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From: cq315@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Hank Walker)
Subject: Re: "pitch accent" vs. "tone"
Message-ID: <Dn3p0F.LJ4@freenet.carleton.ca>
Sender: cq315@freenet.carleton.ca (Hank Walker)
Reply-To: cq315@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Hank Walker)
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References: <4fqhja$kqi@news.mpd.tandem.com> <DMwHqx.8CF@freenet.carleton.ca> <aldersonDn1q81.HC9@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 00:50:39 GMT
Lines: 85
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:50512 sci.lang.japan:32467


I wrote:

>>In pitch languages, a vowel will be coupled with a pitch in a one to one
>>ratio.

> [example elided  --rma]

>>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).

Richard M. Alderson III (alderson@netcom.com) replied: 
> I'm sorry, but this is wrong.  Classical Greek, for example, was a pitch
> language (as I defined such in a previous post), with a complex set of pitch
> accents depending on vowel length:

I'm not an expert on Classical Greek, but I don't see how you've shown that
definition to be wrong:

> 0.  There is only one accent per word; a few words bear *no* accent.  It falls
>     no further from the end of the word than the third syllable.

Is accent here synonymous with pitch? Languages often don't assign underlying
pitch to all vowels.

> 1.  A short vowel may receive the high pitch (acute accent) or no accent.

O.k.

> 2.  A long vowel may receive the high pitch, or a rising-falling pitch (circum-
>     flex accent).

In autosegmental phonology, long vowels are treated as sequences of two
short vowels, and what you describe can be captured in [1]. Example [2]
covers what could happen in a tone language.

	[1]  C  V  V  		[2]  C  V  V
	        |  |   		       / \ 
		H  L		      H   L

Here in [1] the long vowel (i.e. sequence of two short ones, which have the 
same segmental features if they're not parts of a diphthong) has a falling 
quality. By rising-falling, do you mean [3]?

	[3]  C  V   V
	       / \  |
	      L   H L

If so, Greek would be a tone language by Goldsmith's autosegmental theory.

> 3.  Accents are subject to modification:
>     a.  A final acute is lowered but still higher than no accent (barytone or
> 	grave accent) if another accented word follows.
>     b.  If a long vowel is accented and followed by a short vowel, the accent
> 	is *always* circumflex; if by a long vowel, it is *always* acute.

O.k.
 
> The extant Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian, both show the PIE accent
> as clearly as the Slavic languages you mention.

You're right.

> The Swedish accent is *NOT* related to the PIE accent; it is, rather, entirely
> a Swedish development, not even directly related to the similar development in
> Norwegian.

Fine.
 
> I'm not sure what you mean about pharyngeals in Proto-Indo-European.  The
> hypothetical class of consonants in PIE is referred to as "laryngeals"; some of
> us think that some of them were pharyngals, but not necessarily of them. 

O.k.

> And I don't think you mean to imply, as your phrasing does,
> that reflexes of the laryngeals exist as such in
> modern languages.  What *did* you mean to say?

I went back and read what I wrote, and my phrasing didn't imply that to me.
I meant that according to some, PIE had laryngeals.

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