Re: C'ali update: tonal phonology

Hallo!

On Sun, 23 May 2004 04:11:59 -0500,
"Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> Given the relatively low traffic on the list, and that I haven't done
> any work on C'ali in a long time, I thought I might post some musings
> about prosodic phonology in C'ali and Phaleran.
Yes, welcome!  It's always nice to see interesting stuff like that.

> I have already discussed before the issue of stress assignment
> in Phaleran (see archives), but I don't think I had decided at
> that time what actual acoustic correlate most strongly defines
> stress, but now I believe it is a basically unremarkable kind of
> pitch-accent system: the pitch remains "high" up to and including
> the stressed syllable (which syllable gets stress is determined
> primarily by the moraic weight of the syllable, though it is also
> sometimes underlyingly specified), after which the pitch markedly
> decreases providing the effect of "stress".
My conlang Old Albic has a stress accent system, which I might change
into a pitch accent system, in which the pitch, as in Phaleran,
remains high up to and including the syllable carrying the accent.
However, I think I'll keep the stress accent; anyway, the accent rule
would remain the same.  The accent position is determined by
essentially the same rule as in Latin or Quenya.

> C'ali, however, is somewhat more complicated system.  Stress, as
> such, does not exist.  In its place is a tonal system,
> which is partly underlyingly specified and partly predictable
> according to verbal and nominal category.  There is an underlying
> contrast between H(igh) and L(ow) tone, though a large number of
> morphs have no specification, receiving their surface tone by
> phonological or morphological processes. Tone, when present, seems
> always to be associated with the final vocalic mora of the root.
  [examples snipped]

> It's clear that the tonal specification for agreement suffixes is
> important to understanding the surface tone structure, so below I
> will repeat my chart of a previous post (almost a year ago) with
> tonal values underneath:
  [chart and comments snipped]

> Some of the following processes are apparent from even this
> small data set:
> (1) Leftward spread:  prefixes acquire tone of root.
> (2) Word-final L:     all final syllables must be L.
Yes, I have noticed that.

> (3) No short contour tones.
I see no long contour tones in your examples, either.

>       Underlyingly, there is a contrast between
> long and short /u/~/u:/ and long and short /o/~/o:/.
One moment... I thought C'ali had no vowel length distinction,
or did you change your mind (and your design)?

>       When a tone spreads
> onto an underlyingly long /u:/ or /o:/, it may spread onto the adjacent
> mora, but not the further mora.  Now, the contrast of underlying short
> /u/ and /o/ with /y/ and /ö/ is always neutralized to [y] and [ö]
> respectively, while their long counterparts shorten.
Hence,

 /u/  > /y/    /o/  > /ö/
 /u:/ > /u/    /o:/ > /o/

Correct?

>       In this circumstance,
> only underlyingly long /u:/ and /o:/ receive surface contour tones;
> their fronted, underlyingly short counterparts may not do so.
As I said above, I haven't seen any contour tones in your examples.
Each syllable is either H or L.  Where are the contour tones?

> (4) Morphophonologically, the sonorants /m n l r/ and the stop /?/ may
> act as depressor consonants when in coda position, making any immediately
> preceding tone a L tone:
>
>        H                       H  H  HH
>    saxmë-thei  'man-AGT' =>   saxmëthei
>        H                       H  H  H
>    saxmë-tsi   'man-PAT' =>   saxmëtsi
>        H L                     L  L
>    saxmë-n     'man-OBL' =>   saxmën
>
> Some morphemes seem resistant to this effect, however, as is clear from
> the nasal consonants in (1) 'she ran off long ago'.  The most straightforward
> answer to this is that these depressor consonants lexically specify a
> L tone in the UR, while the non-depressor 'depressor' consonants as in
> (1) simply lack this specification. (When not in coda position, these
> consonants are by definition not moraic, and thus cannot host any tone.)
Interesting!

> One last fact about this system is that Phaleran tends to borrow words
> from C'ali with underlying H tone into Phaleran with pitch accent permanently
> docked to that segment. (On which, see archives)
>
> Anyways, that's about it for now. Any questions or comments?
See above.

Greetings,

Jörg.