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Prosodic structure and intonation in Maltese and its influence on Maltese English

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VellaA_1994redux.pdf (29.73Mb)
Date
1994
Author
Vella, Alexandra
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Abstract
 
 
This thesis presents a formal characterisation of prosodic structure and intonation in Maltese. It also examines selected structures of Maltese English, specifically structures having an interrogative function, in order to determine areas of influence of Maltese on Maltese English.
 
Apart from accent-related rising and falling nuclear tunes, Maltese possesses two accentrelated post-nuclear tunes. A tonal entity specific to structures such as vocatives, imperatives and tags is also identified. This vocative contour is similar to the postnuclear tunes in many respects.
 
In order to account for the fact that the specific choice of post-nuclear tune depends on that of the preceding nuclear tune, a distinction between independent and dependent domains is postulated. A proposal to deal with post-nuclear entities as being extrametrical to the phonological phrase (P-phrase) containing the nuclear tune, but crucially occurring within the same intonational phrase (I-phrase), successfully incorporates the aforementioned characteristics of Maltese intonational phonology. The vocative contour is analysed along similar lines. I advance the claim that the focus domain in Maltese is the P-phrase rather than the I-phrase.
 
The distinctness of the falling nuclear statement tune from the falling vocative contour is adequately captured by an analysis in terms of H(igh) and L(ow) tones (Ts) which are attached either to accented syllables (T*) or to boundaries (T%). However, in order to capture the differences in implementation of the nuclear question tune from the postnuclear statement tune, both of which have a rising contour, an extension of the framework is employed. This involves the reinterpretation of boundary tones in terms of whether they attach to phonological phrase (P-phrase) boundaries (Tp) or to intonational phrase (I-phrase) boundaries (Tt). This extension to the framework successfully allows for a representation of the Maltese tunes described here.
 
The influence of Maltese on Maltese English is evident at the levels of both prosodic structure and intonation. The account of prosodic structure and intonation of Maltese throws light on areas of the influence of Maltese on Maltese English at these levels of structure.
 
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1842/30874
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