A Typology of Tone in the Kainantu Languages of Papua New Guinea

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

IntroductionThis project aims to document tone systems in the Kainantu languages of Papua New Guinea, with particular attention to Binumarien and Awa, and compare them cross-linguistically with the diversity of tone systems worldwide.The proposed research serves two objectives. First, it contributes to linguistic theory by adding new data and novel phonological insights from the world's most underdocumented linguistic area. Second, this study aims to record and document the intangible heritage of Kainantu communities. Research contextThe New Guinea area holds up to one fifth of the world's languages, many of which are underdocumented and at the same time face endangerment.Tone is a particularly relevant feature of New Guinean languages. Though documented in languages across the world, it is poorly studied in New Guinea.The Kainantu languages, spoken in the Eastern Highlands Province seems to display atypical tonal features. For example, the association of the tonal melody to moras is remarkably unrestricted; data collected for this project suggest that the Binumarien system allows for multiple realisations of a melody, regardless of the segmental phonological context. This lack of restrictions on tonal associations coexists with strict phonological constraints and tendencies that seem to hint at influence of metrical structure. For instance, each prosodic word must have minimally one high tone, and some tonal patterns frequently pair with certain syllable structures.Research questionsThe major component of the project will be the analysis of Kainantu tone systems, which targets two research questions: 1) what are the underlying tone patterns? 2) how do tone patterns link to syllables or moras in various contexts? In answering these questions, I will review the existing analyses of Awa and Binumarien and investigate variation in the Kainantu family.I will then compare Kainantu tone systems to languages worldwide and take up the overall question: what can Kainantu languages tell us about the structure, limits, and possibilities of tone systems in general?MethodologyIn the first year of this project, new linguistic data of the Kainantu languages Binumarien and Awa were collected in Papua New Guinea. Conventional linguistic fieldwork methods were applied for this project, with a focus on methods for tone analysis. I recorded and transcribed word lists, phrases, and stories. These data form the basis for preliminary sketches of the phonology and morphosyntax. Once the sketches were made, a toolkit was created with carrier sentences that provide various contexts for words, to further investigate the underlying tone patterns and metrical structures. These data serve as the basis for an extensive description of tone that I am currently working on. Finally, I will compare my analyses cross-linguistically and describe how tone systems in the Kainantu languages correspond to tone systems worldwide.Significance and impactThis project contributes to our knowledge of language and language diversity by describing tone in the Kainantu languages. The study fills two knowledge gaps: 1) a geographical gap: New Guinea languages form a blind spot in linguistic typology; 2) a phonological gap: tone is a feature of New Guinea languages on which little information is available.Moreover, since written records on Binumarien and Awa are sparse, the data collected for this study are key to further research, including 1) further descriptions of the individual languages; 2) broader linguistic research; 3) anthropological and literature studies in the language communities; 4) a reconstruction of the proto-Kainantu sound system, which can be paired with broader historical and archaeological studies into the (pre)history of these communities.Finally, the language communities could benefit from this study, as it documents parts of the language communities' heritage for future generations.