Re: Danish: tonal suffices?

Oskar Gudlaugsson skrev:

>>From: Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
>>Subject: Re: Danish: tonal suffices?
>>Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 18:45:14 +0200
>
>>Danish phonology is wonderfully complicated, and the book will give
>>you plenty of inspiration for complicated phonologies. It has a strong
>>generative approach to Danish phonology, but digresses once in a while
>>to a structuralist approach only to point out its disadvantage in
>>describing Danish phonology.
>
>Thanks for the hint. And tusind tak to both you and Lars for the info. I had
>of course heard of the sto/d at school before, but never thought much about
>it. I still can't believe a mere glottal stop and the lack of it can command
>what I perceive as such a wide variation in tone...
>
>But anyway, whichever way it really is, we can agree that Danish phonology
>is indeed wonderfully complicated and fascinating. But let me tell you what
>started me thanking of Danish phonology in the first place; another one of
>my favorite conlang types is "future languages". Once I designed an outline
>for "French 3000". In those cases I often decide that the conlang is just a
>derivative of the modern language, spoken by isolated colonists on a
>far-away planet in the year 3000. So this time I was thinking of "Danish
>3000". This is a very healthy pastime, as it gets me focused and thinking
>about the phonology of the modern languages in question. Very educational :)
Then the book I mentioned is a definite must for you. There is a chapter
in the book dedicated to current developments in Danish phonology and
hints at what Danish could sound like in the future if the developments
continue. I can list them down if you want.

>So, what I'm getting at is that the tonal system I described is at least not
>a bad prediction for a future phonology of Danish (the modern sto/d system
>developing into a full tonal system), since a "native" speaker like me could
>even perceive it to be that way today. So what do you think?...Danish 3000:
>3-4 different tones used for grammatical items, such as plurality and verb
>tenses. Whatever, I'll be working some more on the idea.
That's not unconceivable for tones to develop from differences in
glottal stricture. Many Austro-asiatic languages have developed tones
from stiff vs slack registers. Cool idea.

>Another thing: I have to admit that I have no idea what the difference
>between "structuralism" and "generativism" is. I tried to ask in AUXLANG but
>got no clear answers. Can any of you please explain it to me in basic terms?
Structural phonology analyses the phonology of a language based on
surface contrasts resulting in a taxonomic phonemic ('classical
phonemic') representation of words. Generative phonology, on the other
hand, proposes that abstract underlying representations are converted
into surface representations by the application of language specific
rules. This can result in different interpretations. For instance, the
Danish [D] sound can be considered a (defectively distributed) phoneme
in structural phonology. But in generative phonology it would be
considered the surface value of (an abstract) syllable-final /d/.

-kristian- 8)