Chamberlain, James R.

English

The Australian National University

TONE IN  TA l : A NEW PERSPECT I VE JAMES R. CHAMBERLA I N  During t he Great Tone Splitl ( GTS ) the t ones i n  Tai dial e c t s  were made more numerous through splitt ing c ondit ioned by c ertain phonet i c  features of Ci , usually cons idered to b e  t he voic ed-voi c e l e s s  oppo s i ­t ion . Unfortunately , t he s e  splits  did not always b ehave in phone t i cally predictable way s , so , mere ly stating that voi c ing of C i c au s e s  lower pitch and voi c e l e s sness  of C i causes higher pitch is not a sat i s factory expl anat ion of the situat ion in Tai dialect s .  Nor did splitt ing affect in  ident i cal ways t he t hree original t ones whi c h  are usually labelled A ,  B,  and C .  There i s  also a D t one c ondit ioned by a final s t op . The origin of these tones remains a myst ery . It i s  possible t hey represented regi s t ers , loss of older final consonant s ,  or even older initial conso­nant group ings of the kind d is cussed in this p aper . So far s c holars have arrived at no final solut ion . Thi s paper t reats the que stion , vital to a complete understanding of tonal deve lopment in Tai language s :  Why did the various phonet i c  features of Ci not split a l l  original tone s of Proto-Tai ( PT ) in identi c al way s ?  In  add i t i o n ,  we would like to  discuss  a statement b y  Mati s off ( 19 7 3 )  c on­c erning t he use of tonal criteria in determining gene t i c  relationships among languages and dialect s .  I t  has long been rec ognised by Tai s cholar s  t hat more t han t he s imp l e  voi ced-vo i c e l e s s  contrast suit able for other language groups i s  neces sary for t he d e s cription of Tai tonal syst ems . In  the Lao and Siame se ortho­graphies it  i s  neces sary to maintain a three-way C i dist inction . When lThis t erm was first used by J. Marvin Brown at the Symposium on Tai Linguistics in a paper entitled : ' The great tone split : did it work in two opposite ways ? ' ;  to appear in the symposium proceedings . 1 1 9  Chamberlain, J.R. "Tone in Tai: A New Perspective". In Gething, T. and Nguyen, D.L. editors, Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics No. 6: Tai studies in honour of William J. Gedney. A-52:119-124. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1979.   DOI:10.15144/PL-A52.119 ©1979 Pacific Linguistics and/or the author(s).  Online edition licensed 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0, with permission of PL.  A sealang.net/CRCL initiative.1 2 0  J . R .  CHAMBERLAIN other Tai languages are t aken into considerat ion at least four and some­t imes five categories mus t  be rec ogni sed . This quest ion has been d i s ­cussed by t h e  dedicat e e  of this Fe s t schrift , Profe ssor Gedney ( forth­c oming ) ,  who sugge st s t hat even more dist inct ions will  be d i s c overed in the future . An unexplained Al split has already b een des cribed in the Saek l anguage ( Gedney 1 97 0 ) . For most purposes  it i s  c onvenient t o  maintain a four-way divis ion of Cis ( Gedney 19 7 2 )  based on the original cat egories of PT . The se c at e ­gories have b e e n  summed u p  as : 1 .  voic e le s s  fri c t i on sounds 2 .  voi c e l e s s  unaspirat ed stops 3 . glott al stop and preglottalised stopsl 4 .  voi ced sounds . But in c ertain dialec t s ,  namely Nung of Bac Va ( Gedney forthcoming ) ,  Nung o f  Lang Vo ( Saul 1 9 6 5 ) and T ' ien Pao ( Li 1 9 6 6b ) , i t  i s  neces sary t o  further divide C i type 1 into ( a )  aspirated s t op s  and h ,  ( b )  voi c e l e s s  nasals , liquids and fricatives . The mos t  common split c ondit i oned by C is i s  between 3 and 4 .  Thi s  i s  found in virtually every Tai language and i n  most if not a l l  o f  the original t one categorie s  ABCD , . depending on the dial e c t . Sp l i t s  between 1 and 2 are not uncommon but are stat i s t ically rarer than the former . O c c as i onally one happens on a split between 2 and 3 such as the C c olumn of Yay ( Gedney 1 9 6 5 ) , the A column of T ' ien Pao ( Li 1 9 6 6b ) or the Yuan dia l e c t s  of Northern Tha i land ( Brown 1 9 65 ) . With practi cally no excep­t ions , wherever two splits oc cur in one ancient tone cat egory , they are 2 always between 1-2 and 3-4 , never 1-2 and 2 - 3  or 2 - 3  and 3 - 4 . A more general d i s cuss ion of tonal system variety in the South-Central branch of Tai may be found in Chamberlain ( 197 5 ) . However , the que s t i on s t i l l  remains , why shouldn ' t  s p l i t s  condit ioned by Cis obtain ident i cally in a l l  of the original tone c at egories of PT . What , for instance , caused Yay A . B .  