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phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
, downdrift (also known as ''automatic
downstep Downstep is a phenomenon in tone languages in which if two syllables have the same tone (for example, both with a high tone or both with a low tone), the second syllable is lower in pitch than the first. Two main kinds of downstep can be distin ...
'') is the cumulative lowering of pitch in the course of a sentence due to interactions among tones in a
tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
. Downdrift often occurs when the tones in successive syllables are H L H (high, low, high) or H L L H (high, low, low, high). In this case the second high tone tends to be lower than the first. The effect can accumulate so that with each low tone, the pitch of the high tones becomes slightly lower, until the end of the intonational phrase, when the pitch is "reset". However, not every sequence of H L H leads to downdrift. In some languages, in some circumstances, the two high tones in a sequence H L H can be pronounced on the same level, with a "plateau" between them; that is, H L H changes to H H H. This occurs for example in Chichewa if the first H is a proclitic word, e.g. "of" + "Malawi" is pronounced "of Malawi", with a plateau. In other languages, in some circumstances, even longer sequences such as H L L L H can become plateaux, for example, in Luganda, 'it is in Buganda' is pronounced , with a plateau instead of downdrift.Kamoga, F.K.; Stevick, E. (1968). ''Luganda Basic Course''. Foreign Service Institute, Washington, p. 105. Two basic types of downdrift are found. In one, called ''discrete downdrift'', when downstep occurs all tones shift downward, so that their relative difference in pitch remains constant; in the other, called '' tone terracing'', the pitch of the low tone remains at the lower end of the speaker's vocal range, while the high tones shift downward, so that their difference in pitch narrows. Pitch reset is required in the first instance because the tones approach the lower end of the speaker's comfort range, and in the second because the tonal distinctions of the language start being lost.


References


External links

*Connell, Bruce (2001)
''Downdrift, Downstep, and Declination''
Typology of African Prosodic Systems Workshop, Bielefeld University, Germany. Phonetics {{phonetics-stub