Since Labov’s early work (e.g., 1963, 1966), sociolinguists have frequently examined change in progress on the segmental level, but much less is known about tone change in progress. The present study finds evidence of a tone split in progress in Lalo, a Tibeto-Burman language of China. While many of the world’s tone languages show historical evidence of tone splits, to our knowledge this is the first time that a tone split has been observed while it is occurring, making it possible to closely examine phonological, social, and perceptual factors. In this sociotonetic study of Lalo, 2,938 tone tokens were extracted from recordings of 38 speakers and analyzed in terms of age, sex, and educational level. Multifactorial analyses show that the temporal extent of voiced stops’ depression of Tone 1 F0 is increasing in apparent time, especially among women, while VOT of voiced stops is decreasing as educational levels improve, giving speakers more contact with Mandarin Chinese. The same 38 speakers were also given a perceptual identification task in which F0 was systematically adjusted. Mixed-effects modeling showed that listeners used multiple acoustic cues (consonant voicing, F0 onset, and F0 shape) to identify the voiced initial. These findings suggest that Lalo is undergoing a tone split that follows Beddor’s (2009) coarticulatory path to sound change.
Abramson, Arthur S. (2004). The plausibility of phonetic explanations of tonogenesis. In G. Fant, Hiroya Fujisaki, Jianfen Cao, & Yi Xu (Eds.), From traditional phonology to modern speech processing: Festschrift for Professor Wu Zongji’s 95th birthday (pp. 17–29). Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
Baayen, R.H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beddor, Patrice Speeter (2009). A coarticulatory path to sound change. Language, 85(4), 785–821.
Björverud, Susanna (1998). A grammar of Lalo. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Lund University.
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David (2012). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Retrieved October 17, 2012, from [URL]
Bradley, David (1977). Proto-Loloish tones. In David Bradley, Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics (pp. 1–22). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
Bradley, David (1979). Proto-Loloish. London: Curzon Press.
Brown, J. Marvin (1975). The great tone split: Did it work in two opposite ways? In Jimmy G. Harris, & James R. Chamberlain (Eds.), Studies in Tai linguistics in honor of William J. Gedney (pp. 33–48). Bangkok: Central Institute of English Language.
Brunelle, Marc (2011). Perception in the field. Paper presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), City University of Hong Kong.
Carroll, Lucien (2010). A diachronic chain shift in the sandhi tones of Jinhua Wu. Paper presented at Linguistics Student Association Colloquium, San Diego State University.
Coates, Jennifer, & Pichler, Pia (2011). Language and gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Edmondson, Jerold, Esling, John, Harris, Jimmy, & Wei, James (2004). A phonetic study of Sui consonants and tones. Mon-Khmer Studies, 341, 47–66.
Flemming, Edward (2004). Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness. In Bruce Hayes, Robert Kirchner, & Donca Steriade (Eds.), Phonetically based phonology (pp. 232–276). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garellek, Marc, Keating, Patricia, & Esposito, Christina (2012). Relative importance of phonation cues in White Hmong tone. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp.179–189). Retrieved May 13, 2013, from [URL].
Haudricourt, André-Georges (1954). De l’origine des tons en vietnamien. Journal Asiatique, 2421, 69–82.
Haudricourt, André-Georges (1961). Bipartition et tripartition des systèmes de tons dans quelqueslangues d’Extrême-Orient. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 56(1), 163–180.
Hessler, Peter (2010). Country driving: A journey through China from farm to factory. New York: HarperCollins.
Holmes, Janet, & Meyerhoff, Miriam (2003). The handbook of language and gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Hyman, Larry (1976). Phonologization. In Alphonse Juilland, Andrew. M. Devine, & Laurence D. Stephens (Eds.), Linguistic studies presented to Joseph Greenberg (pp. 407–418). Saratoga: Anma Libri.
Hyman, Larry (2013). Towards a typology of tone system changes. Key note address given at the 3rd International Conference on Phonetics and Phonology (3rd ICPP), National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL).
Hyslop, Gwendolyn (2009). Kurtöp tone: A tonogenetic case study. Lingua, 119(6), 827–845.
Johnson, Daniel Ezra (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass, 31, 359–383.
Kang, Kyoung-Ho, & Guion, Susan G. (2008). Clear speech production of Korean stops: Changing phonetic targets and enhancement strategies. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1241, 3909–3917.
Kang, Yoonjung, & Han, Sungwoo (2013). Tonogenesis in early Contemporary Seoul Korean: A longitudinal case study. Lingua, 1341, 62–74.
Kim, Mi-Ryoung, Beddor, Patrice Speeter, & Horrocks, Julie (2002). The contribution of consonantal and vocalic information to the perception of Korean initial stops. Journal of Phonetics, 30(1), 77–100.
Kirby, James (2013). The role of probabilistic enhancement in phonologization. In Alan C. Yu (Ed.), Origins of sound patterns: Approaches to phonologization (pp. 228–246). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Labov, William (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 191, 273–309.
