Contour tones

Recent work (Clements 1985; Sagey 1986) on the structure of distinctive features has analysed affricates and prenasalised stops as involving branching for the features [continuant] and [nasal] respectively. This analysis explains the edge effects associated with such segments, while simultaneously identifying them as single melodic elements that associate as units to prosodic templates. This paper will argue that some languages have contour tones that show parallel properties to those of affricates: they associate as units, but also exhibit edge effects. Such behaviour can be simply understood if tonal features hang off a tonal root node (Archangeli & Pulleyblank forthcoming), and this tonal root node is allowed to branch. A high rising contour tone will have the structure shown in (i), where [upper] is the tonal root node, and [raised] is free to branch.

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