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Introduction Looking at the results of phonological or phonetic analyses of tonal phenomena in speech, one gets the impression that natural languages are strikingly similar as to the kind of pitch attributes they exploit in order to establish their tonal contrasts; they are also very similar as to the number of categories they discriminate along each attributive dimension. These similarities might be explained to some extent by taking into account certain limitations that are inherent in the speech production and perception systems. In this paper I explore some of the physiological and perceptual constraints that set limits to the communicative use of pitch distinctions in speech. Such constraints define the set of possible 'phonetic features' from which natural languages can select the building blocks for their tonal systems. They also determine how many values each of these features can take. The primary purpose of this undertaking is to explore what kinds of external restrictions are imposed on possible contrasts between single pitch movements. Given this limitation, many fundamental issues regarding the explanation of complete tonal systems will not be dealt with. I hope to show, however, that the approach is sufficiently promising to encourage further research along these
Linguistics - An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences – de Gruyter
Published: Jan 1, 1983
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