LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.25 (01) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 25 July 2009 - Volume 01
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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.24 (02) [EN]

from Heather Rendall  heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk

Ron wrote:   is a "lilt" indicative of former tonality?

What about the difference in emphasis that we have (been left with) to
distinguish between noun and verb for instance.e.g. conTRIBute CONtribution

Could the emphasis have had its origins in tonality and that placing of
'tone/emphasis' gave great scope to "grammatising" any root idea?

As languages developed could tonal languages meeting and mixing with atonal
ones have converted tone to emphasis ?

Just another thought

Heather

Worcester UK

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.22 (01) [EN]
From: Wesley Parish
<wes.parish at paradise.net.nz<http://uk.mc264.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=wes.parish@paradise.net.nz>
>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.21 (01) [EN]

If I may butt in here - what sort of similarities are there between
(Southern)
English, Northumbrian and Scottish?

We know that during the Old English period, the English kingdoms's influence
stayed pretty much south of the border, so whatever political effect English
has had on Scottish, it would not have been important during the Danelagh
days.

Depends on what you mean by "English", and which border.  Bede clearly
thought of the Northhymbran as part of the "English", and the kingdom of
Northumbria extended far to the north of the modern political boundary.
Modern Scots and English probably differ no more than the various "dialects"
of Old English at the time anyway.  Danish influence extended well up the
east coast; Norwegian influence was much more in the far north and west -
including northwest England, though in that case it was second or third
generation Irish Norse rather than direct immigrants from Norway.

Paul
Derby
England

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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.24 (02) [EN]
* > From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
> Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.23 (02) [EN]
> I scanned the article of Cajot and left it for a brief while on my
website:
http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/cajot/71.jpg
> through
http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/cajot/88.jpg

** > From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com
>
> Subject: Language history
> Roger, I have copied the material you kindly posted, and I look forward to
studying it when I get time. Just by skimming across it I get the impression
that Cajot's thesis is that certain Frankish varieties are more conservative
in that they *preserve* tonality that elsewhere has been lost.

When Cajot reported the case of the *detonalzed island* at first, people
were quite surprised, since it was *common belief tonality was typical for
all of Limburg*.
The fiirst report of this detonalized island was just a paragraph  in:
José Cajot, De landen van Overmaze, een linguistische benadering in vier
hoofdstukken.
p. 19-42 in vol 2 of the "Jaarboek van de Vereniging voor Limburgse Dialect-
en Naamkunde."

I think the reaction at the annual conference of the VLDN motivated him for
deepening in the subject.
Cajot actually is born in that detonalized island and was surprised he
lacked himself Limburgish tonality, so he started investigating.

*Loss of tonality* does not make it easier to acquire a municipal dialect
for ousiders. I translate p. 86:
As a result of the disappearance of tonality the number of system-sounds
("fonemes") in this area is significantly increased. The dialect of Zichen
e.g. has 14 long and 14 short vowels, 17 diphthongs, one triphthong and the
sjwa. This means that the dialect of Zichen has *3 times more vocal sounds
than Dutch*: 47 versus 16.
(Zichen is a parish of the former municipality Zichen-Zussen-Bolder, it is
now part of Riemst, adjacent to the South-West of Maastricht).

A cv of Cajot is on URL:
http://www.toponymie-dialectologie.be/cv-cajot.html
It only mentions some recent publications.
I remember he started his study work with a PhD thesis about the Ripuarian
and Moselle-Franconian dialects at the Eastern border of Belgium.

PS. The "*Landen van Overmaze*", in French "les pays d'Outre-Meuse"
originally referred to the territories of the duchy of Brabant at the East
of the river Maas.
In Dutch linguistics it has been used for the Limburgish speaking
municipalities in Belgium, enclaved at the North-East of the province of
Liège bordering the South of Netherlands Limburg.
A split is often made between the municipalities taking Dutch as
administrative language, the "*Voerstreek*"
and the municipalities who had German as church language before WWII (now
French), the "*Plat-Dietse streek*" (in German literature *Northern
"Altbelgien")*

Only Moelingen of the Voerstreek is included in the detonalized pocket that
Cajot descrbes. Further in it are Eijsden and Grondsveld of Netherlands
Limburg and some municipalities at the West bank of the river Maas.
In its South that detonalized pocket borders Wallonia, with as major market
town in that area: "*Visé*" (Dutch name "Wezet")

Comment: why is it so difficult to acquire the sound of a region that good
that one cannot distinguish one's speach from native speakers.
The former Dutch princes Bernhard and Klaus could still be recognized as
being of German origin.
The Belgian Royal family is easily recognized as French speaking at home
when they speak Dutch.
Even when the Dutch these people speak is basically OK. Just the accent, the
pattern ......
The good thing is that this is an easy lever for cabaret imitators (who
somehow have a larger color patern in speach).

Regards,
Roger

----------

From: Gary Taylor <gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com>
Subject: L-Language History

Hi all

just a quick note on tonality, I seem to remember once reading that tonality
tends to arise with time rather than get lost (although I can't find my
source now), so my guess is that the fact that there are tonal Indo-European
languages would indicate more that these are independent inovations rather
than residual features. The comparison of the differences in the tonal
features in various IE languages would probably show that they are
unrelated, although I don't know of such a study.

