[Lingtyp] Loss of tone

[fcosw5]

I don't know about a term for (diachronic) tone-change being 'unnecessary'.  Middle Chinese had a 4-tone system; modern Mandarin has a 4-tone system -- but *not the same tones*.  Other 'dialects' of Chinese (likewise descended from Middle Chinese) have anywhere from 5 to 9 tones in their tonal systems.  Wouldn't these be authentic examples of diachronic tone-change?
 
Best,
Steven Schaufele

-----Original message-----
From:Rikker Dockum<rikker.dockum at gmail.com>
To:Randy J. LaPolla<randy.lapolla at gmail.com>
Cc:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2019 21:30:05
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Loss of tone

Hi Randy,

Right you are, thanks for the correction! I had misremembered. Since Matisoff used “tonogenesis” in a couple of papers before 1973, as early as 1970 if memory serves, he is a likely candidate and known word coiner, though in any case, “tonogenesis” and “tonoexodus” form a clever pair.

I’ve sometimes lamented that we don’t have a similar term for “tone change” that refers specifically to diachronic change within established tone systems, but it’s probably unnecessary. Or perhaps just that everything I brainstormed sounded terrible!

That entire 1973 volume is available here: 
https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/56/docs/SCOPIL1-consonant_types_and_tone.pdf

Best,
Rikker 

On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 8:15 AM Randy J. LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com> wrote:

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
Sino-Tibetan Linguistics (2018)
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

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> 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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