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Re: Lots of Questions About Tones (more questions)

From:Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
Date:Saturday, July 12, 2008, 17:24
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:38:36 -0400, Alex Fink <000024@...> wrote:

>[snip]
>An unfortunate collision with the meaning of "register" that is 'complex of >tone and phonation and other knock-on effects'.
Yep.
>[snip]
>Can there, or will there, be default numbered pitch levels for the tones in >a contour(s1) tone language?
I think that will depend on the IPA and maybe on the linguist discussing the language. The IPA has 1 eXtra Low 2 Low 3 Medium 4 High 5 eXtra High Most languages with phonemic/lexical/morphological have just two pitches, High and Low; most of the rest have just three, High, Low, and Medium. If a language has four relevant pitches, it seems to me the natural terminology would be "Extra Low, Low, High, and Extra High"; but this could cause a problem if the numbers used were {1, 2, 4, 5}, because it could make it seem that a 24 (L-H) rise was not allotonic with a 12 (XL-L) rise and a 45 (H-XH) rise, whereas it probably is. Of course the same applies to the falls; 42 is probably allotonic with 21 and 54. And it carries over into those peaks, dips, etc. that include such a rise or fall. So maybe you want to use {1, 2, 3, 4} or {2, 3, 4, 5} for a language with four relevant pitches, but no relevance to "absolute pitch". And, of course, if there is a problem if a language has six relevant pitches. I'm not sure there are any such languages. The IPA doesn't appear to have heard of them, if there are.
>Or are the realisations of the tones supposed to be completely in free >variation?
I'd imagine they're in complementary distribution and are conditioned, at least partially, by other factors, including perhaps both tonal sandhi and co- occurring segmental features. I'm not sure that counts as "completely free variation"; does it? The point is they're "allotones", or at least that's what I expect and understand.
>Or something else?
Is "allotones" 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.
I'm not sure what you said. I doubt I'd disagree if I understood perfectly, but I understand only partially. Could you explain, please? And, by the way: Thanks!