From: owner-ane@ (ANE Digest) To: ane-digest Subject: ANE Digest V2001 #80 Reply-To: Sender: owner-ane@ Errors-To: owner-ane@ Precedence: bulk ANE Digest Sunday, March 25 2001 Volume 2001 : Number 080 Re: ane archeology of tones (duplicate) Re: ane archeology of tones Re: ane archeology of tones ane Drought question... ane Myriam ane BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY: BOGAZKOY-HATTUSHA: CAPITAL OF THE HITTITES Re: ane archeology of tones Re: ane archeology of tones Re: ane archeology of tones ane Re: archeology of tones Re: ane archeology of tones ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 06:41:42 -0600 From: "John Baker" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones (duplicate) I apologize for the poorly formatted message. I am dealing with a new mail client program. I have reformatted it below. If not interested, please delete! *** There is no reason why a tonal language could not appear anywhere in the world. In tonal languages, tones function as phonemes (or tonemes). They help to distinguish one word from another and, by separating words, to communicate meanings. They are just like any other phoneme in that language or in any other language. That is the reason they are in the language in the first place. In the case of extinct languages, the only way we have of knowing if the language was tonal is if the writing system is phonemic and indicates tone in some manner. (Note that although Mandarin is a tonal language, we could not tell this from the writing system alone, because it is not phonemic and does not indicate tone). If a tonal language used a phonemic writing system but, for some strange reason, did not indicate tones, a reader of the language would have to deal with an extraordinarily high number of homophones / homographs. For the native speaker homophones / homographs are not quite the problem they might seem, because she has context as an ally. For example, in English we have no way of knowing how to read the word "read" apart from context. (Is it the infinitive [ri:d], or is it the homograph past tense [red]?) Nevertheless, in a tonal language which did not indicate tones in a phonemic script, this problem would be multiplied many times over. The purpose of language, whether spoken or written, is to communicate meaning. If the language in question is tonal, unless the writing system of the language makes no representations of the sounds of the language at all (purely logographic), we should expect to find some kind of indication of tone in the writing of the language. Otherwise, speakers of the language would have no way of communicating meanings in writing. A tonal language can adopt the writing system of a non-tonal language, even a phonemic one. But again, it must find a way to indicate tone or written communication will be difficult or very impractical. We should find tonal phonemes or tonemes represented in the script in some way, and we should be able to collect lists of minimal pairs distinguished by tone. Either that, or the texts should be confusing and full of homophones / homographs. I tend to begin with meaning and communicative function rather than with form. Others may take issue with this approach. John W. Baker jjwbaker@earthlink.net Internet service for earthlinks ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 14:54:47 +0200 From: "Ariel L. Szczupak" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones At 22:00 23/03/01 -0600, you wrote: >There is no reason why a tonal language could not appear anywhere in the >world. > >In tonal languages, tones function as phonemes (or tonemes). They help to >distinguish one word from another and, by separating words, to communicate >meanings. They are just >like any other phoneme in that language or in any other language. Actually I was trying to avoid 'phoneme'. Consider a hypothetical language in which a specific CVCV sequence can have two lexical meanings, one with a level tone and one with a rise-fall, but the peak of the rise-fall can fall either on the first syllable or on the second without changing the meaning (something like a tonal variant of the shifting stresses between Ashkenazi & Sepharadi dialects of Hebrew). Assuming further that CvCV is different from CVCV whatever tonal value they have, where does the segment end and the suprasegment start in such a language? Do we have two phonemes and one toneme? Is it a tone language or should it be called a prosodic language? >That is the reason they are in the language in the first place. > >In the case of extinct languages, the only way we have of knowing if the >language was tonal is if the writing system is phonemic and indicates tone >in some manner. First, is such a writing system a necessary condition? I think the simplest way of knowing if an extinct language was tonal is for someone credible to tell us so, in another, known language (in which case the tonal language doesn't even need to have a script representation). The focus would be then on analyzing the credibility of the witness. Would a description of a tonal language by Herodotus be credible? Second, is such a writing system a sufficient condition? Even if we have a tono-phonemic script for an extinct language, can we tell that the script represents a tonal language? Can two languages, a tonal one and an atonal one, be represented by the same script? >(Note that although Mandarin is a tonal language, we could not tell this >from the writing system alone, because it is not phonemic and does not >indicate tone). > >If a tonal language used a phonemic writing system but, for some strange >reason, did not indicate tones, Strange is relative. This sentence would look in a Latin equivalent of Hebrew something like "ths sntnc wld lk in a ltn equvlnt of hbrw smthng lk ths" >a reader of the language would have to deal with an extraordinarily high >number of homophones / homographs. I'm not sure I understand why you include homophones (same sound, different spelling). As for the number of homographs - the possible number of level-tone values and contour-tone combinations is huge but the number of tonal values used in real languages is actually