Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.lang.japan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!newsfeed.pitt.edu!gatech!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!alderson
From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: "pitch accent" vs. "tone"
In-Reply-To: cq315@FreeNet.Carleton.CA's message of Wed, 21 Feb 1996 00:50:39 GMT
Message-ID: <aldersonDn7H88.DF0@netcom.com>
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Fcc: /u9/alderson/postings
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <4fqhja$kqi@news.mpd.tandem.com> <DMwHqx.8CF@freenet.carleton.ca>
	<aldersonDn1q81.HC9@netcom.com> <Dn3p0F.LJ4@freenet.carleton.ca>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 01:52:56 GMT
Lines: 68
Sender: alderson@netcom15.netcom.com
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:50605 sci.lang.japan:32521

In article <Dn3p0F.LJ4@freenet.carleton.ca> cq315@FreeNet.Carleton.CA
(Hank Walker) writes:

>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.

Yes, "accent" is here synonymous with "pitch"--the issue was whether Greek was
a "tone" language or a "pitch" language.

In pitch-accent languages, what you say about not assigning pitch to all vowels
is true.  In tone languages, more than one pitch may be assigned within a word
--not necessarily contours, either, as there are languages with distinctive
pitch levels only.

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

>O.k.

I should have stated here, for those not familiar with the literature, that the
acute accent is realized as a rise on the accented syllable.

>>2.  A long vowel may receive the high pitch, or a rising-falling pitch
>>    (circumflex 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

Treatment of long vowels as multi-mora sequences predates autosegmental phono-
logy by decades.  I didn't want to get into that level of detail; I can, if you
like, dig up old posts of mine on the subject that *do* go into those issues.

>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.

No, the rise is simply short-circuited by the timing of the next vocalic mora,
and so a contour is present at the phonetic level but not at the phonemic.

I will say that if autosegmental phonology requires that Greek be treated as a
tone language, rather than as a pitch language like Japanese, that calls the
validity of autosegmental phonology into question, in my not notably humble
opinion.

(NB:  As I recall, there are dialects of Japanese in which there are intrasyl-
lable contours due to contractions, which are still analyzable in terms of a
single pitch contrast.  Cf. McCawley.)
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
