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

--- Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> See, I don't see that there is a reasonable limit.
> If people can
> understand tones as phonemic, they carry essentially
> the same value as
> any other sound, and, as such, can be stretched out
> as much as you
> like.  The main obstacle would be the number of
> tones - you wouldn't
> really want to have many more than six, and
> certainly no more than ten.
Some Sinitic languages have more than six.  Taiwanese
only has six now, but historically had seven.  IIRC on
dialect of Wu has seven today, and Cantonese is
variously analyzed as having between six and nine
tones.  I can't think of any other examples at
present, but I seem to remember some language
somewhere with eleven.

Adam

=====
Indjindrud edjuebu ul Azor ad ul Sadoc. Indjindrud edjuebu ul Sadoc ad ul Acim.
Indjindrud edjuebu ul Acim ad ul Eliud. Indjindrud edjuebu ul Eliud ad ul
Eleazar. Indjindrud edjuebu ul Eleazar ad ul Matan. Indjindrud ul Matan ad ul
Jagovu. Indjindrud edjuebu ul Jagovu ad ul Jozevu ul maridu djal Maja dji fin
ninadud ul Jezu fin nicuamad Cristu.

Machu 1:14-16

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