Date of Award

8-1-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Linguistics

First Advisor

Katrina E. Tang

Second Advisor

Keith W. Slater

Abstract

Mangghuer’s prosodic system has been described as a stress system (Slater 2003), and alternately, because of a few minimal pairs, as a system that is undergoing tonogenesis. (Dwyer 2008). This thesis looks at new data to evaluate both of these claims. I analyze the prosody of native words and confirm that Mangghuer has a stress system. Duration is one of the indicators of stress, which has not been mentioned in previous literature. Potential minimal pairs are considered, including the minimal tone pairs that Dwyer found; her minimal pairs are not minimal pairs in my data. However, one set of nativized Chinese borrowings form a minimal tone pair by contrasting the pitch on the unstressed syllable. There are two pairs of words that have a high/falling distinction on the stressed syllable, which are not perceived as phonemically distinct. The high and the falling pitch distinctions are still associated with stress, but the evidence shows that the stress system is transitioning to a mixed prosodic system that uses both stress and tone.

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