[Lingtyp] Loss of tone

[Randy J. LaPolla]

Hi Rikker,
Not to diminish the importance of Martha’s work, but the term “tonoexodus” was used in two papers in the 1973 Consonant Types and Tones volume edited by Larry Hyman (Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistic No. 1): Matisoff, James A. "Tonogenesis in Southeast Asia" (for whom gaining and losing tones is a cyclical phenomenon), and Lea, Wayne A. "Segmental and suprasegmental influences on fundamental frequency contours". (Actually don’t have a copy of the latter, so can’t check if the term is used there, but Matisoff cites that article when he mentions the term.)

Randy
-----
Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （羅仁地）
Professor of Linguistics, with courtesy appointment in Chinese, School of Humanities 
Nanyang Technological University
HSS-03-45, 48 Nanyang Avenue | Singapore 639818
http://randylapolla.net/
Most recent books:
The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd Edition (2017)
https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324 <https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324>
Sino-Tibetan Linguistics (2018)
https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397 <https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397>



> On 8 Nov 2019, at 8:39 PM, Rikker Dockum <rikker.dockum at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ian,
> 
> The term “tonoexodus” was coined by Martha Ratliff (Ratliff 2015). In that paper she describes loss of lexical tone in clusters of atonal languages in Bantu and Atlantic, both in the otherwise tonal Niger-Congo family. The pathway is through reanalysis of a high frequency prominent tone as accent. And she describes another case of radical tone merger as a pathway to likely early stage tonoexodus in Nghe An Vietnamese. There are also many references you can follow up in there, too.
> 
> Here is the paper: 
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277816423_Tonoexodus_Tonogenesis_and_Tone_Change <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277816423_Tonoexodus_Tonogenesis_and_Tone_Change>
> 
> Best,
> Rikker Dockum
> 
> 
> —
> Rikker Dockum
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Linguistics Department
> Swarthmore College
> 
> On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 2:36 AM Joo, Ian <joo at shh.mpg.de <mailto:joo at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
> Dear fellow typologists,
> 
> Middle Korean had lexical tones, and they are well recorded in 15th century Korean written in Hangul, but in contemporary Korean, they are lost.
> Are there any other languages that experienced the loss of tone (tonothanasia?) whose written history keeps track of this loss?
> Or is Korean unique in this regard?
> 
> From Jena, Germany,
> Ian
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