Prosodic Typology Revisited: Adding Macro-Rhythm

This paper introduces a new model of prosodic typology by adding a parameter called macro-rhythm to the two known prosodic parameters, types of prominence marking (head, head/edge, edge) and word prosody (stress, tone, lexical pitch accent). Macro-rhythm is a tonal rhythm (a sequence of H/L alternation) in an Intonation Phrase. It captures similarities and differences across languages in terms of pitch contours whether the contour is from a head tone (pitch accent, tone), an edge tone (phrasal/boundary tone), or both. Various criteria defining the degree of macro-rhythm are suggested.