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#lcc10 Gabriel Swai - Grammatical Tonology for Conlangers: Tonogenesis, Tone Rules, and More
details & slides: conlang.org/lc...
speaker: Twitter @GabrielASwai, Reddit u/GabrielSwai, email gabriel.a.swai@gmail.com
From Mesoamerica to New-Caledonia, natural grammatical tone languages can be found on every corner of the Earth (Gil Burgoin, 2021; Lionnet, n.d.). The use of tone to distinguish grammatical features is the primary defining trait of these languages (“Grammatical Tone,” 2003). The surface pronunciation of the tones in these languages can be completely different from their underlying placement (Goldsmith, 1990). Grammatical tone languages also typically follow a set number of tone rules that dictate how tone in a given utterance is pronounced on the surface (Hyman, n.d.). Some grammatical tone languages may have what are called tone melodies: a set of the only sequences of underlying tones allowed on a morpheme (Goldsmith, 1976). For example, the Niger-Congo language Mende of Sierra Leone only permits five different combinations of tones onto three syllable morphemes while mathematically there could be up to 125 different combinations (Mende, n.d.).
In this presentation, using a combination of my own personal experience with creating a constructed tone language and academic work from the field of tonology, I explain how conlangers can add the following two main features to their conlangs:
• Natural evolution from a toneless language into a tonologically complex grammatical tone language and continued evolution between instances of a grammatical tone language.
• A series of realistic tone rules that govern surface pronunciation complete with a tonal inventory, tone melodies, and optional floating tones.
References
Aannestad, A. (2018). Tone for Conlangers: A Basic Introduction. Fiat Lingua. fiatlingua.org...
David Odden. (2020). Tone in African Languages. In G. J. Dimmendaal & R. Vossen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford University Press. citeseerx.ist....
Gil Burgoin, C. I. (2021). Arguments for a Privative L Tone in Northern Tepehuan. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology, 9. doi.org/10.376...
Goldsmith, J. A. (1976). Autosegmental Phonology [PhD Thesis]. www.ai.mit.edu/...
Goldsmith, J. A. (1990). Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Basil Blackwell Ltd. ISBN 978-0631136767, OCLC 19514054. Available at WorldCat & Amazon.
Grammatical Tone. (2003). In The SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms. glossary.sil.o...
Hyman, L. M. (2000). Privative Tone in Bantu. ILCAA. Symposium on Tone, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. citeseerx.ist....
Hyman, L. M. (2007). Universals of tone rules: 30 years later. In Tones and Tunes (Vol. 1). De Gruyter Mouton. linguistics.ber...
Keffala, B. J. (2007). Tone in Mende: A Comparative Analysis of Theoretical Approaches [BA Thesis]. scholarship.tr...
Lionnet, F. (n.d.). Tons et structure prosodique en paicî (Nouvelle-Calédonie). www.princeton.e...
Michaud, A., & Sands, B. (2020). Tonogenesis. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.shs.hal.scienc...
Mende. (n.d.). Center for Language Technology. celt.indiana.e...
Nurse, D., & PhilippsonG. (Eds.). (2003). The Bantu languages (p. 236). Routledge. edisciplinas.u...
Tone. (2003). In The SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms. glossary.sil.o...
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Captions by ‪@stenoknight‬.

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11 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 7

@GabrielASwai Год назад

Hi Everyone! I am the presenter; if you have any questions you want me to answer reply to this comment.

@joaopedrocamelo3866 Год назад

Hi Gabriel, I hope it's not too late to ask, but could you give me a scenario/example in witch a contour may simplify? (15:53) Is it related to the melodies a language allows in a morphene?

@GabrielASwai Год назад

@@joaopedrocamelo3866 You might find this source useful ((Hyman, 2007) in my references): linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman/Hyman_Santorini_Final.pdf (page 9 specifically). To answer your first question, an example from Luba (Bantu, DRC) from the source I provided above is an underlying bà.dì.é.lá becming bà.dyè.lá after a rule changing (what I assume to be /i/) to (what I assume to be /j/), as opposed to changing to *bà.dyě.lá. In other words, a L.L.H.H sequence becomes L.L.H instead of *L.LH.H when the syllables are reduced (which can be written as L.LH → L.L, or put into autosegmental notation as I did). As for your second question, I haven't seen anything talking about the tone melodies, however the restrictions languages place on contour tones can have an effect on this rule. In a quote from the source I linked above: "... many languages prohibit contours in like neighbour contexts, thereby requiring the presence of a -αT ‘bounce’ to precede and/or follow[.]" I hope this answers your questions!; let me know if you have any other questions or clarifications you would like me to make.

@joaopedrocamelo3866 Год назад

@@GabrielASwai thanks a lot!

@GabrielASwai Год назад

@@joaopedrocamelo3866 No problem!

@RuanPysoft 9 дней назад

Very interesting video! I haven't found many resources online wrt how tone is developed/works, at least not aimed at conlangers. (There is Artifexian's "Game of Tones" video, which is quite nice, but that's it. But I also haven't looked very hard recently) I actually find it interesting how I have difficulty distinguishing or producing syllable-level tones (phrase-level or word-level tones, such as a rising tone to indicate a question, are easy, as they are present in all languages I speak), even though my language is currently undergoing tonogenesis by leveling voicing in plosives at the start of words and keeping voicedness as a low tone. (I actually noticed myself doing it today for the first time, even though I've been aware of it and on the lookout for months at this point; but it _is_ most prevalent in young female speakers, and I'm male with a relatively conservative pronunciation) I'm definitely thinking about creating a tonal conlang, but I'm currently like 80% done with my first conlang that might actually become "complete" (have enough grammar to translate, say, the pater noster or the babel text, or to just write a short story with; I typically burn out on and abandon conlangs _long_ before that point XD) so it'll have to wait. And then there's the issue that I won't be able to pronounce it reliably, but in my current conlang I have rounded/unrounded pairs of _all_ vowels, and I keep saying /ɯ/ as something like /u/, /ɵ̞/, or /ɨ/, so I have that problem anyways, lol (ig I'm used to rounding usually-unrounded sounds, rather than unrounding usually-rounded ones)