Re: When are Pitch-accents and Tonemes too bothersome?
| From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, April 15, 2004, 1:17 |
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Adam Walker scripsit:
> 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.
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.
--
John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com jcowan@reutershealth.com
All "isms" should be "wasms". --Abbie
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