and D tones to split b etween 3 and 4 ,  whi le the C tone was split between 2 and 3?  Or , what caused the A tone in some Lue diale c t s  to split b e tween 2 and 3 when BCD all have 3 - 4  spli t s ?  Spl i t t ing seems t o  b e  weighted t owards the bottom of the chart . We find many dial e c t s  with only 3-4 splitt ing in every tone category , but no languages with only 1-2 split s .  The Ci features condit ioning t one lFor a discussion of the possibility that these stops were prevoiced see Chamberlain ( 1975 ) .  2The only except ion known to the author is the Nua dialect of Szu Mao in Yunnan where the os column is apparently split between 2 and 3 as well as between 3 and 4 ( J . G .  Harris , personal communication ) . TONE IN TAl : A NEW PERSPECTIVE 1 2 1  split s form a hierarchy , roughly : I - 3 - 4  between preglottalised and voiced ; II - 1-2 between voi c e l e s s  fric t ion sounds and voi c e l e s s  un­aspirated stops ; I I I  - 2 - 3  voi c e l e s s  unaspirated s t ops and preglottalised stops ; IV - la-lb aspirated stops and h and voi c e l e s s  nasa l s , liquids , and fri cative s . Gedney ( forthcoming ) has not ed that the A c olumn is subj e c t  t o  more s p l i t t ing t han B and e, and i s  therefore more l ikely to have more than one split . Li ( 19 4 7 a )  c laims t hat the 3-4 split is really voiced v .  voi c e le s s ,  t he preglottalised stops behaving like glot­tal stops which are voi celes s .  Thi s  appears s ound in spite o f  recent ly expre s s ed doub t s  as to  what pn eglo��al�¢ ed actually means . Stated briefly , the argument on preglott a lisation i s  that in other languages of South-east A s i a  one hears pnevo�ced s t ops such as in Wa ; pnena¢ al�¢ ed stops , such as in Hmong ; clu¢�en¢ of glottal stop + nasal , such as in Khmu ? ; and in rare case s , such as Vietnamese and some Cam­bodian dialect s ,  �mploded s t ops . The only actual oc currence of a stop which might b e  labe l led " preglot t a l i s e d "  i s  the Hmong [ ? t h ] ,  a voi ce­l e s s  aspirated stop pre c eded by glottal c losure with open velic ( J . G . Harris , personal c ommuni cat ion ) . I f  the PT initials o f  row t hree were prevoiced , prenasalised or nasals prec eded by glottal s t op , a plausible  hi s t orical and/or areal hypothe s i s , we  would exp e c t  these  voi ced ini­t ials t o  fall together more frequently with the voiced initials o f  row 4 .  Ac counting for these prob lems great ly c omp l i cates the heret ofore straight forward p i c t ure of t he phone t i c  pro c e s s e s  involved in Tai tone splitt ing . Are we ( 1 )  to assume t hat a stat i s t ical difference in the number of lexical items found in each of the four t one categori e s  c aused such divergent s p l i t t ing within t hem? For examp l e , Gedney ( personal communication ) observes t hat t he lexical i t ems in  the A c olumn far out­number those in B or e ,  as i f  A t one were somehow normal and B and e were variations of that t one . I f  this is so it must have been a pre-PT phenomenon , the nature of which i s  not fully underst ood . Yet another mys tery is the curious coales cence of DL and B in so many Tai languages . I f ,  on t he other hand , numbers of lexical items are not the causal factor , c an we ( 2 )  say there must have been s eparat e phonet i c  interplay b etween t he original nature of e i and t he original tone feature s o f  ABeD? I f  this  c an b e  demonstrated w e  should b e  ab le t o  make some gener­ali sat ions about t hat interp lay , and to  date no l ingui st has done so . One final possibi lity might b e  ( 3 )  that immediately following GTS t he languages made all possible tonal d i s t in c t i ons . If we use Brown ' s  chart ( 19 6 5 ) of fift een boxes this would mean fift een t one s , or i f  Gedney ' s  c hart ( 19 7 2 ) i s  used it would mean twenty tone s . Ton e s  c ould sub sequen t ly have been lost unt i l  pre sent-day patterns were estab l ished with no more t han seven and no l e s s  t han four distinctive tones on smooth 122  J . R .  