Haskins Publications

Number	278
Year	1978
Drawer	5
Entry Date	06/03/1999
Authors	Abramson, A. S.
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Publication	Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists (pp. 760-763). Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0278.pdf
Abstract	In such Southeast Asian tonal languages as Central Thai, the tone domain is ordinarily seen as the syllable, but some linguists have claimed that a segmental representation of tones best fits the grammar. In such a model, the five-way tonal contrast in Thai would be handled by various arrangements of three-level tones, underlying which are two binary features. Phonetic evidence, either in the form of fundamental f contours or perceptual data, supporting such a view is sought. Criteria are developed & applied to the production of Thai words isolated & embedded in sentences, but fail to provide any direct support for a segmental representation of these tones. Listening tests with controlled variants of fundamental f contours made with a speech synthesizer also fall short. It is concluded that phonological arguments for segmentation are weak, that the phonetic data make such a model implausible, & that the concept is psychologically unconvincing.
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