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Re: Marking tones in conlangs

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 8, 2006, 4:27
I haven't used tone in my conlangs, mostly because I have no ability
to hear or make tonal distinctions.  But I like the diacritics for
Romanization.  I would give the differently-intoned vowels different
symbols in the native orthography.

To me, acute for rising and grave for falling make more sense visually
than the "arrows" of caron/circumflex. I like the idea of macron above
for high steady and macron below for low steady.  I would also put the
acute/grave below if there were a distinct low+rising or low+falling
tone.

On 2/7/06, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> Joseph B. wrote: > > I'm curious to know how others here mark tones in any tonal conlangs > > they have created. > > > > Thanks. > > If I've got a language with level tones, I'll use acute for high tone > and grave for low tone (in romanization). Double acutes and double > graves can be used for languages with more than 3 level tones (although > I don't have any of those yet...). In the native scripts, there are > distinct letters for vowel sounds with different tones (one letter for à > and a different letter for á, for instance). > > Contour tones in romanization would be marked with a circumflex > (falling) or wedge/caron (rising). If there's a difference between high > rising and low rising, the high rising tone is marked with double acute > and the low rising with a wedge. High falling is a circumflex and low > falling is a double grave. > > That's the general idea, but there are complications. Yasaro has a pitch > accent system, where the stressed vowel can be long or short, rising or > falling. The rising accent indicates a historical stress on the final > syllable, which shifted back to the next-to-last syllable (like in > Serbo-Croatian). I use an acute accent for the short rising stress and a > wedge for long rising; grave for short falling and circumflex for long > falling. >
-- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>