The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora

Abstract

Abstract One of the defining characteristics of tonal systems in phonological theory is the notion of tonal stability (Goldsmith, John. 1990. Autosegmental and metrical phonology. Oxford: Blackwell; Yip, Moira. 2002. Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tones remain stable even if their tone-bearing unit changes or is deleted. In the context of historical sound change, tones may either persist as floating tones (from an autosegmental-metrical perspective) or fuse with adjacent syllables and give rise to more complex tonal inventories. However, the process of segmental loss which ultimately conditions historical tonal change is gradual in nature. Tone-bearing units may lenite or they may be optionally realized, leading listeners to rely on coarticulatory cues or phonetic information on adjacent syllables. In the current paper, I examine how variation in the realization of clitic pronouns is conditioned by adjacent tonal cues in Itunyoso Triqui (Otomanguean) within a corpus of spontaneous speech recordings. This research examines and provides evidence for the hypothesis that tonally conditioned allomorphy arises specifically when two conditions are met: (a) there is a morphological context where prosodic units are likely to lenite (highly redundant contexts); and (b) adjacent tonal cues are most informative at this morphophonological boundary. The findings shed light not only on how phonologically conditioned allomorphy arises but also on how variable deletion is sensitive to patterns of multiple exponence during language use.