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Polar question prosody in Dzə: A first look
Benson, Peace Duncan, Phillip T.
Benson, Peace
Duncan, Phillip T.
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Abstract
This paper presents a first-ever investigation of polar question prosody in Dzə. We focus onphonetic parameters at the level of
production, situating our analysis in relation to question intonation typology among African languages (Rialland 2007, 2009, Cahill 2015, Genzel & Kügler 2020), particularly whether Dzə is a “lax prosody” language. Unlike what has been reported for the most closely related languages where lax prosody prevails, we find that Dzə bears characteristics of a hybrid prosody language. Lax prosody in Adamawa-Ubangi languages. Polar question prosody has been reported for Adamawa-Ubangi languages in relation to the discussion of “lax prosody” as an areal feature of African languages. The two Adamawa-Ubangi languages in Rialland (2007) both showed
properties associated with lax prosody, which was expanded to 7 of the 10 reported in Rialland (2009). Specifically, Adamawa-Ubangi languages were reported as having either: (a) vowel lengthening, (b) L tone/falling intonation (w/o mention of lengthening), (c) L tone/falling intonation with the clause-final suffix -(y)a, or (d) M tone with clause-final suffix -wa. Prosody in Dzə polar questions. Dzə (aka Dza, Jenjo, Jen) is an endangered Adamawa language spoken by E Idzə (Dzə people) across several regions of northeastern Nigeria. It is a tonal language with SVO order and a strong preference for open syllables. The language is severely underdocumented. Although there are many excellent recent and even current efforts to expand documentation of Dzə (e.g., Benson 2020, 2024, Othaniel 2017, 2020, 2022), polar interrogative clauses have not received substantive attention. To identify parameters associated with polar question prosody, we compared a series of string-identical (or in some cases, nearly so) declarative statements and polar questions, produced by a single speaker (1 speaker x 2 repetitions x 25 sentences x 2 conditions = 100 sentences). The stimuli were created to ensure that a variety of tones and vowels appeared in clause-final position. We then used Praat to measure f0, duration, and intensity, and generated prosograms (Mertens 2022) for each sentence to examine relationships between prosodic forms and segmental material (see Figures 1 & 2). We find that downstep occurs in both declarative statements and polar interrogatives. Compared to polar interrogatives, Dzə declaratives are marked by sharp clause-final lowering, which we attribute to the presence of a low boundary
tone. Compared to declarative statements, Dzə polar interrogatives are characterized by final vowel lengthening, breathy termination, and downstep reduction realized as a very gradual decrease in f0 across the lengthened vowel. In some cases, -a occurs. Implications: Establishing Dzə as a hybrid prosody language. Our controlled production experiment reveals that Dzə polar interrogatives are indeed characterized by lax prosody features, namely, considerable vowel lengthening, breathy termination, and clause-final -a. However, downstep reduction is a tense prosody feature. Thus, our results support claims that hybrid prosody languages may be more common than they are currently understood to be (Cahill 2015, Salffner 2017).
Description
These are the slides from a presentation given at the Linguistics Association of the Southwest (LASSO) 54TH Annual Meeting 2025 held at Wichita State University on 10/10/2025.
Date
2025-10-10
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University of Kansas
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BensonP_2025.pdf
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Keywords
Dzə, Prosody, Polar questions, Interrogatives, Adamawa languages