choctaw. They often trigger voicing of the /k/, but have been invisible in syllable counting and 'breaking' judgment tasks.

toklo 'two' pronounced as [togəәlo]. •  In syllable counting tasks: [tog.lo] or [tok.lo] or just saying

'two syllables' never' three' or *[to.gəә.lo] tohbih 'white' pronounced as [tohəәbih], judgment of 2 syllables

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SYLLABLE-BREAKING JUDGMENTS In Choctaw, tasks like 'breaking up the words' can help identify geminates or coda consonants in certain contexts.

We get ambisyllabicity judgments in words with medial geminates, like takkon 'apple'.

Speakers produce such forms with an audible pause in between the geminate in coda position and the geminate portion in onset.

For example:

•  [tak.kon] •  The 'breaking' task can also be used to draw attention to

minimally perceptible codas or inaudible codas.

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REITERANT SPEECH

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! In Tohono O'odham (from Fitzgerald 1999)

REPETITION AND CORRECTION

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COMPARISON Reiterant speech elicitation in Tohono O'odham could also be used to ask for confirmation that something was a 1-3 pattern (SWS) or a 1 pattern (SWW). Asking for Choctaw if there are any other forms that the speaker could think of similar to the one just produced (with a pitch verb grade) elicited a similar aspectual change to a different verb. Useful questions for comparisons:

•  "does this word end like the other word?" •  "is this sound the same or different from word x?" (same/different

judgments) Comparison words for challenging segments (i.e., pharyngeal in Tigrinya) as a helpful identifier tool and to build on that speaker knowledge.

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HAND GESTURES A speaker of a more western dialect of Tohono O'odham was able to use hand gestures to differentiate multiple levels of stress:

____

____ ____

____ ____ With Choctaw, we have been able to elicit pitch (peak) judgments provided by hand raising.

Some Chickasaw also use hand gestures to signal syllable count.

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PITCH IN CHOCTAW The distribution of pitch is noticeable in certain words, such as some numbers and nouns:

hánnaalih 'six' •  (Broadwell 2006: 236)

Pitch (in this case) falls on the initial syllable • Also to be noticed: first medial consonant is a

geminate, medial syllable contains a phonemic long vowel

In general, however, pitch plays a bigger role in the verbal system.

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PITCH AS PART OF THE MORPHOLOGY Non-grade verb forms like haklo and pisa undergo phonological modifications to mark aspect. Below are their stems' n-grade forms (with person and tense marking).

háklolitok 'I heard' čipísalitok 'I finally saw you.'

N-grades nasalize and accent the stem's penultimate vowel (Broadwell 2006: 161).

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PRELIMINARY RESULTS Native speaker intuitions about peaks in Choctaw are separable from rhythmic judgments like tapping or grouping syllables. We can also see the visuals of the peak judgments in the following video clip.

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FACIAL GESTURES

Facial and body gestures can also draw attention to prosodically prominent syllables.

• Head nods • Chin thrusts • Eyebrow raising

•  eyebrow signals are also often used by speakers of tone languages

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OTHER TECHNIQUES Shouting Humming Whistling Particular grammatical structures (cf. the vocative in English, Hayes 1995) that highlight prominent syllables

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OTHER SOURCES OF EVIDENCE ON PROSODIC STRUCTURE

Segmental aspects of the sound system can interact in key and insightful ways with the prosodic system, providing essential arguments for descriptions and analyses of prosodic systems. Allophonic processes may be determined within syllable- or foot-based positions (i.e., aspiration of voiceless consonants, t-allophones in English) and converge with speaker judgments. Recurrent prosodic patterns found in language games, nicknames, puns, poetry, line structure in a song or other discourse genre, etc. can also converge.

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FAILURE OF TECHNIQUES These techniques are easiest on rhythmic or stress languages and most difficult or impossible on languages like Tigrinya and Japanese where cues like pitch and length operate non-rhythmically.

•  Challenges using these techniques also tells us something about the language.

Women are often more likely to be able to perform tasks well better than men. Training works best if it starts with the easiest phonological structures in the language, and structures which are most likely to confound or challenge speakers are often those more controversial in their linguistic analysis.

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USE IN REVITALIZATION Master-Apprentice – teacher-driven prosodies as corrective tools, as witnessed in the Sauk Language Department

Listening training (pauses, rhythmic patterning, tunes)

Cherokee tone

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SORTING

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TONE SORTING Cruz and Woodbury (2011) talk about documenting tone in Chatino, which has a highly complex tonal system using a sorting task.

First, together with speakers, wrie the words on flash cards and then together create sets of similar items, record the groups that occur.

Next series of photos from their paper: Tataltepec de Valdés, June, 2008: Sisters Petra, Flavia, and Socorro Mateo Mejía, the first two retired school teachers, with linguists Hilaria Cruz, Alvino Canseco Atilano, and Tony Woodbury

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GOOGLE DOCS OF MINIMAL SETS

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Underlying these studies is the important role played by training, and in native speaker intuition in constructing the phonological description and analysis of a language.

Be attentive to the meta-discussion provided by speakers and the actual task/actions/judgments that accompany that meta-discussion. (Is it what you think it is?)

Methodology and testing of methodologies for collecting data in fieldwork contexts will strengthen language documentation as a discipline.

Theoretical models are as informative as the data they rest on. Testing theories and building them on accurate and complete data and using them to structure what hypotheses we use to collect data are both important.

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THANK YOU! Tohono O'odham speakers Felicia Nuñez, George José, Del Ortiz Funding from the Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society, the University at Buffalo, and the UUP. Sauk Language Department

Choctaw speakers David Ludlow and Freeman Jessie. They have asked for a disclaimer on the data that they are not speaking for all Choctaw on the language. Chickasaw Elders and the Chickasaw Language Revitalization Program Rae Queton, Durbin Feeling and the Cherokee Language Program

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