Emergence of the tone system in the Sanjiazi dialect of Manchu
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Haibo Wang
Abstract
In Sanjiazi Manchu, the pitch of unaccented syllables can be predicted, but accented syllables show four different kinds of pitch (high, low, rising and falling) which cannot be predicted. Therefore, four tonemes will be set up for the pitches of the accented syllables. The emergence of the low tone is very likely to have been caused by accent shift, which made unaccented syllables with a non-high pitch acquire accent without changing their pitch. The accent shift is likely to have been caused by two factors: (i) the difference in sonority between the formerly accented syllable and the currently accented syllable, or (ii) the fusion of the two syllables.
Abstract
In Sanjiazi Manchu, the pitch of unaccented syllables can be predicted, but accented syllables show four different kinds of pitch (high, low, rising and falling) which cannot be predicted. Therefore, four tonemes will be set up for the pitches of the accented syllables. The emergence of the low tone is very likely to have been caused by accent shift, which made unaccented syllables with a non-high pitch acquire accent without changing their pitch. The accent shift is likely to have been caused by two factors: (i) the difference in sonority between the formerly accented syllable and the currently accented syllable, or (ii) the fusion of the two syllables.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword and Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Grammaticalization
- The role of historical research in building a model of Sign Language typology, variation, and change 15
- On the origin of Niger-Congo nominal classification 43
- A closer look at subjectification in the grammaticalization of English modals 67
- Subjectivity encoding in Taiwanese Southern Min 83
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Part II. Problems in historical comparison and reconstruction
- Emergence of the tone system in the Sanjiazi dialect of Manchu 101
- Searching for undetected genetic links between the languages of South America 115
- Reconstructing the category of “associated motion” in Tacanan languages (Amazonian Bolivia and Peru) 129
- The mirage of apparent morphological correspondence 153
-
Part III. Historical development of morphosyntactic features
- Analogy as a source of suppletion 175
- The rise and demise of possessive classifiers in Austronesian 199
- Immediate-future readings of universal quantifier constructions 227
- The historical development and functional characteristics of the go-adjective sequence in English 243
- Recycling “junk” 267
- Sapirian ‘drift’ towards analyticity and long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian 289
- Language index 329
- Index of terms 333
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword and Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Grammaticalization
- The role of historical research in building a model of Sign Language typology, variation, and change 15
- On the origin of Niger-Congo nominal classification 43
- A closer look at subjectification in the grammaticalization of English modals 67
- Subjectivity encoding in Taiwanese Southern Min 83
-
Part II. Problems in historical comparison and reconstruction
- Emergence of the tone system in the Sanjiazi dialect of Manchu 101
- Searching for undetected genetic links between the languages of South America 115
- Reconstructing the category of “associated motion” in Tacanan languages (Amazonian Bolivia and Peru) 129
- The mirage of apparent morphological correspondence 153
-
Part III. Historical development of morphosyntactic features
- Analogy as a source of suppletion 175
- The rise and demise of possessive classifiers in Austronesian 199
- Immediate-future readings of universal quantifier constructions 227
- The historical development and functional characteristics of the go-adjective sequence in English 243
- Recycling “junk” 267
- Sapirian ‘drift’ towards analyticity and long-term morphosyntactic change in Ancient Egyptian 289
- Language index 329
- Index of terms 333
