[Lingtyp] Tonal inventories: High vs Extra-High

[JOO, Ian [Student]]

Dear Laura,

so there seem to be four levels of pitch based on tones (or absence thereof):

  *   No tone: mid pitch or low pitch
  *   High tone: High pitch
  *   Extra-High tone: Extra high pitch

To me it seems that simply renaming the tones and the pitch levels would solve the problem:

  *   No tone: low pitch or extra low pitch
  *   Mid tone: Mid pitch
  *   High tone: High pitch

This would make no difference because low-mid-high are relative concepts, not absolute.

Regards,
Ian
On 27 Jan 2021, 11:25 PM +0800, ARNOLD Laura <Laura.Arnold at ed.ac.uk>, wrote:
Dear Ian,

An excellent question. The labels are phonetically motivated: toneless syllables are generally realised with mid pitch (not low), High syllables have higher pitch than this, and Extra-High higher than High. (Low pitch seems to be involved in phrase-final boundary marking on toneless syllables.) I haven't carried out a systematic analysis yet, but the Extra-High syllables are realised with an unusually high pitch to my ears, compared with what I'm used to in the area (Raja Ampat, Indonesia).

All the best,
Laura
________________________________
From: JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>
Sent: 27 January 2021 15:10
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>; ARNOLD Laura <Laura.Arnold at ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Tonal inventories: High vs Extra-High

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Dear Laura,

If a language has High tone, Extra-High tone, and No-tone (phonetically Low, I assume), then what would stop us from calling them Mid and High tones instead of High and Extra-High?

From Hong Kong,
Ian
On 27 Jan 2021, 11:06 PM +0800, ARNOLD Laura <Laura.Arnold at ed.ac.uk>, wrote:
Dear colleagues,

Does anyone know how frequent two-tone inventories contrasting only High and Extra-High are? I’m working with data from a language which has an inventory that can possibly be analysed this way (the two tones also contrast with toneless syllables). I suspect this is quite an unusual inventory, cross-linguistically – it would be helpful to confirm this. I would also be interested to hear about similar examples elsewhere in the world.

Many thanks,
Laura

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Laura Arnold – British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow
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