very small. The number of possible consonant/vowel combinations is even bigger, but the phonemic inventory of any specific (known) language is between 15 and 80 phonemes (did I get the numbers right?). So I think that a high number of homographs is possible, but not unavoidable. >For the native speaker homophones / homographs are not quite the problem >they might seem, because she has context as an ally. For example, in >English we have no way of knowing how to read the word "read" apart from >context. (Is it the infinitive [ri:d], or is it the homograph past tense >[red]?) Nevertheless, in a tonal language which did not indicate tones in >a phonemic script, this problem would be multiplied many times over. Not necessarily, since the total number of both phonemes and tonemes in the inventory of that language could still be low. >The purpose of language, whether spoken or written, is to communicate >meaning. If the language in question is tonal, unless the writing system >of the language makes no representations of the sounds of the language at >all (purely logographic), we should expect As a matter of scientific methodology I think the only thing we "should" expect is the unexpected . As we speak the speed of light is changing from being constant to being a function of photon frequency and hominid history is being turned upside down. Or, in Popperian terms, the refutations of conjectures are the engine that drives science forward. >to find some kind of indication of tone in the writing of the language. >Otherwise, speakers of the language would have no way of communicating >meanings in writing. > >A tonal language can adopt the writing system of a non-tonal language, >even a phonemic one. But again, it must find a way to indicate tone or >written communication will be >difficult or very impractical. We should find tonal phonemes or tonemes >represented in the >script in some way, and we should be able to collect lists of minimal >pairs distinguished by tone. Either that, or the texts should be confusing >and full of homophones / homographs. I'm talking about a hypothetical. As far as 'reality' goes I accept everything you say, maybe replacing some "should"s and "must"s with less logically strict terms. But I am intrigued by some implications of the hypothetical. I think that we would know if a language was tonal or not if it was still actively living in the second half of the first millennium BC - we'd probably have enough evidence to know (subject to that language not losing tonality along the way to that period). But what about older languages? Are the Sumerian and Akkadian homophones only a result of the mixed phonetic-logographic aspect of these languages? And, if it is possible for a script to represent both a tonal language and and an atonal one, then the hypothetical becomes an exercise in proving that something can't be figured out. Something like proving mathematical NP completeness. >I tend to begin with meaning and communicative function rather than with >form. Others may take issue with this approach. [Excuse the extensive quoting - I didn't want to take things out of context] Ariel. - --- Ariel L. Szczupak AMIS-JLM (Ricercar Ltd.) Jerusalem, Israel +972-2-5619660 als-ane@amis-jlm.co.il ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 13:56:08 From: "Cale Johnson" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones John Baker wrote: "If the language in question is tonal, unless the writing system of the language makes no representations of the sounds of the language at all (purely logographic), we should expect to find some kind of indication of tone in the writing of the language. Otherwise, speakers of the language would have no way of communicating meanings in writing." I would tend to disagree, I'm afraid. This kind of argument, usually involving the presumption that a large amount of homophony makes a language undecipherable, hence some kind of non-segmental phonemic coding MUST have been involved, seems to show up in discussions of Sumerian quite often. If we take a simplified form of the argument: too much homophony implies non-segmental phonemes -- I think the argument fails at several points. There are many, many languages that have relatively little vocabulary and that are perceived by speakers of languages with huge vocabularies like English as highly homophonous -- think of verbs in Sumerian (or, for that matter, think of Japanese, where the same verb used in a different semantic field often uses a different kanji). In any particular semantic field, there usually isn't any homophony or if there is, it is resolved by context or grammar. The use of the "same" verb in different semantic fields is technically not homophony, but it is often perceived that way. That is to say, one person's "homophony" is, for another person, a small lexicon adjoined to an elaborate/interesting grammar used in co(n)text. As for: "Otherwise, speakers of the language would have no way of communicating meanings in writing." Writing always reconstructs relatively complete spoken forms from highly incomplete written forms. If I remember correctly, in Classical Chinese, the same character can have different tones depending on its grammatical function in a sentence. If anything, non-segmental phonemes tend NOT to be coded in writing systems at all and the users of those systems often get along just fine without them. Just think of all the ANE written languages that functioned fairly well without even the regular indication of vowels. Best wishes, Cale Johnson _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 12:39:19 -0600 From: "Charles E. Jones" Subject: ane Drought question... - --============_-1226663335==_ma============ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Posted on behalf of Vance Watrous at watrous@acsu.buffalo.edu > "Does anyone know of any evidence, historical or scientific, for a >drought in the Eastern Mediterranean between ca. 630 - 525 B.C.E.?" >Please respond directly to >Vance Watrous at watrous@acsu.buffalo.edu > >Thank you. - --============_-1226663335==_ma============ Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Drought question...
