Re: Lots of Questions About Tones

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 5:43 PM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> However you replied to this broke the thread, fyi.  Showed up as a new
> conversation...
>
> But I thought creaky/breathy developed from pitch tones, rather than
> the reverse?

It makes sense to me. Many words in Shoshoni have vowels separated by
glottal stop. In Western Shoshoni (and probably Ft. Hall and Wind River as
well) the glottal stop is clearly audible as creaky voice in rapid speech;
the creak is accompanied by a falling pitch contour. In Goshute, the
creakiness is not as pronounced or is absent entirely, but the falling pitch
is still present. This suggests a progression of glottal stop > creaky voice
> creaky voice/falling pitch > falling pitch. Were there young people
acquiring Goshute now (alas, there are none), I would expect the creak to be
completely gone and tonal contrasts left behind.

On 7/11/08, David McCann <david@...> wrote:
> > So it looks as if consonant loss and merger don't generate tones
> > directly, but produce registers - breathy or creaky voice - that later
> > become tones? This certainly seems more plausible.
> >
> > It also looks as if the same circumstances can generate different tones.
> > The Proto-Athabascan -taʔ gives opposite results in different languages
> > if the glottal stop is lost: Chipewyan -tá but Sarcee -tà. Presumably
> > one case involved creaky voice, the other not.
> >
>
> --
> Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
>
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>
Dirk
-- 
Miapimoquitch: Tcf Pt*p+++12,4(c)v(v/c) W* Mf+++h+++t*a2c*g*n4 Sf++++argh
La----c++d++600