16.845, Sum: Unmarked Contour Tone

LINGUIST List linguist at linguistlist.org
Sun Mar 20 18:45:06 UTC 2005


LINGUIST List: Vol-16-845. Sun Mar 20 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.845, Sum: Unmarked Contour Tone

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1)
Date: 20-Mar-2005
From: Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho < jbrandao at idf.ext.jussieu.fr >
Subject: Unmarked Contour Tone 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 13:42:26
From: Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho < jbrandao at idf.ext.jussieu.fr >
Subject: Unmarked Contour Tone 
 

Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 16.588                        
                   
 

Regarding query: http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-588.html#1

Two weeks ago, I posted a summary of the six responses I had received
(http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-642.html).

Since then, four replies were added to the list. Thanks to:

John E. Koontz
Andrea Osburne
Roland Hemmauer
Yi Xu

* John E. Koontz adds to his first reply that Dakotan dialects - Teton or Lakota
and Santee-Sisseton or Dakota are the best known Siouan languages - [which have
H, L and a falling contour] are not generally described as having pitch accent,
and no description of any Siouan language from before the 1970s or so mentions
pitch accent, though essentially all Siouan languages other than Dakotan
accessible to modern investigation are now reported to have them. He would not
be surprised if Dakotan could be analyzed in these terms, too, but no one has
done so.

* Andrea Osburne reports an apparent counterexample to the point (1) above :
Zahao Laizo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Chin State, Burma, has three tones on
both short and long syllables : H, L, and rising.

References:
        
Osburne, Andrea 1975: A Transformational Analysis of Tone in the Verb System of
Zahao (Laizo) Chin. Doctoral diss., UMI.
        
Osburne, Andrea 1979: Segmental, suprasegmental, autosegmental : Contour tones.
Linguistic Analysis 5, pp. 183-193.

* Roland Hemmauer mentions the opposite case of an African language, Kanuri
(Nilo-Saharian), that seems to obey the regularity in (1) which is usually more
clearly attested by esatern Asian languages. Kanuri has a H, L and falling tone.
There is also a morphologically-restricted class of examples that show a rising
intonation. However, while the latter can easily be analyzed as a L-H sequence,
this is not always the case of the falling tone, which can be found in
particular on final short vowels. The Nilo-Saharian family might contain other
similar cases.
        
References:
        
Cyffer, Norbert 1998: A sketch of Kanuri. Köln: Köppe.
        
Lukas, Johannes 1967 (reprint from 1937): A Study of the Kanuri language.
Grammar and Vocabulary. Oxford: University Press.

* Finally, Yi Xu suggests to consider phonetic factors related to contour tones,
which might be useful to explain the putative universal in (1).
        
Reference:
        
Xu, Yi (to appear). Understanding tone from the perspective of production and
perception. Language and Linguistics.

Once again, thank you very much for your useful comments.

Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho
jbrandao at ext.jussieu.fr 

Linguistic Field(s): Phonology
                     Typology





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