Labov, William (1966). The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Labov, William (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change, 21, 205–254.
Labov, William (2001). Principles of linguistic change, volume 2: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
Labov, William (2007). Transmission and diffusion. Language, 83(2), 344–387.
Lee, Hyunjung, Politzer-Ahles, Stephen, & Jongman, Allard (2013). Speakers of tonal and non-tonal Korean dialects use different cue weightings. Journal of Phonetics, 41(2), 117–132.
Lee, Leslie (2010). The tonal system of Singapore Mandarin. In Lauren Eby Clemens, & Chi-Ming Louis Liu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-22) & the 18th International Conference on Chinese Linguistics (IACL-18) (pp. 345–362). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Lennes, Mietta (2002). Calculate-segment-durations. Retrieved October 1, 2013, from [URL]
Lin, Jing (1993). Education in post-Mao China. Westport, CN: Praeger.
Maddieson, Ian (2013). Tone. In Matthew S. Dryer, & Martin Haspelmath (Eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved June 20, 2014, from [URL]
Matisoff, James A. (1970). Glottal dissimilation and the Lahu high-rising tone: A tonogenetic case-study. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 90(1), 13–44.
Matisoff, James A. (1973). Tonogenesis in southeast Asia. In Larry M. Hyman (Ed.), Consonant type and tone (pp. 71–95). Los Angeles: University of Southern California.
Mazaudon, Martine, & Michaud, Alexis (2008). Tonal contrasts and initial consonants: A case study of Tamang, a ‘missing link’ in tonogenesis. Phonetica, 651, 231–256.
Michaud, Alexis (2012). The complex tones of East/Southeast Asian languagesː Current challenges for typology and modelling. Key note address presented at the Third International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, Nanjing, China.
Mok, Peggy P.K., Zuo, Donghui, & Wong, Peggy W.Y. (2013). Production and perception of a sound change in progress: Tone merging in Hong Kong Cantonese. Language Variation and Change, 25(3), 341–370.
Norman, Jerry (1988). Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ohala, John J. (1993). Sound change as nature’s speech perception experiment. Speech Communication, 131, 155–161.
Ohala, John J. (2003). Phonetics and historical phonology. In Brian Joseph, & Richard Janda (Eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics (pp. 669–686). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Osnos, Evan (2014). Age of ambition: Chasing fortune, truth, and faith in the new China. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Pittayaporn, Pittayawat (2007). Directionality of tone change. In Jürgen Trouvain, & William J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVI) (pp. 1421–1424). Saarbrücken: Saarland University.
Pittayaporn, Pittayawat (2013). Contour change as restructuring of tonal variation: The case of Tone 4 in Thai. Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Phonetics and Phonology (3rd ICPP), National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL).
Ross, Elliot, Edmondson, Jerold, & Seibert, Burton G. (1986). The effect of affect on various acoustic measures of prosody in tone and non-tone languages: A comparison based on computer analysis of voice. Journal of Phonetics 14(2), 283–302.
Sanders, Robert (2008). Tonetic sound change in Taiwan Mandarin: The case of Tone 2 and Tone 3 citation contours. In Marjorie K.M. Chan, & Hana Kang (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-20) (pp. 87–107). Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University.
Silva, David J. (2006). Acoustic evidence for the emergence of tonal contrast in contemporary Korean. Phonology, 231, 287–308.
Stanford, James N. (2008). A sociotonetic analysis of Sui dialect contact. Language Variation and Change, 20(3), 409–50.
Stanford, James N. (2013). A practical guide to sociotonetics [software and instructions]. Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.
Svantesson, Jan-Olof, & House, David (2006). Tone production, tone perception and Kammu tonogenesis. Phonology, 231, 309–333.
Teeranon, Phanintra (2007). The change of Standard Thai high tone: An acoustic study and a perceptual experiment. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 4(3), 1–16.
Wright, Jonathan D. (2007). Laryngeal contrast in Seoul Korean. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Xu, Yi (1999). Effects of tone and focus on the formation and alignment of F0 contours. Journal of Phonetics, 271, 55–105.
Xu, Yi (2001). Fundamental frequency peak delay in Mandarin. Phonetica, 581, 26–52.
Yang, Cathryn (2010). Lalo regional varieties: Phylogeny, dialectometry, and sociolinguistics. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, La Trobe University. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from [URL]
Yip, Moira (2002). Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zhong, Joy (2013). Extract Pitches [Praat script]. Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.
Zhou, Minglang (2012). The contact between Putonghua (Modern Standard Chinese) and minority languages in China. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2151, 1–17.
Zhu, Xiaonong (1999). Shanghai tonetics. Munich; Newcastle: Lincom Europa.
Zsiga, Elizabeth (2008). Modeling diachronic change in the Thai tonal space. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 14(1), 395–408.
Cited by (8)
Cited by eight other publications
Gao, Jiayin & Martine Mazaudon
2022. Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang. Linguistics Vanguard 8:s5 ► pp. 583 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.