Downtrend in Sylheti phrasal tones
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/TheLinguisticProceedings/2025/16/01/007/000667Keywords:
Sylheti, downtrend, f0 modelling, phrasal tones, intonationAbstract
This study examines the phonological nature of the fundamental frequency (f0) downtrend in Sylheti, an Indo-Aryan tonal language exhibiting both lexical and phrasal tones. Speech data from five native speakers were analysed using Praat, ProsodyPro, and statistical modelling in R and Python to investigate the behaviour of phrasal tones within Accentual Phrases (APs) across Intonational Phrases (IPs). The results revealed a consistent stepwise lowering of f0 peaks, independent of sentence length, indicating a phonological rather than purely phonetic process. Mathematical modelling based on Liberman and Pierrehumbert’s (1984) downstep and final-lowering equations accurately predicted observed f0 patterns (R² = 0.98). The findings confirm that Sylheti exhibits a systematic, phonologically governed downtrend across utterances.
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