Posted on behalf of Vance Watrous at watrous@acsu.buffalo.edu

>   "Does anyone know of any evidence, historical or scientific, for a
>drought in the Eastern Mediterranean between ca. 630 - 525 B.C.E.?"
>Please respond  directly to
>Vance Watrous at watrous@acsu.buffalo.edu
>
>Thank you.
- --============_-1226663335==_ma============-- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 13:27:12 -0500 From: nyokabi@kingcon.com Subject: ane Myriam Re: the question as to whether Miriam could be an Egyptian theophoric name using the name of the Canaanite God Yam ( and same could apply to the names Meriba'l and Meremot?): Note that Miriam is a son of Mered the Judahite (3 or 4 generations down from Judah) and his Egyptian wife? Bithiah, who is described as a "Daughter of Pharoah whom Mered took" ! in I Chr 4/18. She bore him three sons, while his wife (ha)Jehudijah ("the Jewess") bore him four. My Unger's Bible Dictionary interprets Bithiah as "Daughter of Jah" ! -which if true would be all the more interesting for this question. High ranking Israelites like Miriam and Meribal being given seemingly "Hyksos" names, and a daughter of "Pharoah" [was he a Hyksos kinglet?] with a Yah name! Since Ashtarte was the consort of Yam, and received offerings with him in the Emar area, Meryam might have been an epithet of Ashtarte turned PN during the Hyksos era, when these Canaanite deities show up in Egyptian names. Moses' mother might simply have liked the sound of the name and have given its etymology no more thought than people who name their sons John think of it means "Jah is gracious" or whatever it means. Ditto for Mery-mot, but it would be harder to claim that people who gave their children names ending in -bal didn't know what it meant, though some have maintained it's meaning as "lord" was simply applied to Yahwe, just as with names in "Adon". E. Adams ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 12:56:12 -0600 From: "Charles E. Jones" Subject: ane BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY: BOGAZKOY-HATTUSHA: CAPITAL OF THE HITTITES BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV Department of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Canada Chair in Near Eastern Archaeology Sala Trust, London IRENE LEVI-SALA ANNUAL RESEARCH SEMINAR BOGAZKOY-HATTUSHA: CAPITAL OF THE HITTITES ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PROGRAM: 09:30 - 10:00 Registration and Refreshments 10:00 - 12:30 MORNING SESSION Opening Remarks Prof. E.D. Oren, Coordinator Prof. A. Braverman, President, Ben-Gurion University Guest Scholar: Dr. JURGEN SEEHER, German Institute of Archaeology, Istanbul CURRENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AT BOGAZKOY - HATTUSHA Town Development, Chronology, Temples and Palaces The Buyukkaya Excavations 12:30 - 14:00 LUNCH 14:00 - 17:00 AFTERNOON SESSION Economy, Water Supply and Food Management The Last Days of Hattusha PANEL DISCUSSION Prof. I. Singer, Tel-Aviv University Prof. J. Yakar, Tel-Aviv University Prof. D. Ussishkin, Tel-Aviv University Prof. Y. Goren, Tel-Aviv University Ms. A. Taggar-Cohen, Ben-Gurion University Prof. E.D. Oren, Concluding Remarks The seminar will take place on Thursday, 29 March, __2001 Sonnenfeldt Auditorium, Building 72 (Humanities and Social Sciences) Vouchers at NIS 45 for joint lunch may be purchased during registration For further information call Rona 08-6461091 or Fax 08-6472947 E-mail orensin@bgumail.bgu.ac.il or ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 17:25:59 -0500 From: "Peter T. Daniels" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones Cale Johnson wrote: > Writing always reconstructs relatively complete spoken forms from highly > incomplete written forms. If I remember correctly, in Classical Chinese, > the same character can have different tones depending on its grammatical > function in a sentence. If anything, non-segmental phonemes tend NOT to be > coded in writing systems at all and the users of those systems often get > along just fine without them. Just think of all the ANE written languages > that functioned fairly well without even the regular indication of vowels. Characters don't have tones, syllables do ... I don't think tone has a grammatical function in Chinese; if a character has the same segmental reading and different tone readings, then it's simply representing two words that happen to differ only in their toneme. (But I don't think there are many examples.) PS *Modern Chinese* by Ping Chen (Cambridge, 1999) is a good source for true facts about Chinese writing (and more widely available than John DeFrancis's two books published by the University of Hawaii Press in 1985 and 1989). - -- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 17:21:50 -0500 From: "Peter T. Daniels" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones Any introductory textbook on phonology will have a chapter on tone, and there are not a few books devoted entirely