EVOTONE: The emergence and evolution of linguistic tone

People

James Kirby
IPS Munich
Principal Investigator

Francesco Burroni
IPS Munich
Post-doctoral researcher

Sireemas Maspong
IPS Munich
Post-doctoral researcher

Josiane Riverin-Coutlée
IPS Munich
Post-doctoral researcher

Doug Cooper
CRCL, Inc.
Senior Scientist

Laura Arnold
University of Edinburgh
Research Affiliate

Rikker Dockum
Swarthmore College
Research Affiliate

Ryan Gehrmann
Payap University
Research affiliate

Jiayin Gao
LPP Paris/CNRS
Research affiliate

Pittayawat Pittayaporn
Chulalongkorn University
Research Affiliate

Cathryn Yang
SIL International and Payap University
Research Affiliate

Research assistants

• Pawitsapak Akarajaradwong, Kantika Apinyovichien, Zuzana Elliot, Pimthip Kochaiyaphum, Ioana-Sorina Krehan, Peeranut Nittayanonte, Phongbhorn Prayongdravya, Sue-Anne Richer, Kedsaraporn Ruechai, Ulrike Rupprecht, Thitivut Sommool, Brisa Speier-Brito, Piyapath Srisomyos, Teerawee Sukanchanon, Uracha Tatiyanunt, Chanakan Wittayasakpan

Publications

• Brunelle, M., Kirby, J. (In press). Tonogenesis and the evolution of tone systems. In Adam Ledgeway, Edith Aldridge, Anne Breitbarth, Katalin É Kiss, Joseph Salmons and Alexandra Simonenko (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Diachronic Linguistics.
• Gao, J., Kirby, J. (2024). Laryngeal contrast and sound change: The production and perception of plosive voicing and co-intrinsic pitch. Language 100(1): 124-158. Supplementary material
• Burroni, F., Kirby, J. (2023). Speakers adaptively plan and execute f0 trajectories under rate changes: Evidence from Thai contour tones. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Tone and Intonation, Singapore, 49-53.
• Arnold, L., Gao, J., Kirby, J. (2023). Intrinsic fundamental frequency differences in two tonal Austronesian languages. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Prague, 3345-3349.
• Gao, J., Kirby, J. (2023). Perceptual adaptation to altered cue informativeness: Distributional, auditory, and lexical factors. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Prague, 137-141.
• Kirby, J., Tan, M. (2023). Analyzing variability in closure voicing and co-intrinsic F0 in Central Standard Swedish. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Prague, 2244-2248.
• Kirby, J., Pittayaporn, P., Brunelle, M. (2023). Transphonologization of onset voicing: revisiting Northern and Eastern Kmhmu’. Phonetica 79(6): 591-629.
• Gehrmann, R. (2022). Desegmentalization: towards a common framework for the modeling of tonogenesis and registrogenesis in mainland Southeast Asia with case studies from Austroasiatic. University of Edinburgh PhD dissertation.
• Kirby, J. (2022). Effects of voiceless and pregottalized nasals on F0 in Eastern Khmu (Kmhmu' Am). In Papers from the 30th Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2021), 318-333.
• Kirby, J., Alves, M. (2022). Exploring statistical regularities in the syllable canon of Sino-Vietnamese loanmorph phonology. In Trang Phan, John Phan, and Mark Alves (eds.), Vietnamese Linguistics: State of the Field, pages 104-126. University of Hawaii Press.
• Yang, C. (2022). The phonetic tone change *high>rising: Evidence from the Ngwi dialect laboratory. Diachronica 39(2), 226-267.
• Yang, C., Pittayaporn, P., Kirby, J., Jitwiriyanot, S. (2021). Change and stability in the tonal contours of King Rama IX of Thailand, 1959-1997. In Proc. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI), 66-70. doi: 10.21437/TAI.2021-14.
• Kirby, J. (2021). Incorporating tone in the calculation of phonotactic probability. Proceedings of the 18th SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Research in Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology, Bangkok, 32–38. Supplementary materials
• Kirby, J., Kleber, F., Siddins, J., and Harrington, J. (2020). Effects of prosodic prominence on obstruent-intrinsic F0 and VOT in German. 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody, Tokyo, 210–214.
• Kirby, J., Ladd, D. R., Gao, J., and Elliott, Z. (2020). Elicitation context does not drive F0 lowering following voiced stops: Evidence from French and Italian. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148, EL147–EL152.
• Zhang, Y., and Kirby, J. (2020). The role of F0 and phonation cues in Cantonese low tone perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148, EL40–EL45.

