Re: COMMENTS: Hiksilipsi Tone

Mike Karapcik tried to send this to the list but had some technical
difficulties, so I'm forwarding his message to the list with some
additional comments.

>       <Attempted de-lurking>
> | universals and charge ahead.  If anyone thinks I should
> | have more respect for the universal, please say so.
>
>       No! Must only use universals! Creativity and individual thought are
> *bad*!
>       ;-)
>       Besides, there are always exceptions. Many are in South America.
Well, good.  Besides, I had thought of a less exotic (to me)
exception--Thai.  It's traditionally described as monosyllabic, but a
great many of its compounds act like single words, semantically and
phonologically.

> | Onward.  Hiksilipsi has six tones.  The numbers indicate the
> | general shape of the contours for each tone,
> | high-falling   453
> | low-falling    231
>
>       So, there is a slight bend in the falling tones?
Yes.

> | Each word has a tone break in it,
> | before which may only occur upper tones, and
> | after which may only occur lower tones.
>
>       What marks the tone break? Are most words two syllables?
Nothing in particular marks the tone break, except in orthography (and
maybe not even there.  I haven't really worked out orthography yet.)  It's
idiosyncratic and lexically specified, like stress in English, and it may
come before or after the whole word.  For example, all of the following
would be valid tone patterns for a three-syllable word (the pipe marks
the tone break):

|lo-lo-lo     hi-|lo-lo     hi-hi-|lo     hi-hi-hi|

Many words have two syllables, but there are a great many words of three
or more syllables, especially in inflected forms.

> | The addition of an inherently upper-toned affix may cause
> | the lower-toned syllables before it to shift to their
> | upper-tone equivalent, according to the following chart:
>
>       Relating to the question above, is the last syllable low?
>       If there are multiple low vowels before the end, do they all shift?
The last syllable is usually, but not always, a lower tone.  All tones
have to shift if an upper-toned affix is added.  E.g.:

hi-|lo-lo + hi > hi-hi-hi-hi

> |   low(1) --> rising
> |   low(2) --> high
> | For historical reasons, the low tone may shift to either
> | a high tone or a rising tone.
>
>       Interesting. So, neologisms would always use one of the two? Or is
> it dependent on the letters at/near the end of the word?
I haven't gotten that far.  I think that low > high is more common, and
probably has been generalized.

> | I'd give examples, but I don't have my materials with me.
> | Anyway, I think this system is fairly naturalistic,
> | but still pretty creative.  What do others
> | think of this system's plausibility and design?
> |
> | Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
>
>       You mentioned in the beginning of the post (which I cut out, sorry)
> that you were trying to get away from a monosyllabic vocabulary. Will the
> average word have two or many syllables?
As I mentioned above, most words actually have more than two syllables,
and inflected forms can get very long indeed.

> One thing I thought of right away
> is that the language could sound very sing-songy with constant alteration
> between high and low tones. However, that is a purely personal aesthetic
> judgment on my part, and not a challenge to your creativity.
Aesthetic judgements are welcome.  I, too, want to avoid this, but I'll
have to wait until I have some more vocabulary to work with, to see what
comes out.

>       You have only one rising tone, and it's in the high range. Why not a
> high rising and low rising?
'Cause I said so.  And the historical development doesn't really give room
for it.  And I think six tones is enough--I don't want seven.

>       Is there tone clipping? From what I understand, in Mandarin and
> Cantonese, certain combinations of tones will change the initial tones for
> ease of pronunciation. For example (I hope I remember this correctly), if
> there are multiple rising tones in succession, the initial tone(s) is/are
> changed to high, and the last is a rising.
>       So, to use your sound scheme, tow rising tones, 345.345 (period
> marks a single "tone unit"), would become 555.345.
I have used this, though the term I'm familiar with is "tone sandhi."  I
don't have all of the rules for this worked out, but the example you gave
(345.345) would probably become 333.345.  The tones try to "connect" their
endpoints to each other.

>       Do you have any plans for this sort of phenomenon? Such as a high or
> mid followed by a low falling becoming a high falling then low falling?
>       (For that matter, what do you call this phenomenon? A "clipping"? A
> "tone diphthong"?)
Tone sandhi.

>       What sounds can be toned? In Yoruba, the letter "n" (I think only
> initial "n") can have a high, middle, or low tone, just like a vowel. This
> could potentially work with "m", and some tones could with other non-stop
> consonants (like "s").
Only vowels and glides [j w] can currently have tones.  There's no
syllabic consonants or codas that could be other possible tone carriers.

>       You mention affixes. Is there a rich system of verb conjugations and
> noun declensions? Or is most of this done through additional grammatical
> words? ("Clitics", I think they are called?)
A little of both.  The core grammatical system is prefix-dominant, but
there are a variety of clitic postpositions that usually cause the tone
shifting described above.

>
> ______________________________________
> Mike Karapcik *       Tampa, FL
> Network Analyst       *       USF campus
> H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Research Center
> ConlangCode: v1.1 CIT !h+ !u cG:M:R:S:G a+ y n30:3
> B+++/R:Wic A+ E+ N1 Is/d K ia-:+ p-- s- m o P S----
>
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

Reply