Re: Accent Terminology Question

Replying to both David and Jeff.

Also a favor: for some reason, I don't get copies of my messages even
though my subscription settings are set that way. Could someone let
me know if this actually makes it to the list?

At 5:01 PM -0400 10/11/02, Jeff Jones wrote:
>Hi David,
>I almost didn't recognize this ... Obviously, my description was completely
>inadequate. I had to go back to the original post to see what I did wrong
>and still can't figure it out, but then I've never been good at using the
>English language for communication. More below ...
>
>On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:26:45 EDT, David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
>wrote:
>
>  > so that gets a low. That means each of the other syllables get a falling
>>  tone? (High to low is called falling.) So, if we use 1 for low and 2 for
>>  high, that'd be:
>>
>>bo(21)lo(21)kam(21)be(21)na(2)ta(1)
>
>It should be:
>
>bo(1)lo(1)kam(1*)be(1)na(2)ta(1)
>
>(or preferably, bo(1)lo(1)kam(1*)be(2)na(1)ta(1) )
>
>>Seems kind of odd...   Also breaks the rules of the contour principle.
(Aside to David: Moira Yip has published work on Chinese languages
which shows that contour tones can spread just like level tones. For
example, the Wu dialect shows the following tonal melodies, which can
be spread to forms of 2 to 4 syllables:

L   11-11   11-11-11   11-11-11-11
M   33-33   33-33-33   33-33-33-33
H   55-55   55-55-55   55-55-55-55
LH  24-55   24-55-55   24-55-55-55
HL  42-11   42-11-11   42-11-11-11
FR  42-24   42-24-24   42-24-24-24

The last one, which I've labelled FR (falling-rising) shows spreading
of a contour as a unit.)

>  >Anyway, for the spreading tone you're talking about...  Generally, tone
>>spreads from right to left.  I think it can go left to right, but I don't
>  >remember.
John Goldsmith proposed a default left-to-right spreading rule in his
1976 dissertation (he called it the Universal Association
Convention). I don't think I've seen tone languages which spread
tones to syllables from right to left as a general rule, though the
patterns of tune-text association in Gregorian Chant (which otherwise
behaves like a tone language) are right-to-left.

There are examples where one syllable is marked as accented, and the
tonal melody must anchor to it; if the accented syllable is not
leftmost, then you would get right-to-left spread of the initial tone.

>  >But anyway, generally if one tone has an underlying tone and a
>>different tone spreads to it, the result is a contour.  If it has no
>  >underlying tone, it takes the tone whole.
Languages will differ with respect to this feature. Not all languages
tolerate contour tones, so even if the conditions are right for
creating a contour, no contour will be created if there is a general
prohibition against them.

>That's something I didn't know. Does that mean that the normally low
>syllables that become high have no underlying tone? What is an underlying
>tone anyway?
Generally, if a language has two tones, the L will be the "default",
or the tone which is assigned to a syllable if that syllable isn't
otherwise assigned a H. If there is some tone spreading rule, these
unassigned syllables will easily take on the H value; they occur
often in the morphology -- a suffix will be toneless and will acquire
its tone either through spreading of a neighboring H or through the
default L insertion.

The idea of underlying tone is similar to the idea of any underlying
feature. The reason tones are so interesting, though, is that they
seem to behave independently of the segments on which they are
realized. That is, the quality of the vowel or consonant doesn't
matter; only that there is a syllable for the tone to be realized on.
Stress has similar properties.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                             Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"No theory can exclude everything that is wrong, poor, or even detestable, or
include everything that is right, good, or beautiful."    - Arnold Schoenberg

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