Re: crows and the glottalic theory

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Wed, 06 Nov 2002 13:46:45 +0100, Piotr Gasiorowski
> <piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> >From: Miguel Carrasquer

> The following unsurprising constraints applied: (1) one root (word)
> could only contain either all voiced or all unvoiced stops; (2) only
> one syllable in a word could have the high tone.
>
> For example:
>
> taka (= tàkà) táka (= tákà) taká (= tàká)
> [but no táká, taga, tága, tagá]
> daga (= dàgà) dága (= dágà) dagá (= dàgá)
> [but no dágá, daka, dáka, daká]
>
> Subsequently, the tones were lost, but high tone left a trace in
> (marked) glottalization of the consonant, while low tone gave
> (unmarked) aspiration, as follows:
>
> taka t?aka tak?a [but no t?ak?a, taga, t?aga, tag?a]
> daga d?aga dag?a [but no d?ag?a, daka, d?aka, dak?a]
>
> For vowel initial words, we perhaps had:
>
> haka ?aka hak?a
> haga ?aga hag?a
>

It's true that Swedish tone 1 corresponds by and large to Danish stød
and that the latter is later than the former, but that doesn't
necessarily mean one evolved into the other. Rather, once a language
gives up tones, it might begin to use a device to indicate a syllable
or mora boundary that needed no further indication when tones were
used.

Seems there is a new stød theory in town:

http://www.cphling.dk/~ng/pdf_filer/lund2001.pdf
http://www.cphling.dk/~ng/pdf_filer/aix2002.pdf

BTW considering the idea that Germanic was originally a tonal
language, I found this interesting:

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/ulcl/events/fta.html
http://ling.uni-
konstanz.de/pages/dgfs/Pages/Abstracts/abstractsag3.html

Tones in Limburgs?

Also there is a parallel here:
tones in Swedish / stød in Danish
tones in Lithuanian / Brechton in Latvian

In both cases the tone language is the less creolized (taken in a
broad sense) of the pair.

Torsten