SEMIOTIC POTENTIAL OF SUPRASEGMENTAL COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE: TONAL VARIATION

Abstract

The article addresses the issues of multimodal linguistics and deals with tones, the suprasegmental elements of language. Using examples from a few genetically unrelated and geographically distant tone languages, particularly Chinese and African languages, it examines the semiotic potential of tonal variation. It is argued that a wide range of lexical and grammatical meanings differentiated by tones have a common cognitive ground and function as tonal icons to encode binary oppositions relating size (‘big – small’, ‘wide – narrow’), temperature (‘hot- cold’), interactions and social relations (‘ask – answer’, ‘teacher – student’, ‘buy – sell’), temporal relations (‘past – present’), subjective attitudes and opinions (‘imperative – desirable’), etc. Being an important typological feature, tone marks various language (lexical and grammatical) and cognitive categories, such as dimensionality, multiplicity, tense, modality, negation. The fact that some of these categories, such as negation, do not find their match in reality provides a good evidence of a great interpretative function of tones. It is discovered that by tonal prosodic variation it is possible to encode both inherent, systemic and functional features of entities as they are cognized by sign-makers. It is noteworthy that lexical oppositions expressed by tone contour variation prevail, whereas tonal marking of grammatical oppositions is rarissimum. Lexical oppositions exploit certain tone variations (or vocalisations) which may be explained by the selectivity of speakers about the means of information encoding. In spite of a great range of encoded meanings, tonal variations have a common cognitive ground and embody binary but opposite concepts involving mutually exclusive, incommensurate, and compatible traits in objects, processes and other phenomena. Tonal colourings appear contrasting to mirror binary oppositions relevant to a limited scope of vocabulary. That is why tonal variations should be considered iconic signs as they are involved into signification processes when sign-makers prefer to mimetically represent the opposition in the signified by opposing the signifiers. In cognitive terms, due to cognisers’ strive for the conformity between cognitive and language structures, conceptually opposed entities are mirrored in language / speech oppositions.