[Lingtyp] Inherently toneless morphemes in tone languages

Wed Aug 25 10:00:44 UTC 2021

Randy,

I'm not sure I see the connection.  Synchronically, Singlish is quite 
distinct from Southern Min with respect to many of its basic 
morphosyntactic patterns (and not just in the direction of being more 
like Standard English).  With regard to tonality, in Singlish apparent 
lexical tone (if one analyzes it that way) is specific to the 
phrase-final *particles*, whereas in Southern Min, the citation tone 
appears on phrase-final syllables generally — which are typically 
content morphemes though they also be grammatical morphemes.  Plus, you 
get similar apparently tonal effects in Malay/Indonesian dialects that 
have not been in intensive contact with Southern Min.

If anything, Southern Min tone sandhi bears a greater resemblance to the 
pattern I mentioned yesterday in Moor (Austronesian, West Papua), where, 
in a phonological phrase, the final syllable bears lexical tone, while 
pre-final syllables are toneless.  However, for this analogy to work, 
you have to identify Moor pre-final toneless syllables with Southern Min 
pre-final sandhi syllables, and from what I recollect, there is some 
debate in the literature with regard to whether Southern Min sandhi 
tones are appropriately analyzed as "reductions" of the corresponding 
citation tones. (Logically, in those Southern Min dialects that have a 
complete tone sandhi circle eg. A > B > C > D > A, they can't all be 
reductions.)

David

On 25/08/2021 07:55, Randy LaPolla wrote:
> Hi David,
> That is quite interesting. Singlish is historically basically Southern 
> Min Chinese spoken with English words, and Southern Min has a tone 
> sandhi pattern that is usually analyzed as having only the last 
> syllable in a phrase as the citation tone, and all of the preceding 
> tones in the sandhi tones, a pattern that has some similarity with the 
> one you mentioned. I wonder if there is a connection.
>
> Randy
>
> Sent from my phone
>
>> On 24 Aug 2021, at 11:52 PM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>> Dear Ratanon and all,
>>
>>
>> Oddly, some non-tonal languages of Southeast Asia seem to exhibit a 
>> mirror-image pattern to the one you describe; there it seems as 
>> though the sentence-final particles are the only forms that ARE 
>> tonal, though whether this is really lexical tone as opposed to 
>> intonation remains an open question. This has been argued for 
>> Singlish (colloquial Singaporean English), and I think could 
>> plausibly also be argued for some varieties of Malay.
>>
>>
>> I suspect that some languages of the Sough Halmahera West New Guinea 
>> subgroup of Austronesian might also fit the bill, albeit in different 
>> ways.  For Moor, David Kamholz has argued that lexical tone only 
>> shows up on the final syllable of the phonological phrase, all other 
>> syllables remaining toneless.  And for Roon, I have described a tonal 
>> distinction in a single inflectional paradigm involving inalienable 
>> possession, while all the rest of the language, way over 99% of it, 
>> lacks lexical tone.
>>
>>
>> All of the above examples are thus perhaps more appropriately 
>> described as "inherently tonal morphemes in non-tone languages" ...
>>
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 24/08/2021 15:39, Ratanon Jiamsundutsadee wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> Is anyone familiar with tone languages which are analyzed to have 
>>> "toneless" morphemes, i.e. not specified for tone in the underlying 
>>> representation?
>>>
>>> For example, some final particles in Thai have been analyzed to be 
>>> inherently toneless, exhibiting their surface pitch contour only due 
>>> to their linkage to intonational-phrase-final boundary tones.
>>>
>>> (1) rāw  cʰɔ̂ɔp  tàw kʰa-L%
>>>      1SG like  turtle  FP
>>>      'I like turtles.' (/kʰa/ = formal, female speaking)
>>>
>>> (2) nâarák máj  kʰa-H%
>>>       cute     FP    FP
>>>      'Aren't they cute?' (/máj/ = neutral interrogative; /kʰa/ = 
>>> formal, female speaking)
>>>
>>> Traditionally, /kʰá/ and /kʰâ~kʰà/ would be treated as fully 
>>> specified for tone and distinct from each other. So far, I have 
>>> encountered somewhat similar accounts (of certain morphemes, 
>>> particularly final particles, which are said to be tonally 
>>> unspecified) in Mandarin and Cantonese.
>>>
>>> Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>> Ratanon Jiamsundutsadee
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>> -- 
>> David Gil
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>>
>> Email:gil at shh.mpg.de
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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-- 
David Gil

Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany

Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091

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