Suprasegmental phonology

Abstract This chapter examines stress, tone, and intonation in western Austronesian languages. Apart from summarizing what is known about intonation in the area under scrutiny, the chapter is primarily concerned with stress systems. A four-way areal typology is proposed to account for the variation across the area. One major parameter of variation appears to be the regularities of the association between phrase-marking edge tone combinations – so far found in all languages investigated – and the segmental string. This association may be highly variable (as in the Java prototype), target the penultimate syllable (as in the Eastern prototype), or the final syllable (as in the Philippine and Western Rim…