A tonal semi-reversal in Franconian dialects

Abstract

This paper examines the genesis of a tonal semi-reversal in Franconian tone accent dialects, the so-called Rule A vs. Rule B. Contrary to the traditional assumption, the reversal takes place only under declarative intonation, but not in interrogatives. To account for the semi-reversal, I provide a scenario in which Rule A and Rule B derive from a common predecessor system, which I refer to as Rule 0. These novel findings have important consequences for our understanding of the accent genesis in general: I argue that a combination of my approach for the split with duration-based genesis scenarios leads to a plausible account. As the paper discusses in detail, it is problematic to adapt (previous) alternative proposals to the full data set.