--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
> There are meaningful tone distinctions in some US dialects,
especially those that drop final -r and other consonants. Tone is
not just for emphasis and general amusement.
> The classics that come to mind are granted vs. granite in some
upper Midwestern accents
> and door vs. doe in Mississippi Delta accent
> The Appalachian dialects are much more varied than most people
realize and are often confused with Lowland Southern dialects.
>
From Stang's
Slavonic Accentuation
"
F. de Saussure has demonstrated the connection between Baltic
intonations (outside the final syllable) and Indo-European
quantity (...) He shows that in principle a long monophthong
becomes acute, as do also ir, il, im, in (ur, ul, um, un) <
r.:, l.:, m.:, n.:, while normal diphthongs and the reflexes
of r,, l., m., n., become circumflex. As Kuryl\owicz rightly
pointed out many years later, basing himself on the
assumptions of our own age, a difference in intonation,
accompanying quntity, is not *phonological*. But a phonological
differece in intonation arose the moment ir, il, im, in and
ai, au, ei, an, er, etc, could be iintoned differently, as a
result of r.:, l.: m.:, n.:, a:i, a:u, etc, being shortened
and /&/ disappearing in an internal syllable. ...
"
Both long monophthongs and vowels plus resonant can be seen
as two morae. If they produce a rising tone, one could construe
that as one mora with low tone plus one mora with high tone.
Long time back I tried to make IE sense of Swedish-Norwegian
tone and Danish stød with my limited knowledge until Jens
pointed out that stød occur in what is monosyllables in
Danish, so therefore can't have a PIE origin. But if stød
and rising tone come from original two-morae (syllable)
low tone - high tone, then perhaps they are from PIE after
all?
Torsten