Areal Variation in MorongTagalogIntonation: An Acoustic Phonetic and Dialectological Approach

Vincent Christopher A. SantiagoUniversity of the Philippines – Dilimanvincentchristophersantiago@gmail.com

http://wanderjules.blogspot.com201104morong-and-tanay-rizal-wander.html

Morong, Rizal

• 2nd-Class Municipality of

Rizal province

• 4 865 ha. land area

• 52 194 residents as of 2010 (NSO Census)

• 8 Barangays http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morong,_Rizal

Problematizing Puntó

• “Iba puntó namin rito.”

• “May puntó talaga Tagalog namin.”

• “Maalon „yung puntó sa barrio. Rito sapoblacion, medyo diretso na.”

Problematizing Puntó

• “Iba puntó namin rito.”

• “May puntó talaga Tagalog namin.”

• “Maalon „yung puntó sa barrio. Rito sapoblacion, medyo diretso na.”

Problematizing Puntó

• (Soriano, 1978, p. 18) “For, aside from the fact that we [residents of Morong] have a different punto, or intonation in our speech, and certain distinct attributes, we are not any different from Tanay, or Baras, or Cardona and Teresa.” (emphasis mine)

Puntó as Folk Linguistic Perception

• It seems that the term puntó (accented on the ultimate syllable) invariably appears in any remark or discussion by the residents of Morong about the variety of Tagalog that they speak.

• Moreover, the fact that puntó corresponds to, or at least, is associated with intonation in the quotation above must be taken into account.

• One is driven to ask whether this variation in puntó amongspeakers within the municipality of Morong is comparable to the level of variation in lexicon and semantics (see Santiago, 2013) and to the lexical and semantic variation among varieties spoken within the wider context of the entire Rizal province (as exemplified in Paz, 1994a, 1994b).

Intonation & Dialect inWestern Linguistics

• The study of intonation within the framework and goals of dialectology seems to be a fairly late development in Western linguistics.

• The history and development of dialectology from dialect geography (as outlined in Chambers and Trudgill 1980, pp. 18-23) shows that phonological and lexical variation have been given precedence as shibboleths; with semantic and grammatical variation also considered, but to a much lesser extent.

• In fact, in the system proposed by Chambers and Trudgill(1980, p. 115) for indexing and grading isogloss subtypes, conspicuously absent is any subtype for intonation.

Intonation & Dialect in Philippine Linguistics

• As of this writing, I have found only two linguistic studies on Tagalog that foreground the link between intonation and dialectal variation.

• Soberano (1997) on Marinduque Tagalog

- distinctive “intonation contours” and “pitch levels” (Ibid., p. 55) of EM (Eastern Marinduque) and WM (Western Marinduque) variants of Tagalog

- methodology based on researcher‟s own auditory perceptions

Intonation & Dialect in Philippine Linguistics

• Katigbak‟s (2014) preliminary analysis of Batangan Tagalog intonation

- acoustic phonetics: Praat® software, Tone and Break Indices (ToBI) transcription method

- identified five distinctive characteristics of BatanganTagalog

Intonation & Dialect inPhilippine Linguistics

• 5 Potentially-distinctive characteristics of BatanganTagalog intonation (Katigbak, 2014, p. 11):

1.) higher pitch of penultimate vowels of words at the end of intonation units (IU‟s)2.) lengthened final vowels of words at the end of IU‟s3.) lengthened final vowels as signals for the end of IU‟s4.) H* L-H% pattern in 14 out of 36 IU‟s, H* L-L% pattern in 11 IU‟s, and the occurrence of L* H-H%, 0 H-L%, 0 L-H%, L* H-L% patterns in the rest of the recorded IU‟s5.) emergence of CVCCV or CVCCVC patterns due to epenthetic glottal stop

Intonation & Dialect inPhilippine Linguistics

• Her paper recognizes the fact that in order for this claim to be solidified, “…a similar study must be conducted on other varieties of Tagalog, e.g. Laguna, etc., as well as other Philippine languages.” (Katigbak, 2014, p. 16)

• Sun (2005, p. 1) states that adopting a cross-dialectal/cross-linguistic perspective such as this under the same theoretical framework will contribute to the deepening of knowledge on universals and particular structures of the prosodic features of languages.

Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) Model of Intonational Phonology

• framework assumed by the ToBI transcription method

• The AM Model for intonational phonology assumes that “…intonation has a phonological organization… It describes intonation as a sequence of distinctive tonal units (High and Low and their combinations) forming a hierarchical prosodic structure.” (Sun, 2005, p. 1-2)

- intonation as a linear string of tones aligning with specific points in an intonation unit (IU)

Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) Model of Intonational Phonology

• In addition to tonal phenomena, the degree of juncture between adjacent words is accounted for; some pairs of words exhibit minimal to no disjuncture, others, full disjuncture, as with words found at the end of IU‟s.

• The degree of juncture can then be graded using a “break index”; with 0 signifying the least amount of disjuncture and 4 for the maximum disjuncture.

