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Abstract
The prosodic structure of under-researched languages in the Trade Malay language family is poorly understood. Although boundary marking has been uncontroversially shown as the major prosodic function in these languages, studies on the use of pitch accents to highlight important words in a phrase remain inconclusive. In addition, most knowledge of pitch accents is based on well-researched languages such as the ones from the Western-Germanic language family. This paper reports two word identification experiments comparing Papuan Malay with the pitch accent language American English, in order to investigate the extent to which the demarcating and highlighting function of prosody can be disentangled. To this end, target words were presented to native listeners of both languages and differed with respect to their position in the phrase (medial or final) and the shape of their f0 movement (original or manipulated). Reaction times for the target word identifications revealed overall faster responses for original and final words compared to manipulated and medial ones. The results add to previous findings on the facilitating effect of pitch accents and further improve our prosodic knowledge of underresearched languages.
Acknowledgements
Research for this paper was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – Project-ID 281511265 – SFB 1252. The authors thank the staff of the Center for Endangered Languages Documentation (CELD, Manokwari, West-Papua) and Bob Kennedy (Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara; UCSB) for facilitating the Papuan Malay and American English experiments respectively and for participant recruitment. The authors are furthermore grateful to Michael Fiddler for providing the American English materials and to two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Research funding: The research for this paper has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 281511265 – SFB 1252 Prominence in Language.
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Author contributions: CK: concept and design, experimental setup, running PM experiment, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting and revising manuscript. MG: recording AE stimuli, running AE experiment, interpretation of data, revising manuscript.
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Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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Statement of ethics: The experiments reported in this paper have been conducted following protocols and informed consent practices in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration. Prior approval of the protocols and informed consent procedures was granted by the CELD and the human subject committee of the UCSB for the Papuan Malay and American English experiment respectively (Project Number: 55, Keycode: LING-GO-MA-007, Protocol Number: 55-21-0302).
Target and distractor words in Papuan Malay and English as used in the different phrase positions in the experiments.
| Position | Papuan Malay | American English | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Gloss | Distractor | Gloss | Target | Distractor | |
| medial | jata | allotment | kita | 1pl | llama | puma |
| laki | husband | hoki | plant stem | really | holy | |
| ruma | house | lama | to be long (of duration) | needy | moody | |
| tali | cord | tuli | to be deaf | taller | teller | |
| ribu | thousand | rubu | to collapse | roller | ruler | |
| satu | one | situ | l.med | sully | silly | |
| tiga | three | juga | also | fuzzy | dizzy | |
| tuju | seven | maju | to advance | fishy | bushy | |
| buru | to hunt | baru | to be new | burrow | borrow | |
| butu | to need | jatu | to fall | lucky | rocky | |
| kira | to think | tara | to be matching | psycho | taco | |
| luru | to chase after | biru | to be blue | worry | berry | |
| pili | to choose | kali | river | tuna | china | |
| pisa | to be separate | hosa | to pant | polo | cello | |
| suka | to enjoy | nika | to marry officially | silly | Jolly | |
| bisa | to be able | basa | to be wet | butter | batter | |
| gila | to be crazy | mala | even | ditto | ghetto | |
| kaco | to tell off | koco | to tell off | petty | pity | |
| mara | to feel angry | mera | to be red | moody | muddy | |
| lusa | day after tomorrow | masa | to be impossible | limo | memo | |
| final | besi | metal | nasi | cooked rice | body | lady |
| duri | thorn | diri | self | belly | bully | |
| gaba | unhulled paddy | tiba | to arrive | baggy | foggy | |
| gigi | tooth | pagi | morning | beady | tidy | |
| gora | water apple | gara | to irritate | runny | rainy | |
| lida | tongue | lada | pepper | lousy | lazy | |
| mace | woman | cece | great-grandchild | naggy | piggy | |
| mati | to die | meti | low tide | pillow | polo | |
| paku | nail | suku | ethnic group | kitty | fatty | |
| puri | anchovy-like fish | kiri | left | picky | caky | |
| rawa | swamp | kewa | dance party | buggy | soggy | |
| sala | to be wrong | hela | to haul | kilo | Halo | |
| subu | very early morning | tubu | body | fallow | shallow | |
| tipu | to cheat | tepu | to clap | phoney | funny | |
| tugu | monument | lagu | song | sorry | marry | |
| bera | to defecate | para | to be in serious condition | data | pita | |
| cebo | to wash after defecating | bobo | nipah palm fruit schnapps | sumo | limo | |
| gale | to dig up | bule | white person | nutty | meaty | |
| taru | to put | tiru | to imitate | curry | carry | |
| malu | to feel embarrassed | bulu | body hair | mono | rhino | |
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