Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 41:2 (2018) ► pp.192–218

Anatomy of a grammatical tone

The case of “Induced Creaky Tone” in Burmese

| University of Mainz

“Induced Creaky Tone (ICT)” is a grammatical tone in Burmese. It is the result of a process by which Low or High tone is changed into Creaky tone. This alternation is multifunctional, and one of its functions is possessor marking. This paper demonstrates several well-distinguished conditions of different nature and different domain for this tonal alternation. ICT is primarily induced by syntax, varies due to pragmatic factors, occurs only on the shared right boundary of phrases and stem forms, and its phonological condition has a domain stretching to the left boundary of the prosodic word. A comprehensive account of such conditions provides the basis for a grammatical analysis which tests the theoretical options for representing a tonal morpheme in the morpho-syntactic structure of a sentence. It also sheds light on other issues such as the interfaces between phonology and grammar, and between tonal morphology and tonal syntax.

Keywords: Burmese, grammatical tone
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What is “Induced Creaky Tone”
    • 2.1Burmese lexical tones
    • 2.2Burmese “Induced Creaky Tone”
    • 2.3Research questions and methods of the study
  • 3.Result of the production experiment
  • 4.Conditions, their nature, and their domains
    • 4.1‘Possessor marking’ function and the other marker jɛ̰
    • 4.2ICT in morpho-syntax
      • 4.2.1Conjoined noun phrases
      • 4.2.2Sequence of possession
      • 4.2.3Plural forms
    • 4.3Phonological constraints
  • 5.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.18007.tia
References
Allott, Anna
1967 Grammatical tone in modern spoken Burmese. Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universitӓt Leipzig, Gesellschafts-und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, vol. 161, 157–162. Leipzig: Karl-Marx-Universität.Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker, and Steve Walker
2014 Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1): 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bradley, David
1982 Register in Burmese. In David Bradley (ed.), Papers in South-East Asian linguistics No. 8: Tonation (Pacific Linguistics Series A-62), 117–132. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Cooke, Joseph R.
1968 Pronominal reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gärtner, Uta
2007 Myanmar: eine studentische Festschrift zu Ehren von Dr. Uta Gärtner. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät III, Institut für Asien-und Afrikawissenschaften.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John A.
1976 Autosegmental phonology. Vol. 1591. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Gruber, James Frederick
2011 An articulatory, acoustic, and auditory study of Burmese tone. Doctoral Dissertation of Georgetown University. UMI No.: 3491023.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, J., and C. McClenon
1977 An acoustical study of the vowels and tones of Burmese. Texas Linguistic Forum 81: 129–142.Google Scholar
Hyman, Larry M.
2006 Word-prosodic typology. Phonology 23(2): 225–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Kuki-thaadow: An African tone system in southeast Asia.’ UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Reports.Google Scholar
Ihaka, Ross, and Robert Gentleman
1996 R: a language for data analysis and graphics. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 5(3): 299–314.Google Scholar
Jenny, Mathias & San San Hnin Tun
2016 Burmese: A Comprehensive Grammar. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Leben, William Ronald
1973 Suprasegmental phonology. Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Matisoff, James A.
1994 Tone, intonation, and sound symbolism in Lahu: loading the syllable canon. In Leanne Hinton, Johanna Nichols & John J. Ohala (eds.), Sound symbolism, 115–129. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mesher, Gene
2006 Burmese for beginners. Bangkok: Paiboon Publishing.Google Scholar
Michaud, Alexis
2017 Tone in Yongning~ Na: Lexical tones and morphotonology. Vol. 131. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Okell, John
1969 A Reference Grammar of Colloquial Burmese, 21 vols. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Okell, John & Anna Allott
2001 Burmese/Myanmar dictionary of grammatical forms. Richmond: Curzon.Google Scholar
Rooth, Mats
1985 Association with focus. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
1992 A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1(1): 75–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tang, Xiuxian and Ne Win
2009 Shiyong miandianyu huihua jiaocheng (A beginner’s textbook of Burmese conversations). Beijing: Shijie Tushu.Google Scholar
Tang, Xiuxian; and Ou, Jiangling
2010 Shiyong miandianyu huihua jiaocheng (A practical textbook of Burmese conversations). Beijing: Shijie Tushu.Google Scholar
Thein, Tun
1982 Some acoustic properties of tones in Burmese. In Bradley, David (ed.). Papers in South-East Asian linguistics No. 8: Tonation (Pacific Linguistics, Series A-62) 77–116. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Thurgood, Graham
1981 Notes on the Origins of Burmese Creaky Tone. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.Google Scholar
Wang, Danian
2008 The comparative study on the languages of Sino-Tibetan family – from the micro-perspective. Beijing: Kunlun.Google Scholar
Watkins, Justin
2005a Studies in Burmese linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
2005b Slippery tones: Some data on Burmese tones in context. Handout. Talk given at workshop Making Sense of Prosody at University College London.
Wheatley, Julian K.
1987 Burmese. In Bernard Comrie (ed.), The major languages of East and South-east Asia, 106–126. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Lionnet, Florian, Laura McPherson & Nicholas Rolle
2022. Theoretical approaches to grammatical tone. Phonology 39:3 ► pp. 385 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 april 2024. 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.