Languages of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea boasts a wide variety of typologically interesting tonal systems (Donohue 1997, Cahill 2011). A great majority of these systems are variations of what has often been called ‘word tone’, where the phonological word is the domain for the assignment of contrastive pitch. That is, the system consists of a series of tonal melodies, one of which is lexically assigned to each word. Within this typological grouping, however, a number of variables combine to produce complex variation throughout New Guinea: • How many tonal melodies are available? • Are the melodies lexically linked to specific syllables (accent)? • Are words required to bear an accent? • What is the tone-bearing unit (TBU)—the vowel, the mora, or the syllable? • Are contour tones allowed, and in what types of syllables (i.e. heavy, final)? • Are there toneless morphemes, and how do they behave? • Do tone sandhi processes occur across morpheme boundaries? • Do tonal melodies cause perturbations throughout the phonological phrase? In this paper I reanalyse the tonal properties of Gadsup, a Kainantu-Goroka language within the Trans New Guinea family. Gadsup was previously described as having syllable tone, with a contrast between high, low, rising, and falling tones (Frantz & Frantz 1973). Based on numerous recordings, I show that Gadsup contrasts five word-level tonal melodies: H, L, HL, LH, and LHL. These melodies are lexically assigned to specific morae and then spread outward to encompass the word. Unlike many Papuan languages, the mora (rather than the syllable) is the TBU. I also describe processes of tonal dissimilation, tone sandhi across morpheme boundaries, and tonal perturbation across words within the phonological phrase. In the presentation I will pair the analysis with a discussion regarding the typological parameters of tone behaviour in New Guinea languages, focusing on the importance of accurate tonal analysis in linguistic description.