Tonal Hybridization in Yami-Mandarin Contact

Abstract

Yami, an endangered Austronesian language spoken on Orchid Island in Taiwan has been under heavy influence from Mandarin for several decades. In the current linguistic ecology, the pressure of Mandarin on Yami is increasing and its influence has been reported in Yami intonation. This study, on the flip side, examines whether Yami influence has also diffused through the Mandarin spoken on Orchid Island. Taiwan Mandarin speakers make a three-way distinction in sentence intonation: (1) falling statements, (2) level neutral questions and statement questions conveying lighter incredulity, and (3) high-rising default statement questions. Orchid Islanders showed deviation in their default statement question intonation by using a high-level intonation. Interestingly, we observed two hybridization patterns in Yami-Mandarin bilingual intonation: one that fuses Yami phono-syntax with Mandarin intonation in Orchid Island Mandarin, and one that incorporates Mandarin phono-syntax with Yami intonation in young islanders' Yami speech. This provides crucial evidence showing that in addition to the overwhelming phenomenon of transfer/borrowing, speakers may combine discrete (sub)strates from different sources. If the innovative, hybrid pattern continues, present-day Yami intonation may evolve over time into a newly-styled system.

Language Contact, Language Ecology, and Intonational Variation in the Yami Community

“…Mandarin speakers use the subject–verb–object (SVO) order and a falling intonation in declarative sentences ( Chuang et al, 2007 ; Chuang & Fon, 2016 ; Lai, 2018a , 2019 ; Lai & Gooden, 2018c ; Shen, 1990 ). Yes/no questions and declaratives have identical syntactic structures and the most widely used types of questions include as follows:…”

“…A comparison between Mandarin and Yami question intonation is shown in Table 2 , among which NQ, DQ1, and DQ2 are the focus of this paper. Schematic representations of Mandarin intonation are plotted based on previous research ( Chuang et al, 2007 ; Chuang & Fon, 2016 ; Lai, 2018a , 2019 ; Lai & Gooden, 2018c ; Lee, 2005 ; Liing, 2014 ; Shen, 1990 ). For the Yami data, given that these are (semi-)spontaneous speech with variable morphosyntactic structure, it is unsurprising that participants produced different variants of the same utterance.…”

The Perception of Lexical Tone and Intonation in Whispered Speech by Mandarin-Speaking Congenital Amusics

“…Therefore, there must be non-F0 cues in the speech signal that can compensate for the absence of F0 in whispered tone recognition (Jiao & Xu, 2019). Some researchers proposed some secondary cues, such as duration (Gao, 2002;Li & Guo, 2012;Li & Rong, 2012;Liu & Samuel, 2004;Yang et al, 2005), intensity contour (Gao, 2002;Li & Guo, 2012), and formant frequency (Eklund & Traunmüller, 1997;Higashikawa et al, 1996;Kallail & Emanuel, 1984;Matsuda & Kasuya, 1999), that were exaggerated by the speakers to the needs of the listeners. For example, the duration of tones in whispered speech was much longer than that in phonated speech (Li & Guo, 2012;Li & Rong, 2012;Yang et al, 2005), and the duration differences across the four lexical tones were exaggerated in whispered Mandarin (Li & Guo, 2012).…”

“…Some researchers proposed some secondary cues, such as duration (Gao, 2002;Li & Guo, 2012;Li & Rong, 2012;Liu & Samuel, 2004;Yang et al, 2005), intensity contour (Gao, 2002;Li & Guo, 2012), and formant frequency (Eklund & Traunmüller, 1997;Higashikawa et al, 1996;Kallail & Emanuel, 1984;Matsuda & Kasuya, 1999), that were exaggerated by the speakers to the needs of the listeners. For example, the duration of tones in whispered speech was much longer than that in phonated speech (Li & Guo, 2012;Li & Rong, 2012;Yang et al, 2005), and the duration differences across the four lexical tones were exaggerated in whispered Mandarin (Li & Guo, 2012). With regard to the intensity contour, compared with phonated speech, Gao (2002) found that speakers exaggerated the intensity contour when they were whispering, and concluded that intensity contour played a crucial role in whispered tone perception especially for Tone 3 and Tone 4.…”

Intonation in Contact: Mandarin Influence in Yami

“…While these rubrics make no direct predictions for higher levels of prosody, there is a growing body of research showing that higher level prosody is in fact permeable under contact. Yami has revealed signs of contactinduced segmental [4,5] and prosodic variation [6].…”