It makes sense that tones arise. All languages have some form of sentence
intonation. Through loss of weak syllables, there remains a need to
differentiate between different words, such as the case for singular and
plural of 'day' which Ron mentioned. The final -e is lost but plurality is
still an important grammatical feature, so needs to be retained. The tonal
differences were probably due to the vowel being in an open or closed
syllable, and only became significant and 'phonologised' with the loss of
the final -e.

I also remember reading that Chinese and a lot of South East Asian languages
didn't used to be tonal, and developed their tones due to weakenings of
final consonants. The only way a language which is tonal would become
non-tonal is if the grammatical feature which the tonality represents
becomes non-relevant. If in the case of Chinese where a word such as 'ma'
could have four different tones and four different meanings (quoting from
memory so may be wrong here) then I don't think it will lose its tonality.
If in Limburgish plurality was lost then the tonal differences may ebb too,
but to lose a piece of grammar is far-less likely than sound-changes.

Anyway those are my thoughts

Gary

----------

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

Thanks, everybody, for sharing your interesting thoughts. I was particularly
thrilled to hear from you for a change, Gary.

Gary, I still think there are cases of acquiring tonality and cases of
losing it.

I have a strong hunch that in the case of Limburgish tonality came to be
created "sporadically" as compensation for the loss of unstressed and thus
low-tone *-e*, while in the case of Low Saxon loss of *-e* brought about
compensation by way of length reassignment (super-length). As you said,
plural marking is a grammatical device. Limburgish substituted by preserving
the original prosody of two syllables ($high$low$) and redistributing it
over the remaining single syllable ($high+low$). So this way tone rather
than a suffix marks the plural form. In the case of Low Saxon, a sequence of
a long stressed syllable (or diphthong) and a short unstressed syllable
($CVV$CV$) comes to be contracted to a single syllable but preserves the
length of the original two syllables ($CVVVC$), thus creating super-length
as a plural marker. However, in this case it goes beyond plural marking in
that *all* cases involving loss of *-e* after a voiced consonant are
affected, thus also many feminine nouns such as *Lage* > *Lag'* 'situation'
and *Siede > Sied'* 'silk' and also a few masculine nouns such as *Bade* > *
Bad'* 'messenger'. It would be interesting to see if cognate singular forms
have the falling tone in Limburgish.

Not terribly unlike these cases, Punjabi, among usually non-tonal Indo-Aryan
languages, developed tones, three of them in this case. Apparently, this was
caused by the loss of the voiced aspirated ("murmured") series of consonants
manifesting itself as a low tone in following syllables.

As for super-length in Low Saxon, it is now becoming a thing of the past,
being preserved only among native speakers or conscientious second language
speakers of those dialects in which it is an inherent feature. Since it is
rarely taught (most native speakers being not intellectually cognizant of
it) and is rarely indicated orthographically it has come to be ignored among
most second language speakers. Thus we are speaking about a loss situation.
This loss does not seem to bring about much in the way of comprehension
problems in most contexts.

If what Cajot considers tonality loss in the case of Limburgish is really
loss or preserved inherent absence of tonality, I cannot say. However, I
consider loss possible, just as loss of super-length is possible.

As I mentioned, some dialects of Bengali, which appears to be inherently
non-tonal, have become tonal, and these happen to be spoken in contact with
tonal Sino-Tibetan languages, clearly have Sino-Tibetan substrata. So, it
appears that substratum tonality can be preserved.

Intensive contacts with non-tonal languages apparently can cause the loss of
tonality. I mentioned the case of reduction and even loss of tones in
Mandarin varieties on apparent Altaic substrata in areas outside the
original Chinese-speaking region. Is the absence of tonality in Amdo and
Ladakhi Tibetan a case of loss or of preservation of original non-tonality
in contrast with tonal Central and Kham Tibetan? Since Amdo and Ladakhi
Tibetan are spoken in more multi-ethnic and multi-lingual regions than are
Central and Kham Tibetan, I am inclined to assume that we are dealing with
loss of tonality in contact with non-tonal (Altaic) languages.

As Chinese languages underwent simplification of syllable structure, it may
well be that, as you mentioned, tonality was introduced to compensate for
the creation of homophonous monosyllabic words. However, in the meantime
numerous monosyllabic words have been replaced by compound words, and this,
too, improves listening comprehension. I know several non-native speakers of
Chinese, both foreigners and linguistic minority members, that never really
got the hang of Chinese tones and speak Mandarin pretty much non-tonally.
This causes hardly any problems once listeners get used to it. (Problems
only arise with the mention of new terms and with names, in which case the
old methods of describing the characters or writing them in the air usually
do the trick.)

Modern Greek is not tonal, Ancient Greek is. Whatever may have caused loss
of Greek tone (perhaps massive ethnic absorption), the fact remains that
tonality is lost here. Might this have been favored by the fact that Ancient
Greek tones play no fundamental grammatical role but merely add to the
identity of roots, the way it seems to be in South Slavic and Baltic (the
former having had Greek contacts and the latter being particularly closely
related to Greek)?

So my point here is that under certain circumstances both creation and loss
of tonality seem to be possible.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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