to tone. Intonation, as found in English and any other language, is a different phenomenon from lexical tone; and there are two basic ways that langauges use lexical tone, which we could call the Chinese style and the West African style. In Chinese, every morpheme has one of a small number of "tonemes" (such as high, low, falling, rising, dipping, etc.) - -- the various Chinese languages have different numbers of them. In "downstep" languages, the pitch of successive morphemes is relative to preceding morphemes in an utterance. The most obvious candidate for an ANE tone language is of course Sumerian, since it would provide an easy explanation for the seemingly large number of homophonic signs. But I have the impression that Sumerologists are able to account for a great deal of the homophony in terms of segmental phonology rather than tones (on the basis of morphophonemic alternations visible in adjacent syllables?). Lexical tone seems to develop out of final stop consonants (but in order to see why, you'll need to know something of the acoustic phonetics of consonants and vowels), so tone is a typological property, not genetic and only weakly areal, and is liable to be found anywhere in the world. Such as in Swedish! But ancient final consonants are reconstructed on the basis of comparative and historical data that are plentiful for the Chinese languages but not available for Sumerian -- so we're not likely ever to know for sure. - -- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 17:23:45 -0500 From: "Peter T. Daniels" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones Ariel L. Szczupak wrote: > > At 22:00 23/03/01 -0600, you wrote: > >There is no reason why a tonal language could not appear anywhere in the > >world. > > > >In tonal languages, tones function as phonemes (or tonemes). They help to > >distinguish one word from another and, by separating words, to communicate > >meanings. They are just > >like any other phoneme in that language or in any other language. > > Actually I was trying to avoid 'phoneme'. But why?? The concept of "phoneme" is extremely useful in describing languages (even though it now appears to be more an artifact of alphabetic writing systems than a model of how speech sound is actually processed in the brain). [In my previous reply I tried to avoid duplicating what John Baker had written -- here I might comment on both contributors.] > Consider a hypothetical language in which a specific CVCV sequence can have > two lexical meanings, one with a level tone and one with a rise-fall, but > the peak of the rise-fall can fall either on the first syllable or on the > second without changing the meaning (something like a tonal variant of the > shifting stresses between Ashkenazi & Sepharadi dialects of Hebrew). But there ain't no such animal. Tones are associated with syllables. The pattern you describe might be realized in stress (not tone); "stress" = amplitude, "tone" = pitch. An example is English, where the noun "combat" and the verb "combat" are distinguished only by the location of the stress (thus stress is phonemic in English). There are a number of such pairs in English. > Assuming further that CvCV is different from CVCV whatever tonal value they > have, where does the segment end and the suprasegment start in such a > language? Do we have two phonemes and one toneme? Is it a tone language or > should it be called a prosodic language? Assuming that by and you mean the first syllables of the two words have different vowels, "suprasegmentals" and "segments" don't share a boundary; that's exactly what the prefix "supra-" communicates. A tone (or a stress) is a property of a syllable, not of any particular segment (though presumably it's easer to hear on the vowel than on the consonant(s)). > >That is the reason they are in the language in the first place. > > > >In the case of extinct languages, the only way we have of knowing if the > >language was tonal is if the writing system is phonemic and indicates tone > >in some manner. (Or if the language is fairly recently extinct and all its close relatives show tone patterns suggesting they derive from a tonal ancestor ... I don't know whether there are any such cases, but the possibility can't be excluded a priori.) > First, is such a writing system a necessary condition? I think the simplest > way of knowing if an extinct language was tonal is for someone credible to > tell us so, in another, known language (in which case the tonal language > doesn't even need to have a script representation). The focus would be then > on analyzing the credibility of the witness. Would a description of a tonal > language by Herodotus be credible? A "description"? No, because the vocabulary for describing languages in Greek hadn't been invented yet. But a mention of some language in terms that could be interpreted as suggesting it was tonal -- such as "they sing whenever they speak" -- why not? Anyway, some say the