Re: CONLANG pitch accent (was Re: NATLANG: pitch accent question)
From: | Stone Gordonssen <stonegordonssen@...> |
Date: | Friday, May 2, 2003, 14:42 |
> > Cool. I'd hardored no delusions that I'd created something > not found
>in a natlang somewhere.
>
>Hehe. We call it "anadewism" here in the List...
"anadewism"? Derived from ??
>Unfortunately, no. I read it in a book a couple of years ago, and this book
>was in my Mom's home in another city :( All I remember is that it happens
>somewhere in West Africa.
NP.
I already knew that tone & pitch were used in Hausa & Yoruba, though I've
done no more than read part way through grammars for each a decade ago to
lull myself to sleep. I'll try to remember to google for this when I've a
bit more free time. However, cursory look yielded the following:
"Like many West African languages, Gullah relies on short, loosely connected
sentences that lack many of the prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives,
participles, and adverbs that tie sentences together in English. Gullah
speakers express different meanings by varying tone and pitch and by using
nonverbal gestures such as body language. Listeners infer relationships
between sentences from individual usage and context."
Gullah was a pidgin, amongst slaves of West African ancestry living on the
islands off the coast of South Carolina, which evolved into a creole. What I
find pleasantly interesting is that:
1. I was born and reared in South Carolina, and
2. my Bes Dis'z uses tone plus affixes much the same way as Gullah uses
tone, pitch & body language,
even though I've never studied Gullah.
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