Re: [tied] Re: Stød and rising tone

This seems to make sense, given that all the example of meaningful tone that I can think of deal with dropped consonants or occasionally dropped syllables.

An example similar to tone vs. sto/d is the colloquial pronunciation of <little>, in some UK dialects it becomes /li?l/, while in the US it is often /lil/ with a falling, then rising tone as oppsed to <Lil> (the girl's name).

tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

--- In cybalist@... s.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

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com