Re: tonal language

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 01:54:44 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:

>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)
>
>But is it possible to use it for conjugaison or an other grammatical use
>because I thought about representing moods by changing the word's tones but
>I made it with a suffix, because I encountered the problem that I would not
>myself recognize the similar tones
>
>But I also think to use tones for things wich will need less tones
>
>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
>
>Does it exists? a nat/conlang in wich tones serve to grammatical uses?
>
>Is it an ANADEW as Sally Caves explained?
It is. I've heard it's a feature common in many African languages, though I
don't know how many tones they differentiate.


>I also tought to use the stress for a grammatical use
>
>I tought like making each verbs trisyllabic and that the tense would depend
>of the stress position
>
>Is it an (other) ANADEW?
Sure. Compare Spanish _hablo_ /'aBlo/ (I speak) to _habló_ /a'Blo/
(he/she/it spoke). Okay, this is not only a difference in tense, but in
person as well, but if one of the few languages I know already features
this, then I'm confident that one of the thousends of languages I don't know
feature it more purely.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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