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International audience; Mainland Southeast Asia is often viewed as a linguistic area where five different language phyla – Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Hmong-Mien, Sino-Tibetan and Kra-Dai – have converged typologically. This chapter illustrates areal features found in their prosodic systems, but also emphasizes their oft-understated diversity. The first part of the chapter describes word level prosodic properties. A typology of word shapes and stress is first established: we revisit the concept of monosyllabicity, go over the notion of sesquisyllabicity (as typified by languages like Mon or Burmese) and discuss the realization of alternating stress in languages with polysyllabic words (such as Thai and Khmer). Special attention is then paid to tonation. Although many well-known languages of the area have sizeable inventories of complex tone contours, languages with few or no tones are common (20% being atonal). Importantly, the phonetic realization of tone frequently involves more than simply pitch: properties like phonation and duration often play a role in signaling tonal contrasts, along with less expected properties like onset voicing and vowel quality. We also show that complex tone alternations (spreading, neutralization and sandhi processes), although not typical, are well-attested. The second part of the chapter addresses the less well-understood topic of phrasal prosody: prosodic phrasing and intonation. We reconsider the question of the amount of conventionalized intonation in languages with complex tone paradigms and pervasive final particles. We also show that information structure is often conveyed by means of overt markers and syntactic restructuring, but that it can also be marked by means of intonational strategies.

The draft has been circulated among colleagues since 2012. A first version was deposited in the HAL-SHS archive in 2014 under the title "The tonal grammar of Yongning Na". The title was later changed to "Tone in Yongning Na: lexical tones and morphotonology". The draft was submitted for publication on June 1st, 2016. The volume was published in April 2017. The PDF is available under a Creative Commons license.This version is slightly improved from the submitted version (version 4 of the HAL deposit). It incorporates comments suggested by Roselle Dobbs in the course of a complete proofreading of the volume.; International audience; Yongning Na, also known as Mosuo, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Southwest China. This book aims to provide a description and analysis of its tone system, progressing from lexical tones towards morphotonology. Tonal changes permeate numerous aspects of the morphosyntax of Yongning Na; they are not the product of a small set of phonological rules, but of a host of rules that are restricted to specific morphosyntactic contexts. Rich morphotonological systems have been reported in this area of Sino-Tibetan, but book-length descriptions remain few. This study of an endangered language contributes to a better understanding of the diversity of prosodic systems in East Asia. The analysis is based on original fieldwork data (made available online), collected over the course of ten years, commencing in 2006.

This article sets out a phonemic and tonal analysis of the second author’s native language: the (heretofore undescribed) Naxi dialect spoken in the village of Pianding (Dadong County, Lijiang Municipality, Yunnan). A distributional inventory brings out two pairs of phonemes that are of special interest to Naxi dialectology: (i) two apicalized vowels, /ɿ̟/and /ɿ̠/, and (ii) two rhotic vowels, /ɚ/ and /ɯ˞/, instead of only one apicalized vowel and one rhotic vowel in Old Town Naxi, the best-described dialect to date. These observations confirm and complement reports from other dialects; information on the lexical distribution of these conservative oppositions enriches the empirical basis for comparative–historical studies within the Naish subgroup of Sino–Tibetan. In the course of the discussion, observations about the Pianding dialect are placed in cross-dialect perspective; this article can thus serve as an introduction to key aspects of Naxi phonemics. Cet article présente une analyse des phonèmes et des tons de la langue maternelle du second auteur: le dialecte naxi (non décrit jusqu’ici) du village de Pianding (comté de Dadong, municipalité de Lijiang, Yunnan). Un inventaire distributionnel fait ressortir deux paires de phonèmes qui présentent un intérêt particulier pour la dialectologie naxi: deux voyelles apicales, /ɿ̟/ et /ɿ̠/, et deux voyelles rhotiques, /ɚ/ et /ɯ˞/, là où le dialecte de la vieille ville de Lijiang (Dayanzhen) – le dialecte le mieux décrit à ce jour – ne présente qu’une voyelle apicalisée et une voyelle rhotique. La distribution lexicale de ces oppositions conservatrices, qui avaient déjà été signalées dans d’autres dialectes, est ici exposée en détail, ce qui consolide la base empirique nécessaire à l’étude de la phonologie historique du groupe des langues naish. Au fil de l’exposé, les caractéristiques du parler de Pianding sont comparées à celles d’autres dialectes, de sorte que le présent article peut servir d’introduction aux problématiques centrales de la phonologie du naxi.

