Re: The Dialects of Tech

Kristian Jensen wrote:

>Just a question. I was under the impression that the Techians just
>moved to the island rather recently in their history. So has the Toq
>dialect evolved on the island by 2nd (3rd, 4th, etc.) generation
>agriculturalists on the island? Or was the Toq dialect already
>developed by agricultural Techians before they moved to the island?
(I mentioned this in a previous e-mail, but I was wrong; the dialect is
called Tox.  Pronunciation: [thOx].)

The Tox-speakers, made up of one or two tribes, have a long tradition of
agriculturalism going back to the ancient homeland in east Africa.  So their
dialect already developed long before settlement.

>Incidentally, some of the Boreanesian languages also developed tones
>in what appears to be a similar way to the Toqians. In this case,
>the loss of the distinction between stiff and slack phonation in
>syllable final consonants. Words whose cognates in standard
>Boreanesian ends in a stiff phonation is pronounce in some dialects
>with a falling tone, while those with cognates in standard
>Boreanesian ending in a slack phonation is pronounced with a high
>tone.
Question -- how do previous stiff/slack phonation relate to modern tones?  I
have low tone for formerly glottalized stops/affricates and high tone for
aspirated.  Mid tone for the plain stops.  This produces a simpler consonant
inventory; here I give the phonemes (there may be a few more):

lab den alv ret lat pal vel v+l uvu pha glo
p   t   ts  t`  tL  tS  k   kw  q       ?   (fortis mutation)
b   d   dz  d`  dl  dZ  g   gw  G           (lenis mutation)
f   T   s   s`  L   S   x   xw  X   H   h   (spirant mutation)
m   n   n_  n`  nl  n~  N   Nw  N`          (nasal mutation)
        r   (r`)
        l   (l`)        (l~)
w                   j

Notes:
Qot. /`/ (Arabic _`ayn_) merges with /j/.
There is no lenition of nasals (so no nasalized fricatives).
The fricatives have voiced allophones; the nasals have voiceless allophones,
though less frequently.

A lot more manageable compared to the couple hundred consonants of the main
dialects, huh...

Danny


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