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

[Haspelmath, Martin]

That's great, Larry! Maybe you could write a paper about this for tone 
languages. (Or maybe you already have a paper about this?)

We had some discussions about "normalized concepts" (= uniform 
yardsticks for measurement) earlier (see, e.g., this 2012 blogpost about 
a "normalized" syllable concept: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/263).

And there was an interesting controversy between you and Kiparsky in the 
recent Hyman & Plank volume "Phonological typology", which I discussed 
here: https://dlc.hypotheses.org/1817

Kiparsky works with the traditional generative idea of uniform innate 
building blocks, and it seems that he doesn't even entertain the idea 
that one could have two different descriptions: one that takes into 
account all the language-particular generalizations, and one that is 
"normalized" (= allows uniform measurement).

Since your name is associated (at least by some older folks like me) 
with "generative phonology" (your 1975 textbook was very influential), I 
think you would be uniquely placed to explain the difference between 
innate building blocks, language-particular analyses, and comparison via 
normalized concepts.

Best,
Martin

On 23.03.20 17:26, Larry M. HYMAN wrote:
> Thanks, Martin. I am sensitive to what you wrote. In fact, in creating 
> my "catalogue", which I don't call a database since I prepared it more 
> as an "index" to the 665 tone systems so that I could find things, I 
> actually classified the tone systems both by the language particular 
> analysis AND by my attempted normalization.This is what allowed me to 
> find the examples so quickly (whichi of course would need to be 
> further scrutinized, as the descriptions also vary in quality). For 
> example, if a language was analyzed with H, L, LH, and HL tones, I 
> have a field that tells me there are two tone heights and another that 
> tells me that the author considered the system to have 4 
> tones--whereas as an Africanist I would call it 2 tones, since LH and 
> HL are combinations. I also have a separate field for contour tones 
> where I can find which languages have how many rising or falling tones 
> (up to five each!), according to the author again. I did have to 
> "translate" the descriptions that use numbers to Hs, Ls and Ms. For 
> example a system such as Blang [BLR] reported as 55 31 51 13 would be 
> listed in one field as such, but in my general inventory field as H L 
> HL LH,  with 2 heights in my tone height field, 4 tones in my # of 
> tones field, and 1F and 1R in the # of contour tones field. Best, Larry

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (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