UC Santa Barbara

This thesis is a description of suprasegmental phenomena in Yonghe Qiang, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Western Sichuan, China. The analysis, based on original data from fieldwork, presents Yonghe as having an obligatory word-level accent overlaying a privative /L/ vs. Ø tonal contrast. The thesis includes a discussion of issues of tone and prominence in the typology of suprasegmental phonology. The analysis includes an overview of Yonghe segmental phonology, a phonetic and phonological account of both tone and accent on monosyllabic and disyllabic nouns, as well as tone and accent sandhi phenomena. The discussion of the Yonghe data broadens typological knowledge of possible tonal systems and contributes to wider discussions regarding the validity of the phonological category of ‘accent’ (van der Hulst 2011, Hyman 2006, inter alia). The facts of the Yonghe tone system demonstrate the necessity of both tone and accent as units of analysis and the importance of recognizing language-specific phonological categories in phonological typology. The Yonghe system also suggests a need to reconsider and refine classifications of languages as having either ‘Register-tone systems’ or ‘Contour-tone systems’ (Pike 1948).