[Lingtyp] languages with just lexical contour tones / bitonal units?

[Laura McPherson]

Hi Adam,

I've been working on the tone system of Poko (Skou, PNG) where the language
appears to have 0, L, M, H as tonal primitives, but L and H only ever
surface as part of complex melodies (LM, MH, LH), which are generally
realized as contour tones on monosyllabic roots and as tonal sequences on
disyllabic roots. M can occur as a melody of its own. While LM or MH could
at some (abstract) level be analyzed as simply L and H, on the surface, the
M appears to be phonologically real (for instance, a docked floating H on a
0 root is surface-distinct from a MH contour).

This isn't exactly the same as what you're asking about, but it is another
case of complex melodies or tones appearing in a language without the more
basic melodies.

Best,
Laura

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 12:15 PM Adam James Ross Tallman <
ajrtallman at utexas.edu> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> It's been suggested to me that the language I'm working on really makes a
> distinction between 0 vs. LH lexical marking, rather than 0 vs. H as I had
> previously thought. Looking at connected speech the evidence for this seems
> very strong and I'm starting to overcome my initial resilience to the
> proposal.
>
> Has this been proposed for any other language? (i.e. a language that just
> has 0, LH or 0, HL and no corresponding lexical Ls and Hs). I want to know
> what the evidence looks like for other language? In my case it's primarily
> phonetic and I'm not really sure what strictly phonological evidence would
> look like.
>
> Notice I'm not asking about pitch accents or intonational marking etc. But
> cases where it can be shown that the categories are really lexically
> specified.
>
> Help would be appreciated, I hope everyone is well and healthy.
>
> best,
>
> Adam
>
> --
> Adam J.R. Tallman
> PhD, University of Texas at Austin
> Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz
> ELDP -- Postdoctorante
> CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
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