Re: THEORY: Tonogenesis

On Feb 2, 2005, at 2:13 PM, Kevin Athey wrote:
> Can anyone point me to some good sources (website or book) about
> natlang
> tonogenesis?  I'm particulary but not exclusively interested in tonal
> systems originating from sources other than loss of stop voicing
> distinctions (as in Chinese).
> In a related question, has anyone else dealt with tonogenesis in their
> conlangs?  I try to make my work as natural as possible, which makes
> diachronic linguistics a terrible pain anyway, and with tonogenesis to
> boot I'm feeling a little out of my depth.
> Athey
In Rokbeigalmki, the 'accent-lengthened' (lengthened) and
'tilde-lengthened' (double-lengthened) eventually develop into rising
and falling tones, respectively.  I'm not sure why... i just end up
accidentally doing that to them when i speak, so i thought it must be a
natural development ;) .  The tilde-lengthened vowels, actually,
developed from some kinds of combinations of vowels and consonants back
in the proto-language.

Here's an example:

TILDE-LENGTHENED: the word means _tsunami_.
(one of Rokbeigalmki's unique 'palindromic powerful phenomena' words)
/galaX\alag/ ~ ancient rokbeigalmki
/gala::lag/ ~ 'contemporary' rokbeigalmki |galãlag|
/galàlag/ ~ futuristic rokbeigalmki

ACCENT-LENGTHENED: a construct compound meaning _world of holiness_
/ilmalo:ahja/ ~ ancient |ilmalôahya|
/ilma:lahja:/ ~ 'contemporary' |îlmalâhya|
/ilmálahjá/ ~ futuristic
(it's called an Accent-Lengthened vowel because construct compounds get
lengthened the same way as certain accent-sensitive words, including
all names, are accented: /ilu:ka/ 'so, such a'; /i:luka:/ 'just like' ;
/ts)i\:vi/ 'Tzíhvi')

((( btw, i keep on wanting to write 'futurustuc' :P )))


-Stephen (Steg)
  "Let them come.
   There is one dwarf yet in Moria who still draws breath."
      ~ gimli son of gloin, LotR:FotR (movie version, at least)

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