SOAS Research Online

Abstract

After the acknowledgements and contents, the introductory Chapter gives some details about the language and area, including an account of the previous work done, approach being adopted (prosodic) and also the symbols used to represent speech-sounds and pitch. The second chapter is an account of the two major linguistic uses of pitch, i.e., tone and intonation, A statement of three-term tone system is followed by a detailed discussion, with examples, of the two intonation systems, set up for the final and non-final Panjabi clauses respectively, each having a number of terms. Emphasis, emphatic sentences and main acoustic correlates of emphasis, namely, duration, intensity and pitch discussed in some detail and supported by instrumental evidence form the main body of the third Chapter followed by the examples of sentences with one emphatic word in different positions. In the remaining three Chapters various exponents of each of the three terms of the tonal system are discussed in some detail. Pitch-feature exponents are stated in Chapter four and an attempt is made to account for the variation in pitch-exponency. Chapter five furnishes a short account of the phonation features as exponents of the different tones. Word-initial and word-final features as exponents and also as criteria are discussed in Chapter six. The thesis concludes with a bibliography and three appendices which include instrumental evidence apart from the examples of non-emphatic clauses and tables incorporating actual measurements of duration, intensity and pitch.