LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.23 (02) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 23 July 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.23 (01) [EN]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Morphology
> Naturally, trying to follow your train of thought and taking it from
there, I arrived at the issue of *tone *in Scandinavian

Ron

1 - How do you explain and position Limburgish tonality?

Some resources:

Resources on Limburgish tonality, copy-pasted from URL:
http://www.limburgs.org/nl-li/methodology/other-methodology/research/T

Auteur(s)/Redactie:   Vaan, de, M.
Gansen titel:  Towards an explanation of the Franconian tone accents
Oetgaof:  in: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 51, 1999, 23-44.

Auteur(s)/Redactie:   Peters, J.
Gansen titel:  Tone and quantity in the Limburgian dialect of Neerpelt
Oetgaof:  Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic
Sciences, Saarbrücken, 6-10 August 2007.

Auteur(s)/Redactie:   Gussenhoven, C.
Gansen titel:  On the origin and development of the central Franconian tone
contrast
Oetgaof:  in: Lahiri A. (ed.), Analogy, levelling, markedness. Principles of
change in phonology and morphology, Berlin, 2000, 215-260

Auteur(s)/Redactie:   Gussenhoven, C.
Gansen titel:  Tone in Germanic: Comparing Limburgian with Swedish
Oetgaof:  in: Gunnar Fant, Hiroya Fujisaki, Jianfen Cao & Yi Xu (eds.) From
Traditional Phonology to Modern Speech Processing. Beijing: Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press, 2004, 129-136.

Auteur(s)/Redactie:   Gussenhoven, C.
Gansen titel:  Tone systems in Dutch Limburgian dialects
Oetgaof:  in: Shigeki Kaji (ed.), Proceedings of the symposium
Cross-Linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena: Tonogenesis, Typology, and
Related Topics. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Languages, Institute for
the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, 127-143.

Auteur(s)/Redactie:   Cajot, J.
Gansen titel:  Een toonloze enclave in polytoon gewaand gebied; Een les in
structurele fonologie?
Oetgaof:  in: Jaarboek 3 van de Verenging voor Limburgse Dialect- en
Naamkunde, Hasselt, 2001, 71-78

I only have the publication of Cajot at home. He shows that in an enclave
grouping some municipalities, at the South-East of Belgian Limburg adjacent
to the walloon language border, tonality is lost.

2 - Why did High-German miss a simplification process? There is sufficient
difference between Low and High German, and even between Southern German
dialects to see a potential for language simplicication.
Although many Limburgish speakers can make themself understood in the
Western Rhine area in Germany, mastering German Grammar is still an horror
though.

Regards,
Roger

---------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language history

Hi, Roger!

1 - How do you explain and position Limburgish tonality?

I've been mulling this one over for ages. We are basically talking about a
"simple" falling tone, or *sjtoettoen* ("pushing tone"),  in contrast with
the *sjleiptoen*

Low Saxon, too, has what they call *Slääptoon*, in contrast with the *
Stœttoon*. The *Slääptoon* is not so much a tone than a case of super-length
before a voiced consonant where a final *-e* has been dropped. The consonant
remained voiced, i.e. does not undergo the usual rule of final devoicing. In
other words, the word is treated as though the final *-e* is still there.
Its length comes to be added to the long vowel in the preceding syllable,
though, and this results in super-length.

Example:

Low Saxon:
*Stœttoon*: *Dag* [dax] 'day'
*Slääptoon: *(*Daage* [ˈdɒːɣe] >) *Dag' ~ Daag'* [dɒːˑɣ] (not *[dɒːx])
'days'
("dragging tone" or "drawl").

Limburgish:
*sjleiptoen*: *daag* [daː˦˨˧x] 'day'
*sjtoettoen: daag* [daː˦˨x] 'days'

So the distribution of "tones" is reversed. A vexing albeit interesting
situation. I am inclined to believe that deletion of *-e* plays a role in
both languages.

Consider also this Limburgish case (which has no analogy in Low Saxon, since
"bee" is *Imme > Imm*):

*sjtoettoen*:* **bie* [biː˦˨] 'bee'
*sjleiptoen*: *bie *[biː˦˨˧] 'by'

I am postulating that, while "absorption" of "deleted" *-e* led to the
*Slääptoon
*in Low Saxon, "absorption" of "deleted" *-e* led to the *sjtoettoen* in
Limburgish. Why the difference?

Here's my hunch:

In Low Saxon, the *-e* is underlying but undergoes deletion with the
exception of (unstressed short vowel) length, and the length is added to the
preceding vowel. This results in super-length (as also known in Estonian),
the term *Slääptoon* being a misnomer probably adopted from Netherlands and
Begian linguistics.

In Limburgish, length preservation and reallocation does not play a role but
pitch does, and it is my preliminary postulation that tones of two
consecutive syllables develope(d) into a contour tone when the second
syllable is deleted. In other words, the tone of the second, unstressed and
thus low, syllable is added to the remaining stressed and thus high
syllable:

**daage* [daː˦˨˧ɣ]+[ə˨] > [daː˦ɣ]+[ə˨] > [daː˦˨ɣ] > *daag* [daː˦˨x] 'days'
**bieë* [biː˦˨˧]+[ə˨] > [biː˦ɣ]+[ə˨] > *bie* [biː˦˨] 'bee'

What I am assuming here is that, when another syllable follows, in the first
syllable the Limburgish "plain" dipping countour tone (*sjleiptoen*) is
simplified to become a high tone, its originally first component.

