Re: When are Pitch-accents and Tonemes too bothersome?

>>> downport@COMCAST.NET 4/14/2004 8:41:54 AM >>>
Dear Conlangers,

What's a "reasonable" amount of use for a pitch-accent?
Or, when does the use of pitch-accent start to feel
too unnatural or too bothersome?

Vilani apparently has six 'tones', which I take to mean
six pitch-accent tonal patterns (or uses, even); perhaps
the pitch-accents are tonemes. For example, nouns could
be case-marked using pitch, as in

   Shar'ik.      <= agent
   Shar.ik.      <= patient
   Shar.ik'      <= dative/benefactive obj

And verbs could be aspect-marked using pitch:

   Na.su' Shar.ik.   "Sharik is bothersome."
   Na.su. Shar.ik.   "Sharik is becoming bothersome."
   Na'su. Shar.ik.   "Sharik is becoming less bothersome."

   Na.da'su. Shar'ik. E.ne.ri.   "Sharik bothers Eneri."
   Na.da.su. Shar'ik. E.ne.ri.   "Sharik is beginning to bother Eneri."
   Na'da.su. Shar'ik. E.ne.ri.   "Sharik no longer bothers Eneri."
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It looks like you are just using 2 different "tonemes" (high & low)
here. So maybe I don't understand you when you say that there
are six...

I'm no expert on [linguistic] tones so I eagerly await more
knowledgeable responses. I would like to add a question of my
own to the query:

In languages with tones, are they used morphosyntactically or
contrastively more often? Are there languages that do both? I
ask because I recently decided to incorporate a high and low tone
contrast in emindahken, but I haven't decided whether to use
them morpho'ly or contrast'ly.
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>>> downport@COMCAST.NET 4/14/2004 8:41:54 AM >>>
My question is: how much is too much?  How much farther
can this be stretched out?  Or is it too stretched already?

I guess my root question is: given that this is intended to
be a human language, what is a reasonable limit of the amount
of semantic information that tonemes ought to carry?

Thank you,
Rob
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Thanks from me too,
James W.