Re: [tied] Re: Tonal IE languages

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 4804
Date: 2000-11-22

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.