This paper describes tones on citation syllables in Lhasa Tibetan. Acoustic data from six speakers showed that Lhasa has a high vs. low tonal contrast on the one hand; and its tonal melodies are highly constrained by syllable types on the other hand. Lhasa tones served as a typical case in Tibetan tonogenesis: First, the high vs. low tonal contrast results from the historical prevocalic voicing distinction; Second, tonal melodies are further developed from F0 perturbations of postvocalic consonants.
Index Terms: tones, Lhasa Tibetan, syllable types
Cite as: Hu, F., Xiong, Z. (2010) Lhasa tones. Proc. Speech Prosody 2010, paper 163
@inproceedings{hu10_speechprosody,
author={Fang Hu and Ziyu Xiong},
title={{Lhasa tones}},
year=2010,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2010},
pages={paper 163}
}