A tonal analysis of Cologne Schärfung

Abstract

The word prosody of the dialect of Cologne includes a phonological contrast in stressed syllables which at first sight might either reflect a ternary quantity contrast or a binary quantity contrast plus a tone contrast. There are differences in duration as well as F0 between Accent 1 (Schärfung) and Accent 2, along with differences in the intensity profiles of the syllables. It is argued that the contrast is one between an unspecified lexical tone (T) (Accent 2) and no tone (Accent 1), and that the lexical tone assimilates to an intonational tone. We show that a ternary quantity contrast (i) cannot capture the difference between Accent 1 and Accent 2; (ii) would imply an otherwise unattested distributional confinement to the syllable coda of geminate consonants and (iii) would imply unexpected intonation contours in bimoraic syllables. By contrast, a tonal analysis readily accounts for the phonetic and distributional facts.

Luxembourgish

“…The lexical tone contrast from the Central Franconian tonal accents (Gussenhoven & Peters 2004) has completely disappeared from Luxembourgish (Gilles 2002). This development has given rise to the two sets of diphthongs mentioned above with Word accent in Luxembourgish may fall on the antepenultimate, the penultimate or the final syllable, with the penult as the most common stress pattern, which frequently also applies to French loans like…”

Stress, tone and discourse prominence in the Curaçao dialect of Papiamentu

“…Riad, to appear) and in the Limburgian/CentralFranconian (e.g. Gussenhoven & van der Vliet 1999, Gussenhoven & Peters 2004 contexts, privative tone contrasts tend to show considerable between-dialect variation. Similarly significant variation may be found when comparing the tone system of the Curaçao dialect with that of other dialects, in particular that of Bonaire.…”

Feet, Syllables, Moras and the Estonian Quantity System

“…For instance, consider the Low German ternary length opposition that results primarily from pitch differences between long and overlong vowels in certain dialects (Gussenhoven, Peters 2004) and from quality differences (tense vs. lax) between short and so-called long vowels in other dialects (Kohler 2001). In principle, a similar solution could be conceivable for Estonian, as the perceptual tests conducted by Allik (2007, 2009) show that Q3 is not perceived unambiguously without the falling pitch.…”