Elyse Grasso cazdy
> I'm not sure what you mean by contrastive tones on a lexical level.
> Standard Japanese has standard tone patterns. But they happen more on
> the sentence level, and I can't think of any specific words that differ
> only by tone pattern.
IMHO you are wrong. Here are some examples from my favorite dic "Kenyusha's New
Pocket Japanese-English Dictionary" (I'll put high pitched moras into square
brackets):
a]sa - morning :: a[sa] - hemp
i]shi - intention :: i[shi] - stone
ka]ta - shoulder :: ka[ta] - direction
and even triplets like
ha]na - edge :: ha[na] - flower :: ha[na - nose
ka]sa - umbrella :: ka[sa] - bulk :: ka[sa - syphilis
ka]ki - oyster :: ka[ki] - fence :: ka[ki - persimmon
> Also, there are major regional differences in the
> tone patterns
Right. Quoting S.A.Starostin:
Tokyo :: Kyoto :: Kagoshima
(nail) - tsu[me :: [tsume :: tsu]me / tsu[me]ga
(stone) - i[shi] :: i]shi :: i]shi / i[shi]ga
(shouder) - ka]ta :: ka[ta / kata[ga :: ka[ta / kata[ga
> (I think it's the Osaka area that basically doesn't have
> them at all,
Seems so.
> and the patterns in Hokkaido are very different from the
> Tokyo standard.)
Well, Hokkaido dialect is weird anyway...
~~~~~~Yitzik~~~~~~