Global and local pitch level in Caabe is not predicted by the frequency code

The tendency for questions to be realized with a high or rising pitch has long been held as a (near-) universal property of world languages (Bolinger, 1978; Ohala, 1984, a.o) and even lead to ethological theories as the “Biological Codes,” in particular the “Frequency Code” (Gussenhoven, 2002). Rialland (2007,2009) documented a variety of languages found along the Sudanic Belt in Africa, which realize their questions with a terminal non-high pitch (aka “Lax Prosody”), characterized by longer prefinal duration. Also, in a study of five Ghanaian languages, Cahill (2013) found that the overall pitch level in statements is higher than that of questions. In the present paper, we present findings from a production study involving 24 native speakers of Ede Chaabe (Niger-Congo) to answer the questions: (1) do global and local f0 levels differ as a function of modality? and if so, (2) in which direction? Preliminary results show that questions in Ede Chaabe, contra the Frequency Code hypothesis, present both a local final fall as well as a significantly lower overall pitch level compared to statements. Furthermore, tonal specification interacted with intonation specification, in that L tone utterances did not show a significant level difference induced by modality.