Re: ReTonogenesis

>From: Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
>
>Kevin Athey <kevindeanathey@...> writes:
> > 1)  Pitch accent:  (Japanese) Each word may or may not have an accented
> > syllable.  The relative pitch of each syllabe (H and L in Japanese) is
> > determined by where it falls relative to the accented syllable.  That
>is, in
> > fact, all the accent means.  Length and amplitude do not generally vary,
>as
> > they would in a stress accent.
>
>Wait -- I thought that the Japanese accent falls on morae *breaks*,
>not on the morae themselves.  Therefore, an n-morae word has (n+1)
>accent positions.  The pitches generated by the accent, of cause,
>materialise on the morea then.
>
>Maybe when you say that a word has *no* accent, you mean the accent is
>at its very end?  In that case, a suffixed postposition shows the
>pitch change.
Well, I was being less precise so as to be less verbose, but:

As you noted, Japanese pitch accent is moraic, not syllabic.  Because of
pitch spread to the left, the accent is generally interpreted as a fall in
pitch (an thus generally written with a grave accent in linguistic
romanization).  As the fall in pitch does not occur on a mora, the accent is
said to fall on mora breaks.  BUT, having studied a lot of African tonality
in school, my interpretation would be the other possibility:  that of pitch
spreading, in which the accent is really H, which spreads left, with an
additional rule to drop initial unaccented morae to L.  Now, on a word in
isolation, the pitch contour is identical to a word with the accent on the
final mora.  A post-clitic, however, would be H in the first and L in the
second.  Now, there are a few bound morphemes with their own accent (such as
-'masu) that sort of steal the accent of the morpheme they're attached to.
In this case, the entire suffix is NOT of uniform tonality.  This is my
interpretation, I am aware of others.  It's worth noting, though, that while
I have done some research in this area for a couple of classes and my own
edification, I would not consider myself a Japanese expert by any stretch.
Take anything I say here (or anywhere, for that matter) with the usual grain
of salt.

Athey

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