Re: Gevey intonation (a bit long)

Rik Roots sikyal:

> I've posted a first draft on the rules of intonation for Gevey on my website
> (where the examples look a little better, as I was able to use superscript
> and subscript to show high and low tone). An amended version of that text
> follows.
>
> Grateful for any comments ...
This is impressive, mostly because you've given a pretty thorough
description of something that's neglected by most conlangs. I know that
none of my conlangs have taken systematic thought of intonation yet
(except for Hiksilipsi, which is tonal), but you've done a good job of
this.

I don't know enough about intonation systems cross-linguistically to say
how this holds up, unfortunately. I do know that it would be a great help
to hear some sound files of the longer examples you give, to aid in
understanding how the intonation works.

And have you thought of global intonation patterns? Most languages have
word or syllable-level intonations like you talked about, but also have
global rising or falling tone levels over a sentence or discourse unit.

Just some ideas--


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

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