Tone: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:23, 12 December 2022

Toaq is a tonal language. It has tones! That is: saying a word with a rising or falling vocal intonation, for example, makes for a difference in meaning.

Function of tones

Toaq has grammatical tone: when you change the tone of a word, its grammatical function changes (for example dẻ “is beautiful” → dẽ “beautifully”).

(This is in contrast to lexical tone, like in Chinese: there, when you change the tone of a syllable, it becomes a different word (lexeme) entirely. For example 西 xı̄ “west” → 媳 xí “daughter-in-law”.)

Tones

The falling tone is used for verbs, predicatizers, and adjectives. (fa “goes”, kúe gı “the good book”, … po káto “… of the cat”)
The rising tone is used for nouns, determiners, and pronouns. (káto “the cat”, sá kato “some cat(s)”, jí “I/me”)
The low glottal tone is used for complementizers and clause-initiating words. (ꝡä gı “that it’s good”)
The rising-falling tone is for adverbial adjuncts.

Interaction with parts of speech

This table shows how the four tones interact with Toaq's parts of speech:

	Falling tone	Rising tone	Glottal tone	Rising-falling tone
Verb	Verbal complex Serial tail Adjective Determiner complement	Bound variable		Adjunct
Pronoun		Argument	Incorporated object
Determiner		Argument	Incorporated object
Complementizer	Speech act complement		Subclause head	Incorporated object
Interjection	Interjection	Inquiry		Expression of empathy
Speech act particle	Lexical tone (i.e. dâ and da are simply different lexemes)
Focus particle	Steals tone from head if possible, otherwise echoes it
Conjunction	Highest precedence	Default precedence		Second highest precedence

Toaq Gamma

Tones worked quite differently back in Toaq Gamma.

Verb tones

Every verb can be "conjugated" into one of six tones, each of which expresses some grammatical function:

(see History section for why there is no tone #1)
The rising tone marks a noun or bound variable. (súq “you”, sa pỏq… póq “some person… that person”)
The rising-creaky tone marks the start of a relative clause. (gï “which is good”)
The falling tone marks a verb phrase, or the tail of a serial. (fả “goes”, bũ dẻ “not-beautifully”)
The rising-falling tone marks the start of a content clause. (gî “that it's good”)
The mid-falling tone marks a preposition. (bìe ní “after that”)
The falling creaky tone marks an adverb. (dẽ “beautifully”)

Sometimes people will say “the fifth tone” or “t5” instead of “the rising-falling tone”.

Possible new tone scheme

Main Article: Main verb tone

On 21 August 2022, Hoemaı mentioned trying to settle on a new tone scheme.

— adjunct (adverbs and prepositions)
— nouns or bound variable
— allotone of ; alternatively if adverbs and prepositions stay separate, it would take one of those functions
— tail of a serial
— relative clauses
— main verb
— content clauses
— particles
— allotone of

Neutral tone

Particles, on the other hand, are in the neutral tone (aka the 8th tone), which is not really a tone. The only rule is that you don't continue the contour of the previous tone. So, when saying a particle after the falling tone , you should go up in pitch to break the falling contour. This way, the listener can tell the difference between lẻ moq and lẻmoq.

History

There used to be a flat tone , which marked the continuation of a multisyllable word. But now, the tone contour is spread out over the whole word. This was tone #1, but now it is gone. So we start counting from #2, because it would be more confusing to re-number them.

The rising-creaky tone used to be dipping , and was just “creaky”.

Lexical tone

Toaq actually does have a little bit of lexical tone. For example, moq (question marker) and môq (rhetorical question marker) are different lexemes.

More subtly, lâ is not + lả. Rather, each of and lả is a complementizer in its own right. So really lâ is also its own complementizer, of which is an allomorph.

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 #The '''rising tone''' {{done|2}} is used for nouns, [[determiners]], and pronouns. ({{t|káto}} “the cat”, {{t|sá kato}} “some cat(s)”, {{t|jí}} “I/me”)
 #The '''low glottal tone''' {{done|3}} is used for complementizers and clause-initiating words. ({{t|ꝡä gı}} “that it’s good”)
-#The '''rising-falling tone''' {{done|4}} is for adverbial adjuncts
+#The '''rising-falling tone''' {{done|4}} is for adverbial adjuncts.
+=== Interaction with parts of speech ===
+This table shows how the four tones interact with Toaq's parts of speech:
+{| class="wikitable"
+|-
+!
+! Falling tone {{done|1}}
+! Rising tone {{done|2}}
+! Glottal tone {{done|3}}
+! Rising-falling tone {{done|4}}
+|-
+! [[Verb]]
+| <ul><li>[[Verbal complex]]<li>[[Serial]] tail<li>[[Adjective]]<li>[[Determiner]] complement</ul>
+| [[Bound variable]]
+| style=background:#ccc |
+| [[Adjunct]]
+|-
+! [[Pronoun]]
+| style=background:#ccc |
+| Argument
+| [[Incorporated object]]
+| style=background:#ccc |
+|-
+! [[Determiner]]
+| style=background:#ccc |
+| Argument
+| [[Incorporated object]]
+| style=background:#ccc |
+|-
+! [[Complementizer]]
+| [[Speech act]] complement
+| style=background:#ccc |
+| [[Subclause]] head</ul>
+| [[Incorporated object]]
+|-
+! [[Interjection]]
+| Interjection
+| Inquiry
+| style=background:#ccc |
+| Expression of empathy
+|-
+! [[Speech act particle]]
+| colspan=4 | Lexical tone (i.e. {{t|dâ}} and {{t|da}} are simply different lexemes)
+|-
+! [[Focus particle]]
+| colspan=4 | Steals tone from head if possible, otherwise echoes it
+|-
+! [[Conjunction]]
+| Highest precedence
+| Default precedence
+| style=background:#ccc |
+| Second highest precedence
+|}
 ==Toaq Gamma==
@@ Line 51: / Line 106: @@
 There used to be a '''flat tone''' {{tone|1}}, which marked the continuation of a multisyllable word. But now, the tone contour is spread out over the whole word. This was tone #1, but now it is gone. So we start counting from #2, because it would be more confusing to re-number them.
-The rising-creaky tone {{tone|3}} used to be dipping {{tone|3old}}, and {{tone|7}} was just “creaky”.== Lexical tone ==
+The rising-creaky tone {{tone|3}} used to be dipping {{tone|3old}}, and {{tone|7}} was just “creaky”.
+== Lexical tone ==
 Toaq actually does have a little bit of lexical tone. For example, {{t|moq}} (question marker) and {{t|môq}} (rhetorical question marker) are different lexemes.