Re: THEORY: Tonogenesis
| From: | Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, February 2, 2005, 20:32 |
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--- Kevin Athey <kevindeanathey@...> schrieb:
> 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.
In my most recent conlang, Gi-nàin, there existed
three tones (rising, high and low), which were the
remnants of a previous pitch-accent system. There was
also quite significant tone sandhi.
Basically, the rising tone was the result of a LH word
collapsing into a single syllable, giving a rising
tone in the process. A collapsed HL word would just
give a low tone; it just 'seems' the more logical
thing, from me actually pronouncing these words. High
and low tones were still present, but since most
polysyllabic words collapsed, only those words that
started out with level or falling tone contours
remained level. Examples (circumflex represents high
tone):
nâgin -> nàin
kânu -> kàn
anâ -> ná
...and so on.
That's pretty simple tonogenesis; I'm sure some
language out there has a more complex, involved process.
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