Tonal Conlangs and How They Work

[laelra]

Hello,

I am trying to write a conlang that probably needs to be tonal because of the setting, and the way I need it to sound. The problem is that I am not really a phonology person despite a decent background in linguistics. I understand what a tone is, and the difference between them in a system. I don't understand how they are actually USED, or how they work together. Please help!

[Travis B.]

I would highly recommend looking into level tones versus contour tones, tone sandhi, word tones, pitch accent, and floating tones myself before trying to design a tonal system for a given language.

[laelra]

What exactly is tone Sandhi? What are floating tones? I have tried to research, but researching tones is ... less helpful than one might expect.

I can tell you that I do NOT want to go near contour tones, though, if that helps.

[Travis B.]

What exactly is tone Sandhi? What are floating tones? I have tried to research, but researching tones is ... less helpful than one might expect.

I can tell you that I do NOT want to go near contour tones, though, if that helps.

Tone sandhi are when tones have, well, "allotones" when they are adjacent to particular tones within the same word or, possibly, across word boundaries.

Floating tones are when there are tones in a word that are not firmly tied to any particular syllable or realized morpheme but rather constitute morphemes unto themselves, often due to morphemes with tones that disappeared historically but left their tone behind.

[laelra]

Okay, so all tonal languages probably end up with sandhi, then.

My language definitely has inflections, lots of inflections! Can that work with a tonal language? Obviously, the tones technically increase the phonemes in a language. However, how do you create a tonal system that works together with each other with lots of inflections? (I am suspecting that sandhi is going to be used here.)

[Travis B.]

Okay, so all tonal languages probably end up with sandhi, then.

My language definitely has inflections, lots of inflections! Can that work with a tonal language? Obviously, the tones technically increase the phonemes in a language. However, how do you create a tonal system that works together with each other with lots of inflections? (I am suspecting that sandhi is going to be used here.)

In a tonal language inflectional morphemes may be assigned tones, or different inflected forms may receive different tones overall. In a pitch accent language inflection may result in movement or change in the nature of the pitch accent. Note that tones normally are not considered to increase the number of phonemes in a language, since tones typically are applied to whole syllables, morphemes, or even words rather than to individual segments; they are suprasegmental.

[laelra]

Wait, if the only thing that distinguishes two words is a tone, then the tone is a phoneme, no?
And the tones have to distinguish words, that is, some words (or inflections) have to only be different by the tones because otherwise, tones are not productive in the language, and they would have died out. What happens in a tonal language when you have a high tone in the base morpheme, and the inflection also has a high tone? How do they work together?

[Ares Land]

Tones have a phonemic role. It's really no different from stress in English: not a phoneme, but phonemic.

Complex inflections and tones do work together (Cheyenne, for instance, is tonal and has just about as much inflections as you can pile on, and then some) Sometimes tones are inflections, that is, for some reason, common in Africa. (To use a fictional example, you could definitely use a high tone to mark plurals, or past tense...)

What happens in a tonal language when you have a high tone in the base morpheme, and the inflection also has a high tone? How do they work together?

That would depend on the language, and on sandhi rules. In your case, for instance, you could have the preceding high-tone realized higher, or with a raising tone.
One subtype, so to speak is pitch-accent, you have one tonal contour per word -- I don't know, /pikaba/ realised LLH. Adding an inflection /pikabali/ could switch the contour to LHLH ; there may be complex interactions with stress or vowel length.

I can advise several approaches: a) just figuring out what sounds good, or what is easily pronounced. Try to repeat your word, both uninflected and inflected, very quickly and see how it comes out. (Crude, perhaps, but as good a method as any.) b) check out real life tonal languages, and what rules they have for inspiration c) figuring out the diachronics and tonogenesis.

One thing I found while researching tone myself is that every language will handle it in a different way, sometimes quite different. Cheyenne, Lingala and Mandarin are all tonal language; each of these handle tone in a very different manner.
(Though tone is an areal feature, so unrelated languages in Asia may have tone systems that work in a somewhat similar fashion; ditto in Africa where unrelated languages make use of tone in the same way.)

[bradrn]

My language definitely has inflections, lots of inflections! Can that work with a tonal language?

