Oirat ToBI: intonational structure of the Oirat language

University of Hawai‘i, February 2009. A dissertation submitted to partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics. — xvi, 187 p. The following doctoral dissertation describes intonational patterns in spoken Oirat (SO) and proposes a model of the intonational structure of Oirat. The proposed prosodic model is represented in the framework of Oirat tones and break indices (O-ToBI), which is based on the design principles of the original English ToBI (Beckman & Ayers 1994; Beckman & Hirschberg 1994) and the Korean ToBI (K-ToBI), devised by Sun-Ah Jun (1993, 1996a, 1996b, 2005). O-ToBI adopts the concepts and principles of Autosegmental Metrical (AM) theory (e.g., Gussenhoven 2004, Hayes 1995, Ladd 1996, Pierrehumbert 1980). The proposed intonational structure of the Oirat language is based on analysis of audio recordings of utterances produced by speakers of two varieties (Houg Sar and Bain Hol) of Oirat spoken in the Xinjiang region of China. Based on my analysis, I propose a model for Oirat intonational structure, which key points are: Oirat has three post-lexical intonational or prosodic units (domains): Accentual Phrase (AP), intermediate phrase (ip), intonational phrase (IP). O-ToBI suggests that LH contour marks the left edge of a prosodic domain, and that AP has an underlying pitch contour, LH. Based on the proposed LH hypothesis, I suggest a two-level approach to Oirat stress. The discussion of Oirat intonation also includes the analysis of five major types of utterances: (1) declaratives (or statements), (2)statements with focus (focus for intensification and contrastive focus), (3) yes-no questions, (4) alternative questions, and (5) wh-questions.