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<div>Don - Thanks for your email, which is not controversial, although
it does raise an important question. In fact, it's not just in
databases that tones are ignored, but in all kinds of studies. As I
point out in my in-press Blackwell phonology handbook chapter
("Tone: Is it different?"), there are three persistent
"myths" about tone:</div>
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<div>1. Tone cannot be studied like segmental properties</div>
<div>2. Tone cannot express certain things (which segments can)</div>
<div>3. Tone is expendable</div>
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<div>Re #3, many studies not only fail to transcribe tone, but even
REMOVE tones from examples when they cite them, perhaps adding,
"the tones have been removed because they are irrelevant".
Important for phonologists is that<i> tone is like segmental phonology
in every way--only more so!</i> It can do things that segmental
phonology and stress can't, so if you want to know what the outer
limits are of phonology, you have to study tone.</div>
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<div>Luckily, there is a lot of renewed interest in tone (witness all
of the conferences and workshops over the past decade or so).</div>
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<div>Re your question, I don't know why tones are not included in some
databases--some of the problem may be one of interpretation: I have
what I call a "catalogue" of about 600 tone systems which I
have found hard to "normalize" as UPSID had to do with the
segmental inventories. It's not only hard, but it's hard to be
consistent, particularly if the information is incomplete.</div>
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<div>I think the person who can best answer is Ian Maddieson, who is
looking at correlations between tone and other phonological
properties.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Sorry not to be more helpful.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best, Larry</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 7:37 PM +0300 6/1/11, Don Killian wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Dear typologists,<br>
<br>
I apologize for the potentially controversial email, but I was
wondering one thing about the recent arguments with phoneme inventory
sizes, and would like some thoughts.<br>
<br>
Many of the arguments lately have been based off of databases such as
WALS or UPSID, which mention inventory sizes of consonants and vowels.
However, databases which include tones in phoneme inventories are
lacking, and I really am wondering how much this is affecting these
arguments. My current thought is that almost every single study
which has ignored tones in phoneme inventory questions has flawed
enough methodology that the conclusions are invalid, irrelevant of
whether they end up being true or not.<br>
<br>
Why are tones rarely included anywhere, neither in phoneme databases
nor arguments? I can't imagine almost any modern linguist would
argue that they are insignificant, but I also find that simply not
mentioning tone at all, or the fact that the databases are heavily
biased in favor of non-tonal languages, somewhat frustrating. If ka
and ke are significant, why not ká and kà? Adding tones to
inventory sizes would radically change the number of phonemes in quite
many languages.<br>
<br>
I sent an email to Søren about his own article in particular, but
I'd love to hear other comments or responses.<br>
<br>
Best Regards,<br>
<br>
Don<br>
--<br>
Don Killian<br>
Researcher in African Linguistics<br>
Department of Modern Languages<br>
PL 24 (Unioninkatu 40)<br>
FI-00014 University of Helsinki<br>
+358 (0)44 5016437</blockquote>
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