Re: ReTonogenesis

Hi!

Kevin Athey <kevindeanathey@...> writes:
>...
> If there _is_ a Japanese expert out there, he or she should jump right in.
Well Christophe explained it also with an unaccented possibility
rather than my version with a mora break accent.  Hmm:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0305a&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=2086

> OK, if I understand you properly, you are asking how a sequence of phonemes
> consisting of two morae can have three possible tonal contours.
No, I meant tree possibilities of two-mora word + unaccented
postposition.  Still that's three phonemic accent positions on a
two-mora, while there are only two tone contours.  Just as you show in
your examples.

Maybe it's futile to discuss whether the accent is either on one of
the morae + the possibility of fully unaccented words or whether the
accent is between the morae, including in front and behind the word,
because there is a one-to-one mapping between these possibilities and
it's just definition what you declare to be the phonemic description,
which is a model anyway.  Maybe other factors lead to one or the other
definition.

I still wonder where I picked my view up -- it's not my invention, but
I fail to remember the source.

**Henrik

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