Re: Grammatical tones

H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> writes:

> I don't know how plausible it is, but Ebisedian inflects gender by
> shifting the stressed (high-pitched) syllable. Of course, in many cases
> the consonant changes as well, but that is only because of emphasis.
I'm working on a similar thing for Senu Yivokuchi, only
the tone is lost in the modern language. I also wanted
to ask the experts whether this is plausible. It's quite
similar to the Ebisedian emphasis-triggered alternation
(I swear I didn't know!) but this is a human language
and E. is not...

The modern language has pairs like these:

    bir- 'know' / pir- 'wise man, sage'
    deka- 'painful' / teka- 'sick person, suffering one'

The language has a pitch accent which I thought might
come from a more complex tone system. One of these tones
was an extra-low, creaky-voiced tone (like one I've heard
Vietnamese has). This tone, applied on certain roots,
changes the meaning from a state/action to an agent/
undergoer. Now, is it likely to have creaky voice
become voicelessness, so as to arrive to the above
results? /_k/ is creaky voice, which supposedly would
spread:

    /bir/ + extra-low tone =
    /bi_kr/ or /b_ki_kr/ -> /pi_kr/ -> /pir/ (low pitch)

Is an intermediate stage plausible (e. g. creaky voice
becoming an intrusive glottal stop or glottalization,
as in /b_ki_kr/ -> /b?i_kr/ -> /p'i_kr/ or /bhi_kr/)?
The change from creaky voice to /?/ to /h/ would fit in
nicely, since /bh/ -> /p/ regularly. (SYV has "aspirated"
voiced stops alongside unvoiced ones, like PIE.)


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/index.html

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