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Intonational Downtrends in Mayali

2000; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07268600050003346

1469-2996

Janet Fletcher, Nicholas Evans,

Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

Abstract Many researchers note the paucity of intonational studies of Australian languages. While some descriptive phonetic work has been carried out, most notably on Dyirbal narratives, many grammars do not include systematic descriptions of intonational variation. In this paper, intonational downtrends (declination, downstep, final lowering) and pitch range reset are examined in two varieties of Mayali (Bininj Gun-wok)—Gundjeihmi and Kundedjnjenghmi. Preliminary results of an acoustic intonational study of four texts from these dialects of Mayali show that there is evidence of systematic and non-systematic downtrends (i.e. downstep and final lowering). Mayali shows tonal space resetting across intonational phrases and a use of low boundary tones that are likely to be related to discourse factors, such as initiating new topics, and initiating or closing off discourse 'paragraphs'.