Re: tonal language

On Fri, Dec 31, 2004 at 01:54:44AM -0500, # 1 wrote:
> Did you already created a tonal language?
No.


> Because I suppose that most of you, if not all of you, don't speak a tonal
> language as first tongue, and maybe don't speak a tonal language at all
My L1 is tonal. It has a whopping total of 7 tones, altho I suspect
that my particular idiolect has collapsed some of these together.

However, I haven't created a tonal conlang so far, mainly due to two
obstacles: (1) the transcription into ASCII would be very cumbersome
and not to my taste; and (2) my L1's particular tones (and esp. tone
sandhi rules) are so ingrained into me that I have trouble picking up
other (non-Sinitic) tone systems, let alone create one that isn't a
direct ripoff from my L1.


[...]
> and avoid the use of High rising, low rising, mid rising or high
> rising-falling, low rising-falling wich are harder to differenciate
The particular idiolect of my L1 has high level, high rising, low
falling, and low rising. High rising is the local variant of the
original high falling.


> Also I know that, like in mandarin, tones serve to differentiate different
> words (like "ma" wich can means "mother" or "horse" depending of the tone,
> if I remember)
That's right:

_ma1_ - mother
_ma2_ - (some kind of disease I think? don't remember)
_ma3_ - horse
_ma4_ - to scold


[...]
> I think it would be less difficult than using it for completely different
> words because if a tone is misunderstood it conduct to less ambuiguity to
> understand the wrong mood or the wrong tense than understand "horse" instead
> of "mother" or something else like this because it's a worse mistake
[...]

It's a common misconception that tone and tone alone is responsible
for determining the meaning of words in Mandarin (or other Sinitic
langs). The fact is that *many* different words may actually share the
same syllable with the same tone. How they are differentiated is based
on context and also with word-groups which, while analysable, don't
occur in isolation (except in poetry---but Chinese poetry tends to
stretch the theoretical ideal of one syllable per word a bit too far).


[...]
> I tought like making each verbs trisyllabic and that the tense would depend
> of the stress position
>
> Is it an (other) ANADEW?
Sounds like an ACADEB. [1] :-P Ebisédian shifts stress position to
indicate gender and number (in addition to other morphemes). E.g.:

_jhi'li_ ["Zili] "room";  _3jhilii'_ [@\Zi"li:] "rooms"; _my'jhili_
["myZili] "no rooms".

_bis33'di_ [bi"s@\:di] "person"; _pii'z3di_ ["pi:z@\di] "man (male
person)"; _biz3tai'_ [biz@\ta"?i] "woman (female person)".


[1] Another Conlang's Already Dunnit Except Better ... if I do say so
myself. ;-)


T

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