<div dir="ltr">Dear Mr. Cahill, Lourdes, Sasha and everyone else,<div><br></div><div>I attach a short (0:54) audio recording with a few of the raising (singular) vs. falling (plural) contour tone minimal pairs in Goizueta Basque that I told you about the other day, begotten by courtesy of Prof. Dr. Juan Joxe Zubiri, from the Public University of Navarre, a native speaker of Goizueta Basque himself. To answer your question, yes, he and all other Goizuetans can perfectly distinguish such minimal pairs.</div><div><br></div><div>Seeing as I do, however, that experts in Basque phonetics and phonology much greater than myself, such as Profs. Drs. Miren Lourdes Oñederra and Alexandre Arkhipov are present in this mailing list, I would recommend you to consult them, should you have any further questions regarding this variety.</div><div><br></div><div>Kind regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Iker Salaberri</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 27 September 2017 at 19:47, Mike Cahill <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mike_cahill@sil.org" target="_blank">mike_cahill@sil.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="m_-6349983044350141727WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">Dear Iker,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">Thank you – I had not heard of this at all. This is worth digging into some more to see what’s going on. As I mentioned, I’m particularly interested in cases where a singular noun and a plural noun differ only by tone. It sounds like that happens in the Goizueta Basque. Can the native speakers of Goizueta distinguish these, even if you can’t? If so, I would love to get a few sample recordings of the differences. And thanks also for the attachment – I’ll take a look at that a little later. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">All the best to you!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d">Mike</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1f497d"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif""> Iker Salaberri [mailto:<a href="mailto:ikersalaberri@gmail.com" target="_blank">ikersalaberri@gmail.<wbr>com</a>] <br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, September 27, 2017 3:45 AM<br><b>To:</b> Mike Cahill<span class=""><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] tone alone marking plural nouns?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><div><p class="MsoNormal">Dear Mr. Cahill,</p><div><div class="h5"><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Regarding your question about non-African languages that mark the singular/plural distinction solely by means of tone, perhaps the following data can be useful to you: </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">One dialect of Basque, that spoken in the town of Goizueta (High Navarre, in northern Spain), which belongs to the dialect group of High Navarrese but is very distinct (due mostly to its use of tone, which is an archaic feature inherited from older Basque), is notorious for marking the singular/plural distinction solely by means of contour tone in some classes of nouns. I myself am a native speaker of Standard Basque (which has no tone distinctions) and have friends who speak the Goizueta dialect, and I'm completely unable to tell the difference between singular and plural (unless I infer from context and verb agreement) when I speak with them and they use their dialect. </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, hardly any literature in English exists on this topic, but there are some things in Basque. I have taken the following examples from Hualde & Lujanbio (2008: 379, which I attach) i.e. the paradigms for gizon ''man'' and mendi ''mountain'' (where ´ = rising tone, ` = falling tone):</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> gizon ''man'' mendi ''mountain''</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">ABS gizóna gizònak mendía mendìk </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">ERG gizónak gizònak mendík mendìk</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">DAT gizónari gizònari mendíri mendìri </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">COM gizónakin gizònakin mendíkin mendìkin</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Kind regards,</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Iker Salaberri</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div></div></div><div><div class="h5"><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><div><p class="MsoNormal">On 26 September 2017 at 23:39, Mike Cahill <<a href="mailto:mike_cahill@sil.org" target="_blank">mike_cahill@sil.org</a>> wrote:</p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">Hi all,</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Starting with some research on marking tone in African orthographies, I’ve come across 37 languages that mark the singular and plural distinction of at least some of their nouns solely by tone. Interestingly, in about 2/3 of these so far, the plural has some sort of higher tone than the singular. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I’m looking for other examples of the same thing, particularly non-African. Wayne Leman sent me some Cheyenne examples. In Cheyenne, there seems no consistent pattern of either raising or lowering the tone of the plural – it’s all over the place. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I’m hoping some of you know of other languages that do this kind of thing. Of course, I’m not averse to hearing about African languages – it may be quite possible you know of a language I don’t have on my list yet. Please copy me directly (<a href="mailto:mike_cahill@sil.org" target="_blank">mike_cahill@sil.org</a>) as well as the list!</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Mike Cahill</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">******************************<wbr>******************************<wbr>**</p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Dr. Michael Cahill</p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Orthography Services Coordinator, SIL International </p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=7500+W.+Camp+Wisdom+Rd.+Dallas,+TX+75236+USA&entry=gmail&source=g">7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd.</a></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=7500+W.+Camp+Wisdom+Rd.+Dallas,+TX+75236+USA&entry=gmail&source=g">Dallas, TX 75236</a></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=7500+W.+Camp+Wisdom+Rd.+Dallas,+TX+75236+USA&entry=gmail&source=g">USA</a></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">email: <a href="mailto:mike_cahill@sil.org" target="_blank">mike_cahill@sil.org</a></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">phone: <a href="tel:(972)%20708-7632" target="_blank">972-708-7632</a></p><p style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">******************************<wbr>******************************<wbr>**</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.<wbr>org</a><br><a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.<wbr>org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></p></div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div></div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div>