Re: [tied] Re: Tonal IE languages

I don't think it's a Sprachbund phenomenon. There are important typological differences between Scandinavian and Baltic accent. The latter, by the way, reflects common Balto-Slavic developments, but East and West Slavic languages switched from pitch accent to stress a long time ago. There are no accentual contrasts in Finnish, Saami, Estonian, Russian, Polish, Kashubian or German.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 2:13 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Tonal IE languages

> Also Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovene, Serbian and Croatian have pitch accent (tonal contrasts in accented syllables). Ancient Greek had it too. Danish has no pitch accent, but its "sto/d" is a related phenomenon. > > None of these languages (including Punjabi, Swedish and Norwegian) is truly tonal. Technically speaking, they are pitch-accent languages. > > Piotr Norwegian, Swedish, Lithuanian, Latvian: Is there a circum-Baltic sprachbund? I don't know about Finnish or Estonian.