Roberts, David (2015). Ten good reasons for not testing a tone orthography. Paper presented at the SIL tone orthography workshop, Jos, Nigeria, 30 May 2015. (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article describes the preparatory phase leading up to a tone orthography experiment in Kabiye (Gur, Togo). It aims to show the importance of integrating theory and practice when undertaking a classroom experiment. The first section applies certain principals from the theories of autosegmental and lexical phonology to the development of an experimental tone orthography and the pedagogical materials that were used to teach it. The second section describes four rounds of pilot tests that tested these principals in the classroom. These two tracks developed simultaneously until they coincided in test materials that were both theoretically and pedagogically sound. The article advocates the reporting of such preparatory work in order to optimise future experiment design. Dans cet article nous décrivons la phase préparatoire qui a précédé une expérience formelle sur la graphie tonale du kabiyè (gur, Togo). Notre objectif sera de démontrer l’importance d’une approche unifiée reliant théorie et pratique lorsqu’il s’agit de mener une expérience sur le terrain. La première partie applique certains principes de la théorie de la phonologie autosegmentale ainsi que celle de la phonologie lexicale à l’élaboration d’une graphie tonale expérimentale et les matériaux pédagogiques destinés à l’enseigner. La deuxième partie décrit quatre séries de tests pilotes dont le but était de mettre ces principes à l’épreuve dans les salles de classe. Ces deux pistes ont évolué simultanément, jusqu’à ce qu’elles coïncident dans des matériaux expérimentaux aussi solides sur le plan pédagogique que théorique. L'article plaide pour la publication de tels travaux préparatoires dans le but d'optimaliser la méthodologie des futures expériences.
ABSTRACT: There is an ongoing debate about how tone should be represented in the emerging orthographies of African languages. One of the most significant strands in the debate is a small but growing body of literature describing formal experiments which test the different options. In this article, I present an overview of the existing repertoire which covers ten experiments and three decades. I adopt a comparative approach, examining all the experiments in parallel. I focus in turn on aims, design, sample profile, sample size, experience, training, test materials, tasks, scoring, results and interpretation. In conclusion, I offer some practical advice for future experimenters. I also attempt to identify whether any consensus is emerging about the profile of an optimal tone orthography. RESUMÉ : Le débat sur la représentation du ton dans les orthographes émergeantes des langues africaines a déjà fait couler beaucoup d'encre. L'un des plus importants volets dans ce débat est une littérature, modeste mais croissante, décrivant des expériences formelles entreprises pour tester les différentes options. Nous présentons un survol de ce répertoire qui couvre dix expériences et trois décennies. Dans cet article, nous adoptons une approche comparative, en examinant l'ensemble des expériences en parallèle. Nous nous focalisons sur les objectifs, la conception, le profil de l'échantillon, la taille de l'échantillon, le degré d'expérience, le niveau de formation, les matériaux expérimentaux, les tâches, le scoring, les résultats et l'interprétation. En conclusion, nous offrons quelques conseils pratiques pour de futurs expérimentateurs. Nous tentons également de dégager un consensus en ce qui concerne le profil d'une graphie tonale optimale.
Orthography and Tone: Tone system typology and its implications for orthography development
2011
It is a feature not found in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese – the present-day official and former colonial languages of many African countries, It is certainly not an easy matter to analyse the tone system of a language in preparation for developing a tone orthography, Most people have a natural supposition that an orthography which looks more difficult – i.e. with many diacritic signs – is automatically harder to read.
The experiment reported here tests the Lexical Orthography Hypothesis, that is, the notion that the output of the lexical phonology is the most promising phonological depth for an exhaustive representation of tone by means of diacritics in the orthography of a tone language. We conducted a controlled classroom experiment with 97 secondary school pupils learning written Kabiye, a Gur language of northern Togo. After testing their baseline skills in writing the standard orthography, the pupils participated in an eleven-hour transition course spread over three weeks in four parallel groups: DEEP (an experimental orthography representing the input of the lexical phonology), LEXICAL (representing the output of the lexical phonology), PHONEMIC (representing a level between the output of the lexical phonology and the output of the post-lexical phonology) and a control group. On the final day of the experiment, we tested their acquired skills in a dictation exercise. The results show that the LEXICAL group outperforms the other groups in three of the error types associated with adding diacritics, although they performed less well on one of the error types associated with writing long vowels. This initial evidence supporting the Lexical Orthography Hypothesis needs confirmation with reading and writing experiments on a variety of other tone languages.
Some orthographies represent tone phonemically by means of diacritics; others favor zero marking. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. The former leads to graphic overload; the latter to a profusion of homographs; both may reduce fluency. But there is a ‘third way’: to highlight the grammar rather than the tone system itself. To test this approach, we developed two experimental strategies for Kabiye: a grammar orthography and a tone orthography. Both are modifications of the standard orthography that does not mark tone. We tested these in a quantitative experiment involving literate L1 speakers that included dictation and spontaneous writing. Writers of the grammar orthography perform faster and more accurately than writers of the tone orthography, suggesting that they have an awareness of the morphological and syntactic structure of their language that may exceed their awareness of its phonology. We conclude that languages with grammatical tone might benefit from grammatical markers in the orthography.
The standard orthography of Kabiye (Togo) does not mark tone. In such a context, how can a researcher adequately assess the degree of ambiguity in the written language and make a valid contribution to the debate about how tone might be incorporated in the second generation of language development? This article approaches that question, not from the perspective of phonological analysis which has tended to dominate the literature, but from the point of view of the linguistics of writing. Applying Catach's (1984) model of lexical ambiguity for Kabiye, it advocates the development of a homograph corpus in which words, roots and affixes are included or excluded on the basis of semantic, morphological and dialectal criteria. A homographic prefix with pronominal, negative and immediative interpretations illustrates how the corpus is then applied to a frequency and distribution analysis of ambiguity in natural written contexts, and an analysis of oral reading errors in the classroom. A dictation task reveals that subjects who were taught a segmental modification of the negative prefix write with greater accuracy than subjects who were taught to add tone diacritics.
Strategies for analyzing tone languages
Language Documentation & Conservation, 2014
This paper outlines a method of auditory and acoustic analysis for determining the tonemes of a language starting from scratch, drawing on the author’s experience of recording and analyzing tone languages of north-east India. The methodology is applied to a preliminary analysis of tone in the Thang dialect of Khiamniungan, a virtually undocumented language of extreme eastern Nagaland and adjacent areas of the Sagaing Division, Myanmar (Burma). Following a discussion of strategies for ensuring that data appropriate for tonal analysis will be recorded, the practical demonstration begins with a description of how tone categories can be established according to their syllable type in the preliminary auditory analysis. The paper then uses this data to describe a method of acoustic analysis that ultimately permits the representation of pitch shapes as a function of absolute mean duration. The analysis of grammatical tones, floating tones and tone sandhi are exemplified with Mongsen Ao data, and a description of a perception test demonstrates how this can be used to corroborate the auditory and acoustic analysis of a tone system.
Functions of Tone: An Overview of Languages in Nigeria
2012
"This paper discusses tone and what constitute the functions of tone in tonal languages. In explaining the functions of tone, copious examples were draw from Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Batonu, Nupe, Idoma, Bini (a dialect of Edo), Kahugu, Afo and Ibibio language spoken in Nigeria. ""