Re: Accent Terminology Question

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 19:38:13 -0400, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

>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".
Thanks, Roger. I never know when I'm coherent.

> 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....
Actually, I've been reading it already, but I can't say I understand much;
too many references to so-and-so's law without explanation ....

> 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.
And apparently, it's the resonant that gets the stres, not the preceding
vowel.

> 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.
Good, that's what I had in mind with "circumflex". My grasp on ancient
Greek is somewhat less shaky than with Baltic. Considering how complicated
Greek is, that says a lot about Lithuanian.

>(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'd thought it was something like that, but ???? .... I'll leave "tones"
out of it.

>>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????
Whoops -- I should have left those out, they just indicate that the moric
consonants don't have recognized pitch.

>>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.
It helps multiply the confusion?

Circumflex occurs only on final VV syllables, and acute never. The idea is
to have a high to low transition whenever possible, and to reduce possible
word boundary ambiguity (but not completely), while accomodating other
factors. Example:

baa(21) # ke(1)ton(2)di(1) vs.
baa(22)ke(1) # ton(2)di(1) vs.
baa(11)ke(1)ton(2)di(1)

Well, I'm glad it's interesting!

Jeff