Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China

Dan Sulani wrote:

> >Tone arises in the language accidentally based on the structure of the
> >syllable. It is comletely predictable.
>
>Fascintating. Could you recommend a source/sources from which
>one could learn about this in detail?
>Thanks.

This is a short blurb about tone I wrote for a paper on Na-Dene a few years
back. It summarizes the important information I've read on the topic and
gives the relevant references. Similar facts hold for things I've read
about Chinese, but I don't recall my Chinese sources on the matter.  My
knowledge of Zapotec comes from working with five people who do field work
on that family. I've never read anything about it in print, so I don't know
of any sources for Zapotecan phonology.

         When Sapir proposed his Na-Dene-Sino-Tibetan phylum, he presented
the presence of tone as part of the evidence.  Unfortunately for his
theory, comparative reconstruction cannot recover tone for the
proto-language of either "family" (Campbell 1999).  In fact, Haida is the
only member of Na-Dene to exhibit a well developed system; in all others
the conditions which gave rise to tone are still observable.
         Only some of the modern Athabaskan languages use pitch
phonemically, such as Navajo, Chipewyan, and Sarcee.  Of the Alaskan
Athabaskan languages, only Kutchin and Han have well developed tone systems
(Krauss 1963: 123).  Navajo is a part of the southern branch, Chipewyan the
northern.  Because tone is found in two geographically distant languages,
one might expect it to have an origin common to both tongues.  However,
Navajo and Chipewyan tones do not agree: where one is high the other is
usually low.  Any reconstruction would be complicated.  A simpler
explanation is found by relating the development of tone to the
environment.  For example, long full vowels received high tone in Navajo
unless followed by a nasal (Young and Morgan 1987: 265).  Chipewyan usually
has low tone in the same situation.  In this light, tone appears to be a
parallel development based on similar conditions.
         Eyak provides further evidence that tone is an innovation.  Rather
than tone, Eyak has a set of vowel modifiers including length,
glottalization, nasalization, and aspiration.  Interestingly, e cannot be
modified by nasalization.  During the development of this language from
PAE, nasals tended to disappear: initials simply lost the nasal feature,
while finals vanished completely.  This nasalization secondary feature may
be a result of this process, since it is not found in any of the
surrounding languages.  A lack of nasalization on e suggests that the vowel
developed after the de-nasalizing processes.
         Vowel modifiers are not unique to Eyak: the Tongass dialect of
Tlingit, found at the furthest point in the language area from Eyak, uses
identical features, barring nasalization, instead of the tones found in
other dialects.  The relationship between the tones and modifiers is very
direct: plain and aspirate yield low tone, glottalized and lengthened high
(Krauss 1979: XXX).  With this simple correspondence, and the distance from
Eyak, the most likely explanation is that tone developed from the
environment, just like in the Athabaskan languages.  It should be noted
that Coast Tsimshian, spoken near the Tongass area, also has similar
modifiers.

Campbell, Lyle.  1999.  "Typology, Areal Linguistics, Genetic Relationship,
How they Interact."  Lecture at UCLA on 19 April 1999.

Krauss, Michael E.  1963.  "Proto-Athapaskan-Eyak and the Problem of
Na-Dene: The Phonology" International Journal of American Linguistics
30(2):118-131.

Krauss, Michael E.  1979.  "Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut" in The Languages of
Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment.  Eds. Lyle Campbell
and Marianne Mithun.  Austin: University of Texas Press.

Young, Robert W. and William Morgan.  1987.  The Navajo Language: a Grammar
and Colloquial Dictionary.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.


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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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