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

From:Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>
Date:Thursday, April 15, 2004, 1:38
John Cowan wrote:
> 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.
Wait, how can there be more tones at the emic level than at the etic level?

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John Cowan <cowan@...>