Meaning of catathesis | Babel Free

Definitions

Downstep or downdrift, particularly in non-tonal languages such as Japanese and English.

dated, rare

Examples

“The term ‘downstep’ was first used to refer to certain well-known phenomena in African tone languages that vaguely resemble the tonal implementation phenomenon we describe here. Since we are not in a position now to evaluate the precise extent of the formal similarity between the two classes of phenomena, we will use the term ‘catathesis’ only, withdrawing the term ‘downstep’ as it was used in Pierrehumbert (1980) and Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1985) out of deference to the Africanist usage.”

“The term “catathesis” rather than downstep was adopted for a time (Poser 1984; Beckman and Pierrehumbert 1986), in order to avoid the terminological conflicts inherent in the use of downdrift vs. downstep and automatic vs. non-automatic downstep [...]; usage has since reverted to, and settled on, downstep.”

“The pitch trajectories of these melodic patterns are not simply falling pitch sequences that may appear in any musical melody, but they exhibit the jagged character typical of linguistic downtrends triggered by catathesis.”

CEFR level