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

Garth Wallace scripsit:
> >Cantonese has 11 tones at the emic level: split ping, shang, and qu
> >tones; high, medium, and low ru tones; and two "changed" (morphemic)
> >tones.  Etically there are only six, or seven in older usage.
>
> Wait, how can there be more tones at the emic level than at the etic
> level?
That's not too difficult: two are neutralized in certain contexts
(but two different ones, or we couldn't tell there were two). Or, for
those of a more morphological slant (like me),  some words simply
have tonal allomorphs that are triggered by some phonological environment.

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