Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China

H. S. Teoh wrote:

>On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 01:51:24PM -0500, Nik Taylor wrote:
>[snip]
>> 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"
>
>Whoa, could you unpack that? I don't think you're talking about
>voiced/unvoiced initial consonants, are you? Because my L1 distinguishes
>between [b], [p], [p<h>] and yet it's tonal. How would that have happened?
Voicing distinction can come back into the language after tones developed.
Imagine loanwords from other languages, for instance.

-----<snip>-----
>> > Is there a Sino-Tibetan language that doesn't have tone?
>>
>> Some of the languages in the Himalayan branch of Tibeto-Burman don't.
>
>How about Malay/Indonesian? They are non-tonal. Or are they regarded as a
>different language family?
Completely different. Malay and Filipino are Austronesian. Chinese
and Burmese are Sino-Tibetan. Thai is Daic. Khmer and Vietnamese are
Austro-Asiatic. Austronesian langs are almost all non-tonal (except
for a few exceptions like the Chamic subfamily). Same goes for
Austro-Asiatic but its most well known member, Vietnamese, is certainly
tonal cuz of its strong influence from Chinese. Both Vietnamese and Cham
are tonal due to Chinese influence.

-kristian- 8)