Events

• EVOTONE is pleased to announce that the 3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation will be held from 16-18 May, 2025 at the Haus der Bayerischen Landwirtschaft in Herrsching am Ammersee, about 40 km from Munich. Further details are available at https://www.tai2025.org/.

Presentations

• Brunelle, M., Kirby, J. How does the breathy register develop? Insights from Austroasiatic and Chamic Languages. 12th International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics (ICAAL 12), Chiang Mai, 25 October 2024.
• Kirby, J., Puggaard-Rode, R., Burroni, F., Maspong, S. Effects of coda consonants on preceding vowel F0. Speech Prosody 2024, Leiden, 3 July 2024.
• Riverin-Coutlée, J., Misnadin, Kirby, J. (2024). A perception study on cue weighting in Madurese stops. Poster presented at LabPhon 19, Hanyang University, 29 June 2024.
• Kirby, J. (2023). Tone sandhi in diachronic perspective. The Sixth Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, Edinburgh, 4 December 2023.
• Kirby, J., Burroni, F. (2023). Perceptual similarity and acoustic variability as filters on tonal variation and change. Invited plenary, 2nd International Conference on Tone and Intonation, Singapore, 19 November 2023.
• Burroni, F., Kirby, J. (2023). Adaptive planning of f0 trajectories with rate: Evidence from Thai contour tones. 2nd International Conference on Tone and Intonation, Singapore, 18 November 2023.
• Pornpottanamas, W., Pittayaporn, P., Maspong, S. (2023). A preliminary investigation of the phonetic characteristics of Moklen tones. 2nd International Conference on Tone and Intonation, Singapore, 20 November 2023.
• Yang, C., Kirby, J., Dockum, R. (2023). Diachronic origins of complex contour tones in Tai. ICSTLL56, Chulalongkorn University, 12 October 2023.
• Kirby, J., Pittayaporn, P. (2023). Tone and voicing in Cao Bằng Tai: implications for tonal evolution and change. ICHL 2023 Workshop The diachrony of tone: connecting the field, Universal of Heidelberg, 8 September 2023.
• Sukanchanon, T., Burroni, F. (2023). Phonetic variation in the production of the Thai High tone: a generational effect or not? SEALS 2023, Chiangmai University, 16-18 May 2023.
• Maspong, S. (2023). Chronology of registrogenesis in Khmer: An analysis of poetry and inscriptions. SEALS 2023, Chiangmai University, 16-18 May 2023.
• Yang, C. (2023). Parallels between tone variation and tone change. Invited plenary, SEALS 2023, Chiangmai University, 16 May 2023.
• Dockum, R., Kirby, J. (2022). Aggregating tone data for Tai languages: Challenges and new horizons for studying tonal variation and change. NWAV-AP 7, Chulalongkorn University, 15 December 2022.
• Pittayawat, P., Kirby, J., Yang, C., Jitwiriyanont, S. (2022). Tone change across the lifespan: Change and stability in Tone 3 of King Rama IX. NWAV-AP 7, Chulalongkorn University, 15 December 2022.
• Yang, C., Stanford, J., Zhang, N., Luo, C. (2022). Intergenerational differences in the high rising tone of Lahu Na. NWAV-AP 7, Chulalongkorn University, 15 December 2022.
• Yang, C., Pittayaporn, P., Kirby, J. (2022). Tone chain shifts in Thai and Lalo. 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, University of Oxford, 2 August 2022.
• Gehrmann, R., Dockum, R. (2022). Which Came First, the Register or the Tone? Tonogenesis and the East Asian Voicing Shift. 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, University of Oxford, 2 August 2022.
• Kirby, J., Brunelle, M., Pittayaporn, P. (2022). Studying the evolution of laryngeal contrast: insights from Southeast Asia. Invited plenary, LabPhon18: Phonology in a Rapidly Changing World, 24 June 2022.
• Yang, C., Pittayaporn, P., Kirby, J., Jitwiriyanot, S. (2021). Change and stability in the tonal contours of King Rama IX of Thailand. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation, Sønderborg, Denmark, 8 December 2021.
