Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.lang.japan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!gatech!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!nott!cunews!freenet.carleton.ca!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!cq315
From: cq315@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Hank Walker)
Subject: Re: "pitch accent" vs. "tone"
Message-ID: <DMwHqx.8CF@freenet.carleton.ca>
Sender: cq315@freenet3.carleton.ca (Hank Walker)
Reply-To: cq315@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Hank Walker)
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet
References:  <4fqhja$kqi@news.mpd.tandem.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 03:30:33 GMT
Lines: 56
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:50352 sci.lang.japan:32340


Gary Bjerke (garyb) writes:
	...
> What distinction - if any - do linguists make between "pitch accent" and
> "tone"?
> It seems to me that these represent two extremes of the same phenomenon, as
> compared to "stress accent". So, are "pitch accent languages" the same as "tone
> languages? And is there a controversy over how to classify Japanese?

Pitch is the use of a certain frequency of voice (say, high or low) on
a segment, usually a vowel, and the use of pitch can alter meaning. 
In pitch languages, a vowel will be coupled with a pitch in a one to
one ratio. So, a word where C=consonant and V=vowel might look like this
in a pitch language:
				C V C V C V  
				  |   |   |
				  H   H   L
Here, the first two syllables have a high pitch, and the last one has low
pitch.
The key difference between this and a tone language is simply the fact 
that tone languages allow two or more values for pitch to be associated
with (attatched to) the segments (sounds). So:
						C  V
						  / \
						 L   H

represents a syllable with a low then high pitch: a rising tone! 
Tone languages, like Mandarin and Vietnamese, permit such a coupling 
of pitches onto a vowel to convey semantic meaning. They may have
syllables that just have one pitch, but they're still called tone
languages. Pitch languages, like Japanese and Luganda, just use pitch
to convey meaning; other languages, like English and Albanian, don't 
use pitch at all (except in conveying emotion etc. but all languages do
that in various ways).

Though I deleted that part of your post, you mentioned Swedish and 
Norwegian. I don't know about Norwegian, but Swedish, Slovenian,
Croatian and Serbian are the only Indo-European languages that still
have the last vestiges of the old Proto-Indo-European pitch system
which has disappeared (along with pharyngeals, the deep 'h' sounds that
occur in Arabic), at least according to one theory.

But yes, tone is just a 'more extreme' version of pitch in a sense, and
no, I don't think there's much controversy as to how to classify Japanese.

So much for pitch and tone.  But then there's always "stress"...








--
	hank.		"a lack of restraint is a sign of weakness."
