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

[Haspelmath, Martin]

On 22.03.20 17:50, Larry M. HYMAN wrote:
Adam - In my "catalogue" of 664 tone systems, I have 398 that have only two levels. Of these 85 have a LH tone. Of these 11 have been analyzed as having a contrast between LH and something else. A warning though: This is really an interpretation—for example, Fasu has been analyzed as having a /H/ vs. /L/ on its stressed syllable, but it could have been set up as /HL/ vs. /LH/ (probably other possibilities). The fewer tonal contrasts, the more room for interpretation. I'm skeptical that you *have to* analyze the language that way.

I think that this case is really instructive, because this apparent difficulty arises all the time in comparative grammar research:

Different "interpretations" (or "descriptions", or "analyses") are possible, which makes comparisons questionable. My own expertise is in morphosyntax rather than phonology, but I see it all the time. Many people think that databases like WALS are not reliable, because the "analyses" may not be the right ones.

Fortunately, there is a solution, I think:

The solution consists in distinguishing between (A) language-particular analyses/descriptions, and (B) uniform yardsticks for assessing ("measuring") similarities and differences between languages.

So what we'd need is a catalogue of tone systems that classifies tone languages not by "interpretations", but by uniform yardsticks. By "uniform", I mean "defined in the same way in all languages" – just like other measurement devices must be uniform across measured instances (e.g. measurement of global inflation rates, which must be based on a uniform basket of goods and services that works for all countries).

(Alternatively, if one ants to distinguish the twoone might suggest that languages are different from other social systems and should be compared in the manner of chemical elements – by first finding the common building blocks of all languages (= the innate features and architectures of UG), and then comparing languages on the basis of these building blocks. This has sometimes been attempted in generative grammar, but I have not seen any successes of this research programme.)

See this blogpost for more discussion of the two approaches: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2305

Best,
Martin

On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 9:15 AM Adam James Ross Tallman <ajrtallman at utexas.edu<mailto: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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--
Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19



--
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig
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