[Lingtyp] Inherently toneless morphemes in tone languages

Wed Aug 25 12:52:22 UTC 2021

Hi David,
I was just referring to the pattern of the final syllable being different from the preceding ones. It is also a matter of analysis in terms of how you look at the Min sandhi patterns. Many years ago Hashimoto Mantaro (Mantaro J. Hashimoto) argued for looking at them the other way around, i.e. seeing the sandhi tones as the basic tones and the so-called citation tones as the sandhi tones. He felt the sandhi circle you mentioned worked better that way. There was also a debate at that time (1980’s) about the historical development, as some argued the sandhi tones were the original tones, and there are interesting correlations, e.g. in my wife’s dialect (Quanzhou) the citation tones are largely the same as the sandhi tones in Taiwanese Hokkien.

All the best,
Randy
——
Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA 
Center for Language Sciences
Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai Campus
A302, Muduo Building, #18 Jinfeng Road, Zhuhai City, China

> On 25 Aug 2021, at 6:00 PM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
> 
> 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> <mailto: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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>>> -- 
>>> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
> 

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