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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Tones in Chinese
In-Reply-To: millert@grad.csee.usf.edu's message of 3 Nov 1994 06:10:59 GMT
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Date: Thu, 3 Nov 1994 17:41:27 GMT
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In article <399utk$97c@mother.usf.edu> millert@grad.csee.usf.edu
(Timothy Miller) writes:

>Well, so one person says that tones in Chinese came from dropped consonants
>and another suggests that they may not have and that you can't figure out what
>would have caused them.

>So, where did the tones come from?

Was this apropos a previous posting?  Or did you just drop it on us unexpanded
for some reason?

There is a large literature on tonogenesis.  You can start with Fromkin (I
forget the exact title), and Hyman's _TONE_.  These will provide you with the
positive side fo the argument.

I've not heard the negative side; would you please provide a reference, since
you seem to have done.
-- 
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_