Classical accents are tone indicators, so perhaps such a phenomenon wouldn't even be considered worthy of remarking on by Herodotus. > Second, is such a writing system a sufficient condition? Even if we have a > tono-phonemic script for an extinct language, can we tell that the script > represents a tonal language? Can two languages, a tonal one and an atonal > one, be represented by the same script? Of course. Look at any account of the scripts of Southeast Asia and their antecedents. (Well, ok, such accounts are few and far between, but the chapters in *The World's Writing Systems* on SEA, Burmese, Thai, and Khmer will show you a variety of results of the same original system -- Pali -- 's resources coming to represent a variety of suprasegmental features.) Very few tonal languages have their tones notated obligatorily and explicitly. One of them is Vietnamese. > >(Note that although Mandarin is a tonal language, we could not tell this > >from the writing system alone, because it is not phonemic and does not > >indicate tone). > > > >If a tonal language used a phonemic writing system but, for some strange > >reason, did not indicate tones, I.e., virtually all of them. > Strange is relative. This sentence would look in a Latin equivalent of > Hebrew something like "ths sntnc wld lk in a ltn equvlnt of hbrw smthng lk > ths" Good! You didn't make the very common mistake of omitting the indication of initial vowels in English! > >a reader of the language would have to deal with an extraordinarily high > >number of homophones / homographs. > > I'm not sure I understand why you include homophones (same sound, different > spelling). No, that's "homograph." "Homophone" = "homonym" = 'words that sound the same'. > As for the number of homographs - the possible number of level-tone values > and contour-tone combinations is huge but the number of tonal values used > in real languages is actually very small. The number of possible > consonant/vowel combinations is even bigger, but the phonemic inventory of > any specific (known) language is between 15 and 80 phonemes (did I get the > numbers right?). So I think that a high number of homographs is possible, > but not unavoidable. You can read all of Chinese knowing 3000 or so characters. (Most Chinese "words" are two syllables long.) In technical materials, where special terms have additional characters, you pick them up soon enough. > >For the native speaker homophones / homographs are not quite the problem > >they might seem, because she has context as an ally. For example, in > >English we have no way of knowing how to read the word "read" apart from > >context. (Is it the infinitive [ri:d], or is it the homograph past tense > >[red]?) Nevertheless, in a tonal language which did not indicate tones in > >a phonemic script, this problem would be multiplied many times over. > > Not necessarily, since the total number of both phonemes and tonemes in the > inventory of that language could still be low. The powers of multiplication ... > >The purpose of language, whether spoken or written, is to communicate > >meaning. If the language in question is tonal, unless the writing system > >of the language makes no representations of the sounds of the language at > >all (purely logographic), we should expect > > As a matter of scientific methodology I think the only thing we "should" > expect is the unexpected . As we speak the speed of light is changing > from being constant to being a function of photon frequency and hominid > history is being turned upside down. Or, in Popperian terms, the > refutations of conjectures are the engine that drives science forward. (I think that was a Brit-should, i.e. "We would expect ...," not an American-should of obligation or necessity) > >to find some kind of indication of tone in the writing of the language. > >Otherwise, speakers of the language would have no way of communicating > >meanings in writing. Except that tone-indication is very, very rare except in scripts devised by linguists in the last couple of centuries! > >A tonal language can adopt the writing system of a non-tonal language, > >even a phonemic one. But again, it must find a way to indicate tone or > >written communication will be > >difficult or very impractical. We should find tonal phonemes or tonemes > >represented in the > >script in some way, and we should be able to collect lists of minimal > >pairs distinguished by tone. Either that, or the texts should be confusing > >and full of homophones / homographs. These seem to be American-shoulds, and they make predictions that are reasonable but generally aren't borne out by observation. > I'm talking about a hypothetical. As far as 'reality' goes I accept > everything you say, maybe replacing some "should"s and "must"s with less > logically strict terms. But I am intrigued by some implications of the > hypothetical. > > I think that we would know if a language was tonal or not if it was still > actively living