Re: Marking tones in conlangs

Joseph B. wrote:
<<
I'm curious to know how others here mark tones in any tonal conlangs
they have created.
 >>

For one of my languages, Njaama, which claims to be a pitch-accent
language (but which may not be, now that I think I understand
better what a pitch-accent language is), there are only two tones:
high and low.  So for that it's straightforward: accent mark on the
high ones, no marking on the low ones.  There are certain lexemes
that end in a floating (unrealized) high tone.  This high tone gets
realized if the word that follows has a low tone.  This is marked
with a grave accent.

This is for the romanization system.  For the orthography, there
are five markers: One that indicates all tones in the word are high;
one that indicates all are low; another that indicates first come high
tones then low tones; another that first there are all low tones then
high tones.  Then there's a raised dot which occurs before the syllable
where there's a change in tone.  This system is detailed here:

http://dedalvs.free.fr/njaama/tone.html

Sheli has 6 tones (super high, high, mid, low, rising and falling),
so I simply numbered each of the tones for the romanization.
Then, for the website, I use the "greaterthan"sup"lessthan" tag
to raise the number above the writing line.  I'm not too pleased
with it, because there are too many numbers--kind of hard to
read.  But because of the vowels used in the language, using
diacritics proved impossible.  That's for the romanization.  I haven't
written down the orthography, but it's incredibly complex.
Essentially, there are no tone markers, save one which  marks
words with a mid tone.  By the shape of the word (and the type
of letters used), you can tell what tone takes what.  For example...

*pan > pan (content word = high tone.  N has special final form.)
*pan > pan (function word = mid tone.  N has special final form,
marked with raised dot.)
*pana > pan (super high tone.  N uses its medial form.)
*panas > pan (mid tone.  N uses medial form, marked with raised dot.)

That's an example.  When I finally do the orthography page for
Sheli, this system will be fully explained.  More general info is
here:

http://dedalvs.free.fr/sheli/tone.html

-David
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