Journal article
Closure duration as an acoustic correlate of the word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast in Kelantan Malay.
M Hamzah, J Fletcher, J Hajek
Journal of Phonetics | Elsevier | Published : 2016
Abstract
Comparisons of prosodically defined units and grammatical structure in typologically diverse languages may reveal insights into how language is processed. This paper presents examples of intonation units comprising two or more verbs in Dalabon, a polysynthetic head-marking language from Australia. The prosody, semantics and grammar of these multi-verb intonational units is examined and it is shown that intonation is used as a delimitative device to signal the higher-level groupings of grammatical constituents in the discourse. What is interesting in these findings is that, despite the multiple grammatical constructions available to signal subordination in Dalabon, grammatical subordination i..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Skim Latihan Akademik Bumiputra (SLAB) under the Ministry of Education Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia awarded to the first author. Many thanks go to the staff of the University of Melbourne for their generous assistance during the recording of the Kelantanese speakers in Melbourne. We are also grateful to the management of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan for offering access to their undergraduate students who made the task of data collection enjoyable and rewarding. Finally we would also like to express our gratitude to the reviewers and to the editor for their valuable comments and assistance. All errors remain our own.