#lcc10

#lcc10 Gabriel Swai - Grammatical Tonology for Conlangers: Tonogenesis, Tone Rules, and More

details & slides: https://conlang.org/lcc10/#swai
speaker: Twitter @GabrielASwai, Reddit u/GabrielSwai, email [email protected]

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. https://fiatlingua.org/wp-content/upl...
David Odden. (2020). Tone in African Languages. In G. J. Dimmendaal & R. Vossen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford University Press. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...
Gil Burgoin, C. I. (2021). Arguments for a Privative L Tone in Northern Tepehuan. Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.4916
Goldsmith, J. A. (1976). Autosegmental Phonology [PhD Thesis]. http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/the...
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. https://glossary.sil.org/term/grammat...
Hyman, L. M. (2000). Privative Tone in Bantu. ILCAA. Symposium on Tone, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...
Hyman, L. M. (2007). Universals of tone rules: 30 years later. In Tones and Tunes (Vol. 1). De Gruyter Mouton. http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyma...
Keffala, B. J. (2007). Tone in Mende: A Comparative Analysis of Theoretical Approaches [BA Thesis]. https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr...
Lionnet, F. (n.d.). Tons et structure prosodique en paicî (Nouvelle-Calédonie). http://www.princeton.edu/~flionnet/pa...
Michaud, A., & Sands, B. (2020). Tonogenesis. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics.https://shs.hal.science/halshs-025193...
Mende. (n.d.). Center for Language Technology. https://celt.indiana.edu/portal/Mende...
Nurse, D., & PhilippsonG. (Eds.). (2003). The Bantu languages (p. 236). Routledge. https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfil...
Tone. (2003). In The SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms. https://glossary.sil.org/term/tone

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