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Re: Lots of Questions About Tones (more questions)

From:Alex Fink <000024@...>
Date:Thursday, July 10, 2008, 18:38
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:23:33 -0400, Eldin Raigmore
<eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:

>Well, "contour" is used in three different senses. > >Sense 1 >In one sense, "contour" is used opposite to "register". > >In a "register tone language", the absolute pitch at which a syllable is spoken >is its tone, and has phonemic and/or lexical and/or morphological significance.
An unfortunate collision with the meaning of "register" that is 'complex of tone and phonation and other knock-on effects'.
>But, in a "contour(sense 1) tone language" what matters is whether, and by >how much, the pitch changes. >So a "contour(sense 1) tone language" can have at most one level tone; that >is, all level tones mean the same thing. If it has four relevant pitches
(say 1
>and 2 and 3 and 4), there is a choice of three falls and of three rises; >21, 32, and 43 are all one possible kind of fall; >31 and 42 are another possible kind of fall; and >41 is a third possible kind of fall. >These languages can tell 41 apart from 31 and from 42, but can't tell 31 apart >from 42; they can tell 41 apart from any of 21, 32, or 43, but can't tell 21 or >32 or 43 apart from each other.
Can there, or will there, be default numbered pitch levels for the tones in a contour(s1) tone language? Or are the realisations of the tones supposed to be completely in free variation? Or something else? If you're just reporting the results of a discrimination task on single words each from different speakers presented in isolation, I could see this even for speakers of a language without a contour(s1) tone system. Surely register(s1) tonality doesn't imply perfect pitch. Alex