This type of creating a single-syllable falling tone from a two-syllable
sequence of high+low is very common for instance among African languages
where contraction of low+high creates a rising tone, contraction of
high+low+high creates a dipping town, and contraction of low+high+low
creates a rising and falling tone. In other words, a sequence of more than
one syllable may be contracted to be come a single syllable, but the prosody
of the original seqence relains and results in contour tones.

Why does Limburgish have a dipping tone in a single syllable (not followed
by *-e*) rather than a simple falling tone as in related language varieties?
I don't know, but my hunch is that it has something to do with Rhenish
prosody as an areal feature. In the prosodies of Ripuarian and Alemannic
varieties, perhaps other varieties as well, there is a tendency toward using
contour tones or sequences of tonal height contrasts that is rather striking
to outsiders. Many of you may have noticed this in varieties of Swiss
Alemannic which to the unintiated tend to sound like tonal languages, not
unlike Scandinavian. Why is this, and why in the Central and Upper Rhine
areas? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps a substratum feature of Celtic
varieties that used to be spoken in those areas?

Might we go as far as saying that in Rhenish-colored Limburgish prosody has
been considered more important than in related languages such as Dutch, Low
Saxon and English in which deletion of *-e* did not result in contour tones?

The genesis of tonality is still pretty much a mystery. My proposal re
Limburgish may well explain one such case. Comparing it with the said
African cases that developed contour tones by way of contraction, we have to
note that these languages were all tonal to begin with, though originally
they had only the simple contrast of high and low. Was Limburgish thus
originally tonal? Not necessarily I'd say.

As for orthography, I would, if I may, suggest a following apostrophe to
indicate deletion of *-e* and thus presence of the falling tone; e.g.

*daag* (day) [< *daag]
*daag'* (days) [< *daage]

*bie *(by) [< *bie]
*bie' *(bee) [< *bieë]

*sjtein* (stone) [< *sjtein]
*sjtein'* (stones) [< *sjteine]

*graof *(grave) [< *graov]
*graof'* (ditch, hole by a road) [< *graove]

I said before that tonality tends to disappear in contact situations. I
believe I have to qualify this by saying that there are exceptions.

For example, Livonian, a Balto-Finnic language (thus related to Estonian and
Finnish, neither of which is tonal) is tonal, probably because of Latvian, a
tonal language that has been overshadowing it for a long time. Livonian has
been moribund for a long time. Could it be that, as its bases is being
eroded, it is increasingly based on Latvian?

Another example is, among all the non-tonal Slavic languages, the group of
South Slavic languages: Slovenian and Croatian-Serbian-Bosnian, while
closely related Bulgarian and Macedonian of the Balkans are not tonal?  All
right, Old Greek is tonal, and most early ancestors of the Slavs were
enslaved by Greeks. Could tonality in the said language be due to Greek
substrata? Then why is there no tonality in Bulgarian and especially
Macedonian, including the Slavic variety used in Northern Greece that are
geographically closest to Greek? Or have they lost tonality in concert with
Greek itself? Could tonality in Slovenian and Croatian-Serbian-Bosnian be
due to Celtic substrata?

We know very, very little about the Celtic languages of the European
continent. There are most certainly no phonological descriptions. We might
assume that there was a lot of diversity among them, being that they used to
be spread from Eastern Turkey to Galicia's and Portugal's coasts and from
Southern France to the Shetland Island and beyond to the Faroes and Iceland.
Note, however, that among the Lowlands varieties it was only the Saxon
language that was outside the former Celtic range (though some of the
varieties used in the Netherlands are at the edge of the Celtic range), and
the Saxon and Northern Frisian and Dutch areas were outside the Roman Empire
as well, while Rome's presence was particularly strong along the Rhine.

Roger further wrote:

2 - Why did High-German miss a simplification process?

I don't really know but would guess that it has something to do with the
grammar being based only on Southern and Central German varieties, all of
which had that sort of grammar, e.g. morphological distinction between
dative and accusative and between masculine, feminine and neuter. Low Saxon
("Low German") varieties were at that time considered constituting a
different language, which is why Martin Luther asked the Pomeranian Johannes
Bugenhagen to translate the Bible for the Saxons. Low Saxon later
contributed to the development of Standard German only in the form of
lexical material (actually a lot of it). It is only Missingsch and Northern
German developed from it that has some simplification along the lines of Low
Saxon. You must also bear in mind that at that time, education made people
focus on Latin and Greek as the ideal classical languages, and that
grammatical complexity was therefore considered desirable in a power
language.

By the way, speakers of Low Saxon and even speakers of Missingsch and also
speakers of East and North Frisian have the same problems with Standard
German that speakers of Dutch, Frisian and Limburgish have. (It is probably
similar, if not harder, to speakers of Afrikaans having to acquire active
command of Dutch.) It is only that speakers in Germany are more intensively
exposed to it, especially once they start going to school where it is the
only permissible language, unless they visit Sorbian or Danish schools, but
even then Standard German contents are considerable. These days they are
being bombarded by it since they are being exposed to
Standard-German-dominated media from an early age. I guess it's similar to
Scots-speaking children being bombarded by Scottish, English and American
English from an early age.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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