Re: Accent Terminology Question

Jeff Jones wrote:
>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.
Oh, come now...... Your first post was  quite coherent, though I'm totally
at sea when it comes to "pitch accents".  Ancient Greek (where nobody really
knows how they were pronounced) and Lithuanian (I think Serbian too).  There
has been recent highly technical discussion on Cybalist (yahoogroups, you
might get some ideas from the archive of the past 10 days/2 wks. or so)
precisely about this matter....as nearly as I understand, it seems that
"circumflex accent" in Lith. mainly affects long V and diphthongs i.e.
bimoraic (which include Vplus resonant /n r l/ and maybe others), and it is
a _rising_ pitch. But it sounds like Lith. can also have steady pitch on
long V and diphthongs too.  (???)  "Circumflex" in anc.Gk. was the result,
among other things, of two vowels coalescing, so one could assume it was
either rising or falling.  So I think you can use whatever terminology you
prefer, as long as cirumflex involves a change in pitch.

(snip David's explanation.  Your answer shows that the lang. works the way
I'd assume........)
>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?

Don't confuse tones with pitches.  Tones are usually considered intrinsic to
a syllable, pitches are more an accentual/prosodic feature. There is, of
course, a certain amount of overlap (plus, I probably don't know what I'm
talking about.....)

>I'll try my original examples with numbers.
>
>circumflex: SAa(21)
>            te(1)KAe(21)
>            gif(1*)tom(1*)BOa(21)
>acute:      BU(2)ne(1)
>            JOU(22)del(1*)
>            ke(1)TON(2*)di(1)
>            MA(2)ru(1)ko(1)
>            GAS(2*)ti(1)res(1*)
>(3rd type): SUF(2*) TE(2)NE(2)KAA(22)ta(1)
>            CE(2) BOM(2*)MOu(21)
Understood.  But now-- what do the asterisks mean????
>
>The words in the 3rd set of examples would be:
>            suf(1*)
>            te(1)ne(1)KAA(22)ta(1)
>            ce(1)
>            bom(1*)MOu(21)
>when occurring separately. {suf} and {ce} are the actual 3rd type words;
>{tenekaata} and {bommou} are "acute" and "circumflex", respectively.
>
>Does all that help, or just multiply the confusion?
>
Yes. ;-)  What I find a little confusing is that VV in some cases is
circumflex (SAa), in others acute (teneKAAta).  What's going on?

Anyway-- this is very interesting.