Pitch Patterns in Standard Negation in Alaskan Dene and the Development of Grammatical Tone
Date
2024-10
Authors
Lovick, Olga
Tuttle, Siri G.
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The University of Chicago Press Journals
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Article
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Abstract
We describe a prosodic pattern that is part of standard negation in five Alaskan Dene languages spoken along the Tanana River. In all of these varieties, this “negative high” differs from the tonal distinction originating from historical constriction. We argue that it originates as an emphatic form of negative verb suffixation that is still partially productive in Koyukon. In the other Tanana languages, the negative high occupies different places in the grammar. In Upper Tanana it is a floating tone which associates with the negative verb stem. In Lower Tanana it is a high tone associated with the negative suffix. In Tanacross and Middle Tanana, the negative high is best analyzed as an utterance-level intonational pattern.
To our knowledge, this type of intonational source for tone has not been described for other language families. Our study also has implications for typological studies of standard negation and for language teaching.
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Keywords
Dene/Athabascan, standard negation, emphatic prosody, tonogenesis, typology
Citation
Lovick, Olga, and Siri G Tuttle. “Pitch Patterns in Standard Negation in Alaskan Dene and the Development of Grammatical Tone.” International Journal of American Linguistics, vol. 90, no. 4, 25 Sept. 2024, pp. 397–444, https://doi.org/10.1086/731661
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DOI
10.1086/731661