ToBI Transcription Method

• A minimum ToBI transcription of an utterance consists of the following (Beckman & Hirschberg, n.d.):

1.) recording of speech/sound file (waveform & spectrogram)2.) record of the fundamental frequency (F0) contour3.) symbolic labels for events on four parallel tiers:

a.) orthographic / word tierb.) tone tierc.) break tierd.) miscellaneous tier

ay nu‟ng rumating ako raon \ (1.39)

ToBI Transcription Method

• L- or H-- phrase accent (either low or high) at an intermediate phrase boundary

• L% or H%- (final) boundary tone, at the end of every IU

• H* or L*- „peak accent‟ or „low accent‟, respectively- H* = apparent tone target on the accented syllable which is in the upper part of the speaker‟s pitch range for the phrase- L* = apparent tone target on the accented syllable which is in the lower part of the speaker‟s pitch range for the phrase

Dialectological Methods

• The representation of dialectal variation, on the other hand, is executed through the plotting of shibboleths, in the case of this study, distinctive features of intonation, on maps as exemplified in Chambers & Trudgill (1980).

• Display map vs. Interpretive map

Dialectological Methods

• Display map- simply shows the data as it occurs in each area (Chambers & Trudgill, 1980, p. 29)

• Interpretive map- generalizes the description based on predominant variants and their geographical spread (Ibid.)

• For the purposes of this study, a display map with symbols (as opposed to isoglosses) is used because it highlights the particular nature of the findings and that the data was elicited from individual representative speakers from each barangay.

Barangays of Morong, Rizal

Methodology

• 2 representative barangays are included in this study: Bgy. San Juan (henceforeth, JUA) which is part of the poblacion and Bgy. Bombongan (henceforth, BOM) which is in the periphery, among the so-called barrio barangays.

• 1 consultant from each barangay: both male, JUA consultant = 46 y.o., BOM consultant = 85 y.o.- Both have continuously-lived in their respective barangays for more than 20 years.

• Data elicited: recordings of continuous speech - JUA: an interesting experience- BOM: Pear Film- Only the first minute of each recording was transcribed.

JUA Consultant

• Total number of IU‟s in 1:00 = 28

• Most frequently-occuring tune: H* H-L%

(11 occurrences)

- H* = peak accent

- H-L% = H phrase accent of the final intermediate phrase upsteps the L% to a value in the middle of the speaker‟s range, producing a final level „plateau‟ (Beckman & Hirschberg, n.d., p. 3)

BOM Consultant

• Total number of IU‟s in 1:00 = 27

• Most frequently-occuring tune: H* H-L% as well (8 occurrences)

• Notable: occurrences of ‘scooped accent’ (L*+H) and ‘rising peak accent’ (L+H*)

aba e \ (0.75)

e siguru‟y „yun e talagang \ (2.49)

BOM Consultant

• Drastic differences within local pitch ranges (from F0 at beginning of IU to F0 at first accented syllable)

- aba e (L*+H H-H%) = 992.5 Hz > 1990 Hz

- e siguru‟y „yun e talagang (L+H* H-L%) =

1384 Hz > 3387 Hz

Fig. 1: Display Map for H* H-L% tune

• Legend:

- H* H-L% -

•The most frequently-occurring tunes of the other barangays may then be inputted into the map in the same way.

Fig. 2: Display Map for ‘scooped accent’

• Legend:

- L*+H H-H% -

Fig. 3: Display Map for ‘rising accent’

• Legend:

- L+H* H-L% -

Summary of Findings

• Distinctive tunes were recorded for the speech variety of the BOM consultant.- characterized by „scooped accent‟ and „peak accent‟

• One can interpret these tunes as correspondent to the folk linguistic account, i.e. maalong puntó, of the intonation of the variety spoken in the barrio.

• Despite these distinctions, the most frequently-occurring tune (H* H-L%) is still the same for both barangays. - commonality that might exist for the rest of the barangays

Recommendations and Further Directions

• 6 more barangays to be accounted for!

• Inclusion of more consultants from barangays

- for the data to be truly representative of the speech communities

• Towards a study of the intonational variations in the province of Rizal, and eventually, the whole Tagalog region?

Sources

Beckman, M. E. & J. Hirschberg (n.d.). The ToBI AnnotationConventions. MS.

Chambers, J. K. & P. Trudgill (1980). Dialectology. Cambridge University Press.

Jun, S. (Ed.) (2005). Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing. New York: Oxford University Press.

Katigbak, L. C. (2014). “Ala eh!” A Preliminary Analysis on Batangan Tagalog Intonation. In Proceedings of the 10th National Natural Language Processing Research Symposium. Manila: De La Salle University. 11-18.

Sources

Paz, C. J. (1994). Isang Preliminaryong Pag-aaral ng Tagalog sa Rizal. In The Archive (10). Quezon City: Cecilio Lopez Archives of Philippine Languages and the Philippine Linguistics Circle.

Paz, C. J. (1994) Ay Hao: Ang Dayalek ng Tagalog sa Rizal. In The Archive (10). Quezon City: Cecilio Lopez Archives of Philippine Languages and the Philippine Linguistics Circle.

Soberano, R. (1997). The Dialects of Marinduque Tagalog. In Edrial-Luzares, C. & A. Hale (Eds.) Studies in Philippine Linguistics 1(1). 53-74. Linguistic Society of the Philippines and Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Soriano, D. H. (1978). Common Noun for an Uncommon Town. In Morong‟s 400 Years. Morong, Rizal: Morong‟s 400 Years Pub. Comm. p. 17-18.