dyacob@... wrote:

> While on the subject of Yi, does anyone know if there are symbols in
> the Yi syllabary that represent _only_ a tonal level? If so, which
> are they? I've seen some Yi charts of course but I know not to take
> them at face value.

There is only one such sign, which AFAIK is the only diacritical sign used
in Yi.

The sign looks like a reversed "breve" sign, and it is written on top of 3rd
tone syllable signs to turn them into the correspondent 2nd tone sign. You
can see this sign in use in this chart:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/yi.htm

E.g., on the top row, the second syllable from the left ("ix", where "x" in
the romanization indicates 2nd tone) is identical to the following symbol
("i", where 3rd tone is unmarked in the romanization) with only the addition
of the 2nd tone mark.

Similarly for all other series: "iex" "ax", "uox", etc. are the same sign as
"ie", "a", "uo", etc. plus 2nd tone mark.

--
Marco