• Gao, J. (2021). Recurrent sound change is drawn from a pool of systematic variation. Linguistics Colloqium, University of Konstanz, 28 October 2021.
• Kirby, J. (2021). Incorporating tone in the calculation of phonotactic probability. Eighteenth SIGMORPHON Workshop on Computational Phonology, Morphology, and Phonetics, Bangkok, 5 August 2021.
• Gao, J., Kirby, J. (2021). Perceptual equivalence between prevoicing and pitch: implications for sound change. 4th Phonetics and Phonology in Europe, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, 22 June 2021.
• Gao, J., Kirby, J. (2021). Perceptual equivalence between prevoicing and pitch: implications for sound change. Methoden und Ansätze moderner phonetischer Forschung, Institute for Phonetics and Speech Processing, LMU Munich, 26 May 2021.
• Kirby, J., Alves, M. (2021). Exploring statistical regularities in the syllable canon of Sino-Vietnamese loanword phonology. Workshop "Vietnamese Linguistics, Typology and Language Universals", Harvard Yenching Institute, 16 April 2021. Plots and tables Supplementary materials
• Gao, J. (2021). Individual differences in cue integration in coarticulation, and how they may impact sound change. Séminaires de Recherches en Phonétique et Phonologie, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle/Paris 3, 22 January 2021.
• Gehrmann, R., Dockum, R. (2021). The East Asian Voicing Shift and its role in the origins of tone and register. Poster presented at the the 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.
• Gao, J., Kirby, J. (2020). When is onset f0 perturbation enhanced? And what is enhancement after all? Phonetics/phonology workshop, U. Edinburgh. 30 October 2020.
• Hendrix, L. (2020). Perception of differences in tonal alignment depends on location relative to the nucleus-coda boundary. Poster presented at LabPhon 17, Vancouver, 7 July 2020.
• Kirby, J. (2020). Production and perception of onset F0: Insights from the EVOTONE project. UCL Speech Science Forum, 10 December 2020.
• Peralta, W. (2020). Place of articulation effects on the cue weighting of voicing. Poster presented at the LabPhon 17 Satellite Workshop "Cue Weighting: Thinking Outside The Box", Vancouver, 5 July 2020.
• Yang, C. (2020). Intermediate stages on the pathway from -ʔ to rising: Evidence from Ngwi (Loloish). Paper presented at the 53rd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Language and Linguistics, Oct. 2-4, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas.
• Gehrmann, R. (2019). On the origin of rime laryngealization in Ta’oiq. 8th International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics, The Myanmar Center, Faculty of Humanities, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
• Gehrmann, R., Kirby, J. (2019). The register phenomenon across Kuay dialects: analysis of the Huffman Katuic Audio Archives. 29th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, Japan.
• Yang, C. (2019). The emergence of rising tones in Ngwi. Paper presented at the 6th Workshop on Sino-Tibetan Languages of Southwest China, August 20-23, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.
• Yang, W., Yang, C. (2018). Reduction in Dali Nisu tone change-in-progress. Paper presented at TAL 2018 - 6th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, June 18-20, Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Data

All data generated by the EVOTONE project will be made available to the research community. Links to datasets related to individual papers can be found in the Supplementary Materials sections of the relevant publication. Links to more general datasets and corpora will be posted here as they become available. Our project GitHub repository is here.