A grammatical analysis of the 'induced creaky tone' in Burmese

Abstract

This thesis investigates the conditions and effects of the ‘induced creaky tone’, a grammatical tonal alternation in modern standard Burmese. Burmese is well known for its complex tonal system. Recent work has shown that the five Burmese tones are defined along contrasts in several suprasegmental categories, namely pitch, phonation, intensity and duration. My own work addresses a specific tonal alternation phenomenon in modern standard Burmese, the ‘induced creaky tone’ (ICT). ICT is the result of a process by which the last syllable of a noun with personal reference is altered from Low or High into the Creaky tone.

This alternation has several grammatical functions. The present thesis focuses on the functions of possessor marking and object marking. Production experiments and interviews with seven young native speakers of Burmese from Yangon and Mandalay demonstrate that there are several well-distinguished conditions of different nature for this tonal alternation. Some of these conditions are phonological constraints, for example: * Creaky, Checked and High tones on the syllables before the final syllable block the ‘induced creaky tone’ on the ultima. * Low tone syllables are more likely to change into the ‘induced creaky tone’ than High tone syllables.

Some grammatical conditions are also found, for example: * If the possessive marker jɛ̰ occurs in a sentence, the ‘induced creaky tone’ is less likely to occur. * Tonal alternation occurs only on the last syllable of the last noun in a nominal coordination. Finally, there are some word and sentence semantic conditions: * Tonal alternation occurs only on nouns that rank high in the animacy hierarchy. * Optional tone marking becomes obligatory if the possessor is ‘emphasized’ in the sentence.

These conditions interact with each other in different ways. A comprehensive account of such conditions developed in this thesis provides the basis for a grammatical analysis which tests the theoretical options for representing a tonal morpheme in the morpho-syntactic structure of a sentence. The analysis provides a direct comparison of segmental morphemes and tonal morphemes with the same function in the same language. It may also shed light on other theoretical issues such as the interfaces between phonology and grammar, and between tonal morphology and tonal syntax.