proto-southwestern-tai revised: a new reconstruction - seals 22

TONE NEUTRALIZATION DUE TO
CONSONANTS IN MULAO
Seunghun J. Lee
Central Connecticut State University
0 Abstract
Mulao requires that syllables with onsets that are aspirates, glottals, voiceless sonorants
and fricatives have high tone. These consonants phonologize in a way that input tone
neutralizes when such consonants are onsets of these syllables. This paper argues that this
requirement is due to the ranking, in which markedness constraints on consonant-tone
interaction outrank faithfulness constraints on tone. Crucial to the analysis is the proposal
that no faithfulness constraints preserve the relationship between tone and consonant.
Finally, the typology of consonant-tone interaction is presented by including data from
African languages in which consonants also interact with tone.
1 Introduction
The aim of this paper is to propose that markedness constraints on the tone-segment
relationship are responsible for the high tone requirement in syllables with laryngealized
consonants, such as aspirates and glottals, voiceless sonorants and fricatives, in Mulao.
While various phonetic studies show that there is a physiological relationship between high
register and these laryngealized consonants, I argue that phonologization of H tone in
Mulao results from constraints that penalize the low register tone on these consonants. 1
Mulao (or Mulam) is a Tai-Kadai language, and it is spoken by about 20,700
speakers in Luocheng County of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China (based on a
2000 census). One of the characteristics of Tai-Kadai languages is that laryngealized
consonants often interact with tone. For example, laryngealized consonants such as glottals
and aspirates in Zhuang favor high tone (Luo, 2005: 1217-1218). On the other hand,
unaspirated stops inhibit high tone in Thai (Ruangjaroon, 2006).
In Mulao, laryngealized onsets such as glottals, voiceless sonorants, and aspirates
require a high register tone and never occur with a low register tone as in (1), while other
(non-laryngealized) onsets as in (2) do not have such a requirement. In other words, the
onsets in (2) can occur with both high and low register tone. Laryngealized consonants that
require H register tone are called ‘elevator consonants’ in this paper. 2 Tonal
representations are based on Optimal Domains Theory (ODT, Cassimjee and Kisseberth,
1998). An output tonal domain is marked with square brackets, and the tonal specification
of each domain is marked with a subscript H or L.
1
High register tone and low register tone will be used interchangeably with high tone and low tone in this
paper.
2
Hyman and Schuh (1974) refer to these pitch raising segments as ‘uplifter consonants’.
Seunghun J. Lee. 2009. Tone Neutralization Due to Consonants in Mulao. Journal of the Southeast Asian
Linguistics Society 2:73-84.
Copyright vested in the author.
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