Collaborative Research: Investigations into tone and stress in a complex prosodic system

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The sound systems of human languages differ widely, as any student of foreign languages knows. One way in which languages differ is their use of stress and tone. English is a language which uses stress to distinguish word meanings: compare the word "record" when used as a verb ("to recórd") and as a noun ("the récord"). Other languages use stress to mark the edges of words. Similar patterns are found with tone: in Tokyo Japanese, for instance, the meaning of the word "hashi" depends on the pitch melody with which it is spoken (with a high-low melody it means "chopsticks", and with a low-high melody it means "bridge"). Languages which use just one of these features are very common. Less common, and less studied, are languages which use stress and tone together. Until such languages are studied in greater detail, we will not have a complete picture of the sound systems of human languages and the ways in which they can vary.This project investigates stress and tone in Uspanteko, a highly endangered Mayan language spoken by approximately 1000-3000 people in the central highlands of Guatemala. Uspanteko uses tone to distinguish word meanings, as in "síip" (high tone, means "tick") vs. "siip" (no high tone, means "gift"). Alongside tone, stress is used in Uspanteko to mark the edges of words. The primary aim of this project is to document and analyze the acoustic structure of stress and tone in Uspanteko. As the sound system of Uspanteko is typologically unusual, this project has the potential to contribute substantially to our understanding of cross-linguistic variation in the areas of stress and tone. One product of this research will be a large, annotated corpus of spontaneous speech in Uspanteko. The project also involves a substantial training component for linguistics students in the U.S. and Guatemala.