--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> (If tone was to be notated, diacritics would need to be added

whether

> syllabics or alphabet.)

Not necessarily. Nushu appears to be a phonetic syllabary, but I
have not heard that it uses diacritics for the tone distinctions.

There ought to be a language in which the tone contrast is solely
marked in the initial consonant - tonal Mon-Khmer languages would be
an obvious place to look. (Tone is generally a recent development in
Mon-Khmer languages, and can carry the now generally lost distinction
between voiced and voiceless initials, e.g. some dialects of Khmu.)
Most Tai scripts use a combination of consonant and diacritic for the
tone.

Do the initial consonants mark a 3-way tone distinction in any Tai
language or dialect? <hñ> v. <y> v. <ñ> would be possible for a Lao
dialect that had, like Siamese, undergone the 3-way merger of /j/, /?
j/ and /ñ/. The Thai digraph <'y> (or <?y> if you prefer) no longer
occurs in the right environments to justify citing the U Thong
dialect or a Southern Thai dialect, and I don't there there is a 3-
way contrast (*not* supplemented by a tone mark) in the area where
the Lanna Thai script may legitimately be used.

Richard.