<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 25 July 2009 - Volume 01<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);"><a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a></span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.24 (02) [EN]<br></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">from Heather Rendall </span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk" target="_blank">heatherrendall@tiscali.co.uk</a>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Ron wrote:Â Â is a "lilt" indicative of former tonality?</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">What about the difference in emphasis that we have (been left with) to distinguish between noun and verb<span> for instance.e.g. conTRIBute CONtribution</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>Could the emphasis have had its origins in tonality and that
placing of 'tone/emphasis' gave great scope to "grammatising" any
root idea?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>As languages developed could tonal languages meeting and mixing with atonal ones have converted tone to emphasis ?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>Just another thought</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>Heather</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span>Worcester UK<br><br>----------<br><br></span>From: <span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span></span><br>
Subject: <span class="gI">LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.22 (01) [EN]</span><br></p><div style="margin-left: 40px; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: Wesley Parish <span><<a href="http://uk.mc264.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=wes.parish@paradise.net.nz" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wes.parish@paradise.net.nz</a>></span><br>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2009.07.21 (01) [EN]<br><br>If I may butt in here - what sort of similarities are there between (Southern)<br>English, Northumbrian and Scottish?<br><br>We know that during the Old English period, the English kingdoms's influence<br>
stayed pretty much south of the border, so whatever political effect English<br>has had on Scottish, it would not have been important during the Danelagh<br>days.<br></div><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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.</p>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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.</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Derby</div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">England</div><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------<br><br>From: <span class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc.</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:roger.thijs@euro-support.be">roger.thijs@euro-support.be</a>></span></span><br>
Subject: <span class="gI">LL-L "Language history" 2009.07.24 (02) [EN]<br></span></p><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">* >
From: <span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc.</span> <span><<a href="mailto:roger.thijs@euro-support.be" target="_blank">roger.thijs@euro-support.be</a>></span><br>> Subject:
</font><font size="2">LL-L "Language
history" 2009.07.23 (02) [EN]<br></font><div class="im">
<div><font size="2">> I scanned
the article of Cajot and left it for a brief while on my website:</font></div>
<div><a href="http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/cajot/71.jpg" target="_blank"><font size="2">http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/cajot/71.jpg</font></a><br><font size="2">> through<br></font><a href="http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/cajot/88.jpg" target="_blank"><font size="2">http://www.euro-support.be/tmp/cajot/88.jpg</font></a></div>
</div></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><div class="im"><font size="2">** > From: R. F. Hahn <</font><a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank"><font size="2">sassisch@yahoo.com</font></a></div>
<font size="2">><br>> Subject: Language
history<div class="im"><br>> 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 <b>preserve</b> tonality that elsewhere has been
lost.</div></font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">When Cajot reported the case of the <strong>detonalzed
island</strong> at first, people were quite surprised, since it was
<strong>common belief tonality was typical for all of
Limburg</strong>.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">The fiirst report of this detonalized island was just a
paragraph  in:</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">José Cajot, De landen van Overmaze, een linguistische
benadering in vier hoofdstukken.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">p. 19-42 in vol 2 of the "Jaarboek van de Vereniging voor
Limburgse Dialect- en Naamkunde."</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">I think the reaction at the annual conference of the VLDN
motivated him for deepening in the subject.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Cajot actually is born in that detonalized island and was
surprised he lacked himself Limburgish tonality, so he started
investigating.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2"><strong>Loss of tonality</strong> does not make it easier to
acquire a municipal dialect for ousiders. I translate p. 86:</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">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 <strong>3 times more
vocal sounds than Dutch</strong>: 47 versus 16.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">(Zichen is a parish of the former municipality
Zichen-Zussen-Bolder, it is now part of Riemst, adjacent to the South-West of
Maastricht).</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">A cv of Cajot is on URL:</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2"><a href="http://www.toponymie-dialectologie.be/cv-cajot.html" target="_blank">http://www.toponymie-dialectologie.be/cv-cajot.html</a></font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">It only mentions some recent publications.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">I remember he started his study work with a PhD thesis about
the Ripuarian and Moselle-Franconian dialects at the Eastern border of
Belgium.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">PS. The "<strong>Landen van Overmaze</strong>", in French "les
pays d'Outre-Meuse" originally referred to the territories of the duchy of
Brabant at the East of the river Maas.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">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.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">A split is often made between the municipalities taking Dutch
as administrative language, the "<strong>Voerstreek</strong>"</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">and the municipalities who had German as church language
before WWII (now French), the "<strong>Plat-Dietse streek</strong>" (in German
literature <strong>Northern "Altbelgien")</strong></font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">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.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">In its South that detonalized pocket borders Wallonia,
with as major market town in that area: "<strong>Visé</strong>" (Dutch name
"Wezet")</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">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.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">The former Dutch princes Bernhard and Klaus could still be
recognized as being of German origin.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">The Belgian Royal family is easily recognized as French
speaking at home when they speak Dutch.</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Even when the Dutch these people speak is basically OK. Just
the accent, the pattern ......</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">The good thing is that this is an easy lever for cabaret
imitators (who somehow have a larger color patern in speach).</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Â </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Regards,</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="2">Roger</font></div><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------<br><br>From: Gary Taylor <<a href="mailto:gary_taylor_98@yahoo.com">gary_taylor_98@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Subject: L-Language History<br><br>Hi all<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Anyway those are my thoughts<br>
<br>
Gary<br><br>----------<br><br>From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
Subject: Language history<br><br>Thanks, everybody, for sharing your interesting thoughts. I was particularly thrilled to hear from you for a change, Gary.<br><br>Gary, I still think there are cases of acquiring tonality and cases of losing it.<br>
<br>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 <i>-e</i>, while in the case of Low Saxon loss of <i>-e</i> 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 <i>all</i> cases involving loss of <i>-e</i> after a voiced consonant are affected, thus also many feminine nouns such as <i>Lage</i> > <i>Lag'</i> 'situation' and <i>Siede > Sied'</i> 'silk' and also a few masculine nouns such as <i>Bade</i> > <i>Bad'</i> 'messenger'. It would be interesting to see if cognate singular forms have the falling tone in Limburgish.<br>
<br>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. <br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.)<br>
<br>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)?<br>
<br>So my point here is that under certain circumstances both creation and loss of tonality seem to be possible.<br><br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron<br>Seattle, USA<br>
</p><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br></p><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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