Re: [tied] Re: Does Saussure's Law Apply Synchronically to Lithuani

From: Sergejus Tarasovas
Message: 16057
Date: 2002-10-08

Message
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Wordingham [mailto:richard.wordingham@...]
Sent: 2002 m. spalio 8 d. 12:49
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [tied] Re: Does Saussure's Law Apply Synchronically to Lithuanian?

> As Lockwood only mentions
intonation differences in _stressed_ 
syllables, and Classical Greek only (contrastively) distinguished 
intonation in stressed syllables with long nuclei, I assumed that the 
> same applied to Lithuanian.

This is true as to the Standard Lithuanian of today, but, eg., many High Lithuanian dialects have pitch accent on every (or at least more than one) long syllable in some cases (if I have time, I'll try to upload some of the .wav examples, including ones with so called _broken tone_ (lauz^tine: priegaide:, absent from Standard Lithuanian), with larynx being nearly closed in the middle -- thus "breaking" effect -- which could be treated as a direct reflex of a laryngeal by some New Agy minds). Lithuanian phonologists emphasize that only one accent is really phonological while others are merely phonetical, but, anyway, this could reflect an earlier state of affairs.
 
> Now that Sergei is recovering  - let's hope he is - I am intrigued by
> Kazlauskas's remark 'at the time when tonal stress ["melodinis 
> kirtis" -- ST] still existed', which implies (to me, at least) that
> the "melodinis kirtis" no longer exists.  So what was it?
 
I'm intrigued as well. Probably he means it was tone language's _tone_ vs. _pitch accent_ of today (Piotr could probably  clarify the difference, as he's a professional phonologist). Suffice to say, that in contemporary Standard Lithuanian it's not -- probably even mostly not -- the main frequency, but rather the loudness and (as to the diphthongs and VR-type diphthongoids) vowel quality/quantity that makes the difference, while in tone language it's mere tone indeed (if I'm not mistaken). There are also structural differences: in a tone language, a toneme is something inherent to a syllable, while a pitch accent is a prosodical option. Dybo suggests late PIE was a tone language.
 
Sergei