Re: A new Indo-European subfamily in China

At 01:48 2000-12-04 -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
>IF Daic is ultimately related to Austronesian (I'm not wild about that
>theory), then it's a case of bisyllabic bases becoming mono/tonal.  From
>what I've been told, the tone correspondences between the various Thai
>languages/dialects are incredibly difficult to figure out.  One language's
>high tone will be another's low, and so forth.
I figure a lg like Swedish might develop monosyllabic tone features if
final high pitched syllables were lost, since final high pitch goes with
low pitched stressed syllable and vice versa.  E.g. (where / is high pitch,
\is low pitch and " is stress, otherwise orthography):

_/tal_ 'speech'
_"/ta\let_ 'the speech'
_"\ta/la_ 'speak'

could develop into _/tal_ 'speech' vs. _\tal_ 'speak'.



/ B.Philip Jonsson B^)>
--
mailto:bp.nospam@netg.se (delete .nospam)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy,
of what language, pray, is Basque a dialect?" (R.A.B.)