Talk:Láadan
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[edit] Tones
In her LiveJournal blog, Elgin writes:
About "Based on the extremely cursory evidence presented, I'd actually argue that it has two tones: high and low" .... I understand, and I understand why you say so. (I've had several off-LJ e-mails making the same proposal.)
In the formalisms I work with, calling absence of tone "low tone" is an unnecessary complication; just "absence of tone" is enough. The phoneme that carries no high tone represents the neutral, baseline pitch for the language; calling it a tone seems to me to be superfluous. I may of course be wrong, but that's my perception of the situation.
For many linguists, as she acknowledges there, it makes more sense to speak of two tones. I've expanded the tone section to mention this difference in formalisms.
The section proposead an analysis in four tones and long vs. short vowels. But since the "long vowels" always have changing tone, never level tone -- that would be two high or two low/unmarked-tone vowels in a row -- those "long vowels" are never distinguished by length alone. Therefore length is not phonemic. Thnidu (talk) 17:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
- I never understood why people have been analyzing it as 4 tones anyway. Her tone system is basically the same as Navajo, and I think she is pretty up-front about that, although it's peculiar to hear her saying that it has "only one tone"; I assume she knows what she's talking about, but a system like Navajo/Laadan is what Ive always heard described as having two tones, not one (or four). Soap Talk/Contributions 18:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
