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Article published In:
NOWELE
Vol. 68:1 (2015) ► pp.81–112

A tonal semi-reversal in Franconian dialects

Rule A vs. Rule B

This paper examines the genesis of a tonal semi-reversal in Franconian tone accent dialects, the so-called Rule A vs. Rule B. Contrary to the traditional assumption, the reversal takes place only under declarative intonation, but not in interrogatives. To account for the semi-reversal, I provide a scenario in which Rule A and Rule B derive from a common predecessor system, which I refer to as Rule 0. These novel findings have important consequences for our understanding of the accent genesis in general: I argue that a combination of my approach for the split with duration-based genesis scenarios leads to a plausible account. As the paper discusses in detail, it is problematic to adapt (previous) alternative proposals to the full data set.

Published online: 9 April 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.68.1.03koh
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Köhnlein, Björn
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