International audience; This paper focuses on the particular kinds of difficulties which arise in the study of an emergent tone-system, exemplified by Tamang in Nepal, where pitch, phonation and other laryngeal features combine in the definition of a tone. As a consequence, conducting a well-ordered analysis in stages first of phonetic transcription, then variation in context, then interpretation is not possible. Rather we have to discover the contrasting categories first, and study their phonetic realization next, or do both at the same time. This also leads to questioning the validity of the traditional distinction of features into “distinctive” and “redundant” and proposing instead an analysis of an abstract “tone” as a bundle of cues. We will only sketch the second characteristic of the Tamang tone system, the extension of tone over the phonological word. The contributions of instrumental studies and of a comparative-historical perspective are discussed.

Invited talk at the International Conference on Phonetics of the Languages in China (ICPLC-2013), City University of Hong Kong, December 2-4, 2013.; International audience; This paper discusses the prosody of Naxi, Yongning Na and Laze, three Sino-Tibetan languages of the Naish subgroup. These three languages have three level tones (High, Mid and Low). Level tones are not unattested in China and Southeast Asia, but have received somewhat less attention than the phonetically complex tones typically found in Sinitic and other families in the area. The study of level-tone systems in Asia appears as a promising field of research, now still in an early stage of development. Central issues concern these languages' place in prosodic typology, and the ways in which intonation interacts with level tones. The paper explains how answers to these questions gradually emerged. The three languages considered here illustrate the great diversity of situations that one may expect to encounter in the field: the tones of Laze and Yongning Na fall squarely in the level-tone type, whereas Naxi is somewhat of an outlier among level-tone systems.

All languages in the Vietic subbranch of Austroasiatic have at least one glottalized tone. This thesis zooms in on one of these languages: Muong (in Vietnamese orthography: Mường, endonym: /mon³/), spoken in Kim Thuong (Phu Tho, Vietnam). Twenty speakers recorded twelve tonal minimal sets of the five tones of smooth syllables, plus three tonal minimal pairs of the two tones of checked syllables, under two conditions: in isolation and in a carrier sentence. Acoustic and electroglottographic recordings allow for estimating fundamental frequency, glottal open quotient and duration. These parameters are compared across tones, experimental conditions and speakers, in order to contribute to a better understanding of glottalization as a feature of linguistic tones. First, allotones of the phonologically glottalized tone in Muong (Tone 4) are classified on a phonetic basis, confirming the consistent presence of creak. It is tempting to contrast it with the glottally constricted tones of Northern Vietnamese (with which Muong is in sustained language contact). However, the phonological discussion emphasizes that analysis of Tone 4 as a prototypical "creaky tone" would be a pitfall. Tone 4 behaves in key respects like the other tones in the system: it is not defined solely by phonation type. Moreover, the range of phonetic (allotonic) variation of Tone 4 includes cases of glottal constriction. Use of a phonetic nomenclature for types of glottalization serves as a basis for describing the interaction of glottalization with intonation., Toutes les langues de la branche viétique de la famille austroasiatique possèdent au moins un ton glottalisé. La présente thèse se concentre sur l'une de ces langues : le muong (en orthographe vietnamienne : Mường, endonyme : /mon³/), parlé à Kim Thuong (Phu Tho, Vietnam). Vingt locuteurs ont enregistré douze ensembles minimaux des cinq tons des syllabes sans occlusives finales, et trois paires minimales des deux tons des syllabes à occlusives finales, dans deux conditions : à l'isolée et dans une phrase-cadre. Les signaux acoustiques et électroglottographiques recueillis permettent d'estimer fréquence fondamentale, quotient ouvert et durée. Ces paramètres sont comparés entre tons, entre conditions expérimentales et entre locuteurs, afin de parvenir à une meilleure compréhension de la glottalisation en tant que caractéristique d'un ton lexical. Tout d'abord, les allotones du ton phonologiquement glottalisé en muong (le ton 4) sont classés sur des bases phonétiques. Il est tentant d'opposer ce ton, caractérisé par la présence régulière d'une voix craquée, avec les tons B2 et C2 du vietnamien du nord (avec lequel le muong est en contact linguistique soutenu), caractérisés par une constriction glottale. Cependant, une analyse phonologique du ton 4 comme prototype de " ton en voix craquée " masquerait la complexité des faits : le ton 4 fait partie d'un système au sein duquel il n'est pas défini exclusivement par un type de phonation. En outre, la plage de variation allotonique du ton 4 comprend des cas de constriction glottale. Une nomenclature phonétique des types de glottalisation sert de base à la description du ton 4 et de son interaction avec l'intonation.