in the second half of the first millennium BC - we'd > probably have enough evidence to know (subject to that language not losing > tonality along the way to that period). But what about older languages? Are > the Sumerian and Akkadian homophones only a result of the mixed > phonetic-logographic aspect of these languages? "Only"? Of course not: Semitic and Sumerian phonology seem to be quite different (not to mention Hurrian phonology, which also had to make do with the highly inadequate Mesopotamian cuneiform inventory it borrowed). > And, if it is possible for a script to represent both a tonal language and > and an atonal one, then the hypothetical becomes an exercise in proving > that something can't be figured out. Something like proving mathematical NP > completeness. > > >I tend to begin with meaning and communicative function rather than with > >form. Others may take issue with this approach. > > [Excuse the extensive quoting - I didn't want to take things out of context] > > Ariel. > > --- > Ariel L. Szczupak > AMIS-JLM (Ricercar Ltd.) "ricercar" = 'fugue': are you approaching the question as a musician? - -- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 17:47:33 -0600 From: "John Baker" Subject: ane Re: archeology of tones Thanks to Ariel Szczupak and to Cale Johnson for your interesting and thought-provoking comments. I won't try to respond to all of them, but here are a few thoughts. I heartily agree (and tried to say so) that both context and the amount of redundancy in language in general reduce the number of "real" homographs for the native speaker. My example was the English word "read." The problem looks different, depending on whether you are a native speaker looking at it from the inside, or someone trying to learn the language (or decipher it) and looking at it as an outsider. I think there is a kind toneless variant of Chinese spoken by early Western missionaries, referred to as "missionary Chinese." I was told by a Taiwanese that this form of speech is fairly intelligible. In addition, both Cale and Ariel mentioned Semitic and other ANE languages which get along fine without writing vowel phonemes. Basically, it is context and redundancy which enable communication in the two examples. I could also say, "I _urned _e _oast at _reakfast _is _orning," and be fairly confident that I would be understood (although it might be pretty apparent that my tongue must have gotten burned along with the toast). Nevertheless, there are doubtless lots of ambiguities in any system in which a whole group of phonemes is left out. What level of ambiguity would cause one to suspect a tonal language, is I suppose a matter of subjective judgement. I certainly don't think such a thing is absolute or could even be quantified. And, writing is by nature decontextualized. A text is in the context of the reader at the time it is read and no longer in the context in which it was written (even though the size and shape of tablets, for example, may contain clues as to the genre and so forth). I am not sure if an ancient speaker of a non-tonal language would know what a tonal language was, how it worked, etc. When we are exposed to the sounds of a new language, we tend to compare them to the sounds of our own language and interpret their significance in that light, even though we hear many sounds that the speaker doesn't "hear" because they are non-distinctive. In Ariel's CvCV / CVCV example with two tones, the question is really whether you can identify a minimal pair. A candidate for a phoneme will either distinguish a minimal pair, or it will be in complementary distribution with one or more other candidates in certain environments. (I would make no distinction between phoneme and toneme, btw.) Best, John W. Baker jjwbaker@earthlink.net Internet service for earthlinks ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 03:59:26 +0200 From: "Ariel L. Szczupak" Subject: Re: ane archeology of tones At 17:23 24/03/01 -0500, you wrote: >But why?? ... It's not an easy answer and, as it's almost 4 am here, I'll tackle it (and the rest) tomorrow. >*The World's Writing Systems* On the desk right here - a major resource in trying to deal with this stuff. But only now, looking at the cover, I realized ... >"ricercar" = 'fugue': are you approaching the question as a musician? I'm not a musician, and the name relates to the research/seeking sense from Hofstadter's "Godel, Esher, Bach", but, surprisingly, the answer is probably yes. I'm more inclined to see speech as a specialized case of human sonic expression than to see speech and music as totally different. Ariel. - --- Ariel L. Szczupak AMIS-JLM (Ricercar Ltd.) Jerusalem, Israel +972-2-5619660 als-ane@amis-jlm.co.il ------------------------------ End of ANE Digest V2001 #80 *************************** Back issues are available on the Oriental Institute World-Wide Web (WWW) site at: http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/OI_ANE.html