Re: a "natural language" ?

Hi!

Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> writes:
>...
> I'm not sure how tone sandhi works; probably something like:
> High followed by Low > Falling, or maybe mid-low, or high-mid.
Exactly so.  Mandarin has a few.  The one you need all the time is:

   3rd            before 3rd            -> 2nd
   falling-rising        falling-rising -> high-rising

In this rule, the resulting tones exist as phonemic tones as well,
so the rule can be written with normal tone numbers.  Of course,
this is not always the case, new tones may arise from a sandhi
rules.  E.g. in Mandarin:

   3rd  followed by end-of-word -> low-falling

(This happens in some dialects.)

ObConlang:
> I'll have to work on this for Gwr, probably re-inventing the wheel
> in the process :-))))
As long as its fun, I love to reinvent wheels especially when
programming... :-)

My conlang Qthen|gai also has a few tone sandhi rules:

   rising    after rising  -> high level
   mid level after rising  -> low level
   falling   after falling -> low level
   mid level after falling -> high level

The phonemic tones (tonemes) are:
   rising
   falling
   mid level

So high level and low level are allotones only.

**Henrik