Of course! You may want to look at Bantu languages here: they are both highly agglutinative and highly tonal.

Wait, if the only thing that distinguishes two words is a tone, then the tone is a phoneme, no?

Not quite. Generally we restrict the term ‘phoneme’ to things which are segmental: they have a linear order in a word. By contrast, tones are suprasegmental, in that they are associated with a whole mora, a whole syllable or a whole word, rather than being associated with any one specific segment.

What happens in a tonal language when you have a high tone in the base morpheme, and the inflection also has a high tone? How do they work together?

Well, assuming your language has syllable tone, you just put the tones together: a word like /kàpá/ (with LH tone) plus an inflection /ní/ with H tone would yield /kàpání/. What happens next is language-dependent. In some languages, such as Mandarin, this is all: simply putting the syllables together gives the surface form. Other languages, such as Bantu languages, have complex systems of tonal sandhi, such that this might end up as /kàpánì/ or /kàpàní/ or something like that.

If you’d like a resource recommendation, I found Yip’s book Tone extremely helpful in understanding all the things you can do with tone.

[Richard W]

Generally we restrict the term ‘phoneme’ to things which are segmental: they have a linear order in a word.

Which clique do you mean by 'we'? Plenty of people consider tones to be phonemes: some analyses make vowel length a phoneme.

Not all languages have noticeable tone sandhi - Thai for one seems to lack tone sandhi, though lack of stress can come close to obliterating it.

We do seem to have little idea of how tones change over time.

By contrast, tones are suprasegmental, in that they are associated with a whole mora, a whole syllable or a whole word, rather than being associated with any one specific segment.

Be very wary of accounts splitting contour tones into associations with moras. I've seen detailed accounts which do a good job of explaining why well-attested words don't exist. The processes of tonogenesis and tone splitting can leave strong correlations between tones and the remnant of the former conditioning factors, giving the false appearance of constraints that actually don't exist.

[laelra]

If a language has long and short vowels, and the long vowels have low-high or high-low tone, is this a contour tone language, or is it two short vowels near each other with different tones? How would these two scenarios be different?

Also, thank you so much! You all are amazing!

[bradrn]

If a language has long and short vowels, and the long vowels have low-high or high-low tone, is this a contour tone language, or is it two short vowels near each other with different tones?

Whichever you want. It will depend on the specifics of the tonal system and on your favoured analysis. But if only long vowels have contour tones, and all combinations of H/L/HL/LH are possible on them, then I would incline to the view that tones are associated with moras in this particular language.

Note that as Richard W mentions, many analyses of tonal systems consider contour tones to be two tones on one vowel, even for short vowels.

Generally we restrict the term ‘phoneme’ to things which are segmental: they have a linear order in a word.

Which clique do you mean by 'we'? Plenty of people consider tones to be phonemes…

…some analyses make vowel length a phoneme.

Well, this at least makes sense, since vowel lengthening is a process involving phones in a linear order.

By contrast, tones are suprasegmental, in that they are associated with a whole mora, a whole syllable or a whole word, rather than being associated with any one specific segment.

Be very wary of accounts splitting contour tones into associations with moras. I've seen detailed accounts which do a good job of explaining why well-attested words don't exist. The processes of tonogenesis and tone splitting can leave strong correlations between tones and the remnant of the former conditioning factors, giving the false appearance of constraints that actually don't exist.

I never said that all contour tones are moraic; only that such systems exist. Of course the preferred analysis will depend heavily on the language in question.

[foxcatdog]

If a language has long and short vowels, and the long vowels have low-high or high-low tone, is this a contour tone language, or is it two short vowels near each other with different tones? How would these two scenarios be different?

Also, thank you so much! You all are amazing!

Navajo allows tonal contours on long vowels not allowed on short vowels (as do most languages i've seen at least according to wikipedia though navajo is the only grammar i've read). I imagine this results from previously short identical vowels coalescing into one long vowel rather then the lengthening of a previously short vowel but i don't know the specifics in diachronics. Also of note is at least according to the grammar i read is Navajo contrasts long *ai based on whether the first (aai) or second element (aii) is longer.

[Vilike]

Also, there's a neat introduction specifically for conlangers here.