CHAMBERLAIN syllab l e s . Thi s possibility  remains highly susp e c t  as no modern lan­guage has that many tone s ,  but this alone would not rule out reconstruct­ing such a non-existent earlier stage in Tai . The author opt s  for ( 2 ) , that we would expect the phonet ic feature s of Cis t o  influence the four original t ones in d i s s imilar ways .l For instanc e ,  Ci t ypes and 2 and 3 might cause an original falling t one to b e c ome leve l ( or more leve l t han be fore ) , whereas C .  type 1 might rai se � the p i t ch b e fore the fal l ,  t hereby causing a 1 - 2 3 4  in the original t one . On the other hand , Ci type 3 and 4 might have a p i t c h  rais ing effe c t , c aus ing a 1 2 - 3 4  split in an original ri sing tone . Quite obvi ously the phone t i c s  of  such general i s at ions have not been worked out yet , but if someday we c ould write rul e s  of  the sort { �y /� C�:: yXz } ORIGINAL TONE A - - - - - - - - - - > POST GTS TONE � : we might begin t o  explain why t one systems have developed their present­day patt erns . Although this does not answer the original que s t ion , per­haps a means t o  an answer has been sugge sted , an area of  phone t i c  study which may prove vital in  the solving of  the prob lem . The t one s p l i t s  of the e�tant Tai diale c t s  do not reflect the c on­t emporary featur e s  of Cis ,  rather , we as sume they reflect hi stori cal features . It may be noted t hat , in a fo analysis of syllables beginning with b ilabial stops in  Siamese , b had the lowe st fo ' ? p  the second lowe s t , and p h the highest ( Erickson 1 9 7 5 ) . The modern S i ame se tone s y s t em does not different iate t ones along these l ines . Obviously the t o ne sy stem gives us a p i cture of  an earlier stage in the language when the Cis had d ifferent value s .  Furthermore , t one split patterns in  Tai have b e en shown t o  b e  t he most stab l e  part of  the phonology ( Brown 1 9 6 5 , Chamberlain 1 9 7 3 ) , and t hey provide a wealth of evidence for determining gene t i c  relat ionship s . Why , then , does Mat i soff ( 197 3 )  conc lude t hat " . . .  t o na l  criteria are not even sufficient to estab l i sh genet i c  sub­groupings for languages whi ch are already known to be genet ically related . " ? One c annot help but fee l  this statement was based on evidence only from Tibeto-Burman . I n  Tibeto-Burman , as Mat i soff informs us , t one i s  extremely fickle . Dialec t s  of the same language may or may not b e  t onal , and t ones are lost  or acquired t hrough l anguage contac t . On the other hand , to the author ' s  knowledge , t here are no Tai dialects whi ch did not develop lIf this i s  true , at least some of the major subgroups would have to have separated at the time of GTS , with different tonal contours for ABeD . TONE IN TAl : A NEW PERSPECTIVE 1 2 3  tone s , and t here are n o  Tai dialects whi c h  have lost tones due t o  contact with Mon-Khmer languages ,  in spite of  t he fact that Tais and Mon-Khmers have been living s ide by side for over a mil lenium . Thi s  would appear to throw grave doub t s  on the composit ion o f  super­s t ocks proposed by Bened i c t , and followed by Mat i soff . " Sino-Tibetan"  is said t o  be t he only " t onal " superstock whi le " Austro-Thai " i s  l ab e l l ed "atonal " .  Yet from t he evidence cited above t he opp o s i t e  should be true . Perhaps the t ime i s  not yet right t o  t ake t he Benedict hypothe s i s  s eri­ous ly . Let us first produc e  good reconstruct ions of t he proposed sub­groupings . The n ,  and only t hen , may we begin t o  look for broader genera l i s at i ons . Chamberlain, J.R. "Tone in Tai: A New Perspective". In Gething, T. and Nguyen, D.L. editors, Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics No. 6: Tai studies in honour of William J. Gedney. A-52:119-124. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1979.   DOI:10.15144/PL-A52.119 ©1979 Pacific Linguistics and/or the author(s).  Online edition licensed 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0, with permission of PL.  A sealang.net/CRCL initiative.

Tone in Tai: A New Perspective

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Tone in Tai: A New Perspective

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