Government and tonal phrasing in Papago

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Abstract
The intonation contour of a Papago sentence is entirely predictable on the basis of its surface syntactic structure. It consists of a sequence of instances of the pattern (L)HL. For example, one Papago sentence may manifest a single (L)HL pattern, as in (I): while another will show repetitions of the canonical tonal shape, as in (2): Our task in this paper will be to characterise the distribution of the (L)HL pattern in Papago sentences. Our analysis is that the phonological representation of a sentence of Papago consists of a sequence of one or more tonal phrases, and that (L)HL is the pattern assigned to a tonal phrase. This tonal phrasing - i.e. the beginnings and ends of individual tonal phrases - will be indicated by parentheses in the tonal tier, as in (1) and (2). The association of the (L)HL pattern within each tonal phrase is captured by simple rules of the phonology, to be described in §2. Thus the description of the syntax of Papago intonation contours will centre on the tonal phrasing itself, and on the manner in which it is determined with respect to surface syntactic structure.

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