Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China

Hmong is also one of the Chinese minority languages.  I believe in China
they are the Miao.  (Though I could be wrong about which tribe they are.)

I don't recall ever hearing that any of the Turkic or Mongolian langs in
China are tonal.  I don't think Sogdian was tonal, nor Tocharian.  Korean
isn't.  Tibetan is.  I thnk all the minority langs in Sichuan, Yunnan,
Guangxi, Guangdong, etc. ARE tonal.  But I'm no expert.  Was Manchu tonal??

Adam

>From: E-Ching Ng <e-ching.ng@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>Subject: Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China
>Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 17:57:01 -0500
>
>Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> >Typically, the loss of a voicing contrast in initial consonants results
> >in a phonemic high/low tone distinction, with earlier voiced initial
> >voiced syllables developing low tone ... while the depletion of the
> >inventory of the inventory of possible syllable-final consonants results
> >in a distinction between open syllables and those ending in a glottal
> >stop or constriction, with the latter eventually giving rise to rising
> >or falling tones"
>
>That points me towards getting contours for my language, which is terribly
>helpful.  This is "The World's Major Languages" edited by Bernard Comrie,
>right?  Thanks Nik!
>
> >>I'm inventing a new Indo-European subfamily for a class project
> >
> >For a class project?  Awesome!  What's the project?
>
>[chuckle]  Well - the project is to invent a new Indo-European subfamily.
>:p  The class is Intro to Indo-European linguistics.  Every week we do
>another subfamily (last week was Armenian, next week is Tocharian) and
>another quick topic in historical linguistics (e.g. semantic change,
>analogical change) or the structure of Indo-European (like de Saussure and
>his laryngeals).  I was thinking of projecting English 500 years into the
>future as my project, and the prof was fine with that, but it would have
>had embarrassingly little to do with Indo-European linguistics.
>
> > > If there are other areal phonological features that anyone thinks
> > > might be worth including
> >
> >Simple syllable structure, for one.  In fact, that simplification would
> >probably be the origin of the tones.
>
>Yes, I was planning on having monosyllabic morphemes.  Am not quite sure
>how I'm going to deal with cases.  Hmong is supposed to have myriad
>classifiers that disambiguate number and gender - I might do something like
>that for the educational value to myself, though I have a feeling that in
>real life the language would pick up the rigid syntax and optional
>particles that are common to both Mandarin and Hokkien Chinese, and which I
>therefore assume to be common to the Sino-Tibetan family within China.  I
>still have no idea what happens to the other minority languages in China
>... Hmong is Southeast Asian.
>
>E-Ching
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