Re: tonal languages

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 11:34:06AM -0500, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
[snip]
> >Indeed it's considerably different. For one thing, tone 3 usually sandhi's
> >into tone 1, not tone 2. Actually, now that I think of it, there appears
> >to be no fixed pattern: hi3 (show/movie) + tai5 (stage) --> hi1tai5
> >(cinema);
>
> As I mentioned above, "ki3" usually sandhis into "ki1" rather than
> the expected "ki2". Perhaps what you're describing is a broader
> application of that phenomenon.
Perhaps.

> > however, gong3 (foolish) + kia~2 (child) --> gong3kia~2 (no
> >sandhi!).
>
> You mention below that for you, 7 and 3 have merged, which would make
> sense in that for me, "gong7" is originally tone 7, so "gong3kia~2"
> is actually sandhied. But lo, we get the same result (at least
> here)....:)
Aha. That explains it.

> >Perhaps it's just dependent on context. Also, tone 2 in my
> >idiolect is (35) not (52), so this may be a result of euphonic change
> >based on this different tone shape.
>
> As Malaysia also has a Cantonese speaking population, could this be
> Cantonese influence? The Cantonese shang tones are both rising. It
> screwed up my head totally for months on end to have to pronounce yin
> shang as a falling (52) tone in Taiwanese. Having it (35) would have
> felt a lot more natural.
Now that you mention it, yes, this is very likely. Although the Chinese
population in my hometown is predominantly Hokkien, there is also a
significant number of Cantonese speakers, so Cantonese influence is quite
likely. For all I know, some of our "Hokkien" vocab probably are
borrowings from Cantonese. :-)

[snip]
> >So there you have it. The Hokkien I speak in my hometown consists of these
> >tones, plus a few sound changes (such as mutation of some initial g's:
> >gua2 ("I") --> wa2; jit4ge1 ("this one") --> ji4le1; li2 ("you") --> lu2).
>
> These are common variants in Taiwan as well.
[snip]

Interesting. I wonder if these variations correspond with different
regions in Fuqian province? My grandparents are from Xiamen area. My
grandmother always referred to China as "teng3 su~a1", if that means
anything to you. :-)


T

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