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

[Larry M. HYMAN]

Thanks for the response--and the challenge, Martin. I reread the blogposts
to refresh my memory, all of which makes me think of Molière's, "C'est trop
de grâce que vous me faîtes!" I doubt I'll fully take up your challenge,
but yes, as I've indicated before, I agree with the distinctions you make,
although I'd like to make a small commentary on the following that you
wrote in one of the blogposts,

*Language-particular theories (=analyses) often make use of abstract
concepts (such as the syllable or the adjective) because language-internal
generalizations cannot be captured otherwise.*

where I wonder what "cannot be captured otherwise" might mean. I often find
myself saying that there is no knock-down argument in linguistics--nothing
like Crick and Watson's discovery of the double helix, which others could
then ignore only at their own peril! Coming back to linguistics, the no
knock-down argument is also partly due to another thing I find myself
lamenting too often, that it's too bad science has to be practiced by human
beings: If someone is determined to have a theory without syllables and
does not buy arguments of "insight", "simplicity" or "generality", they
will continue to deny the reality not only of syllables, but potentially of
any other useful innate or comparative linguistic concept (cf. Kiparsky's
discussion of this re the syllable on pp.77-78 in the Hyman & Plank
*Phonological
Typology* volume that you cite). Look at all of the deniers of consonant
and vowel segments who blame our use of these on "alphabetism"! As I point
out in the 2008 "Universals in Phonology" article you cite, "claimants [for
or against universals] should make clear what they would accept as a
potential counterexample" (p.109). If it has already been pre-determined
that there can be no counterexamples, then the claim is not interesting.

On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 4:06 AM Haspelmath, Martin <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>
wrote:

> 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
>
>

-- 
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
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