Newsgroups: bit.listserv.deaf-l
Date:         Fri, 11 Sep 1992 20:39:27 EDT
From:         "(Annie Senghas)" <annie@PSYCHE.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      tonal languages

Well, some of you had a few more questions about tonal languages, so I
passed them on.  Here's more info, for those who are interested:

==========================

> Off the top of my head - Japanese isn't tonal, but Vietnamese
> is.  I'll get back to you on others.  There are quite a few
> tonal languages in Africa and eastern/central Asia.  Most
> (though not all) Sino-Tibetan (east/central/southeast Asia)
> languages are tonal, as are most Bantu (east/central/southern
> Africa) languages (though Swahili, the best-known Bantu language,
> isn't tonal).  Yoruba and Hausa, two of the most widely spoken
> languages in western Africa, are both tonal (and both belong
> to non-Bantu language families).  Note that not all eastern
> and southeastern Asian languages are Sino-Tibetan, by the way.
> Non-Sino-Tibetan languages in those regions include Japanese,
> Korean, Khmer (Cambodian) - non of which are tonal; and
> Vietnamese - which is tonal.  I can't think of any Indo-European
> languages or any Afro-Asiatic languages (Arabic, Hebrew, etc.) that
> are tonal.  Nor can I think of any Malayo-Polynesian languages
> (Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagolog, Hawaiian, Maori, Malagasy, etc.)
> that are tonal.  I'll have to check on other groups, such as
> American Native and Australian native language families, Dravidian
> languages of southern India, Ural-Altaic languages (mainly
> central and western Asia, as well as Hungary and Finland), etc.

==============================

and my friend added, a few days later,
==============================

> If you care ...  It occurred to me the other day that in answering
> your questions about tonal languages, I'd made at least one possible
> mistake.  In the same message I said that I couldn't think of any
> Afro-Asiatic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) that were tonal, and I
> also noted that Hausa is tonal.  Now if you believe some (slightly
> contentious) proposals of Greenberg's, Hausa should be considered a
> member of the Afro-Asiatic family.  So I guess that's an example.

> And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

==============================

For those who were asking about what a tonal language is, I think
Seth's example is a good place to start.  But basically, it means that
tone is a relevant feature WITHIN A WORD for identifying that word.

English is not a tonal language.  But perhaps a good example for
English would be stress.  Stress in English IS relevant within a word.
With different stress, a word can have a completely different meaning,
or even be a different part of speech.  Think of the difference
between the words RECord and reCORD.  The first is an album, the
second means to tape something or to write it down.  You have to put
the stress on the right syllable or you will find yourself meaning
something different.  (Similar noun/verb stress pairs can be found in
the words reject, rerun, conduct, pervert, etc, although it is not a
general rule per se.)

If you stress a word wrongly in English, it can become unrecognizable.
Say the word "apparent" to a hearing English-speaker with stress on
the wrong syllable (such as appaRENT or APparent) and they won't
recognize the word.  (If they do, they might think you sound like a
non-native speaker).

In tonal languages, tone plays the role that stress plays in English.
If you change the tones within a word, you can change the entire word.
Use the wrong tones, and the word may be unrecognizable.

Note that there are languages that are not stress languages.  Some
always put the stress at the last or second-last syllable of a word.
This guides people to where the boundaries between words are.  If a
language is not a stress language and you say a word with the wrong
stress, it sounds a little silly, but it is the same word.  Likewise,
if you vary tones within a word in English (a non-tonal language), it
may sound funny but it won't change the meaning.  (Of course, it may
start to interfere with phrasal intonation, which is another thing
altogether).

Hope this answers some of your questions,
Annie
(annie@psyche.mit.edu)
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU