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Why didn’t Korean and Japanese become tonal? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 17 of 38 15 December 2010 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
All languages were once unwritten; writing is a fairly recent innovation and languages continue to evolve and change despite writing. Most languages in the world are still not written. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6373 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 38 16 December 2010 at 2:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Why didn't English become French? Edited by zerothinking on 16 December 2010 at 2:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5386 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 19 of 38 27 December 2010 at 2:34am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, actually it kind of did. . . 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 20 of 38 24 January 2011 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
Jerry Norman's Chinese has a good summary of the topic in Chapter 2. There is strong evidence that the 去 tone arose as a result of the loss of a final -s (1, 2, 3, 4). Pulleyblank suggested that the 上 tone arose from a glottal stop (4), which was further supported by Mei Tsu-lin (5). The 入 tone is characterized by stop endings (p, t, k), which leaves the 平 tone. Of course if three tone categories originally had specific distinguishing traits and one (平) did not, it was characterized by a lack of any of these traits, and thus we have four separate and distinguishable categories, irrespective of tone. So it is quite reasonable to suggest that Old Chinese had no tones, or if it did, that they were redundant. Of course this theory isn't necessarily fact, and it could be that someone has come along since Norman wrote the book and changed the game completely, but I wouldn't know since I'm not up on the most current research regarding the topic. However, this passage from Norman's book and the relevant articles I've cited seem to still be standard reading for graduate-level Chinese Linguistics courses, so I think it's safe to assume this theory still has currency. 1. Haudricort, Andre 1954. Comment reconstuir le chinois archaïque. Word 10, 351-64 2. Yakhonotov, S. E. 1960. Fonetika kitajskogo jazyka v tysjačiletije do n.e. Problemy Vostokovedenija 6. 102-15. Translated by Jerry Norman in Unicorn 6 (1970), 52-75. 3. Yakhonotov, S. E. 1965. Drevnekitajskij Jazyk. Moscow: Nauka. 4. Pulleyblank, E. G. 1962. The consonantal system of Old Chinese, part 2. Asia Major 16, 121-66. 5. Mei, Tsu-lin 1970. Tone and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 30, 86-110. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| CS Groupie United States Joined 5129 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Latin, French | Message 21 of 38 24 January 2011 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
English borrowed from French, both during and after the Norman period, but the grammar and the basic vocabulary of the language is clearly Germanic i.e. the influence of French on English is fairly analogous to that of Chinese on Japanese and Korean. Loanwords do not a creole make. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 22 of 38 24 January 2011 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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OneEye,
there is not much more that I can say against this type of solid argumentation :) I am far from being an expert and I base 90% of my knowledge only on the things I've heard on our lectures, but if I look at the whole situation with some distance and realize that we are trying to prove a slight sound change, or a slight difference in sound-meaning relations 2500 years back, where the earliest proven recorded sound of a Chinese speaker that someone actually heard and could compare to modern Chinese would be with the origin of Chinese radio maybe..is very difficult. I just wanted to make it safe and say that "probably" Old Chinese had no 入声 and the rest of the following conclusions is thus even less certain. We've been learning about the sound reconstruction patterns of Song dynasty Chinese and then subsequently the reconstructions of Old Chinese. To me, they all looked very general with many many variations based around several common features. They were just like you said, mostly groups of sounds where similar traits were appearing or disappearing. It looked very logical when I saw the reconstruction patterns on paper, then I looked at a sentence written in the reconstructed language in IPA, read it aloud and in all honesty I do not believe that someone was ever able to speak like that. Glottal stops combined with consonant clusters, strange nasal endings.. I cannot imagine something being sung in that reconstructed language for instance and songs were a big part of Chinese culture back then (Book of songs, Songs of Chu and so on). What I am trying to say is, that none of us was there to hear the language and to reconstruct its sound or some of its sound-meaning specifics 2500 years back based on characters and the sounds of contemporary Chinese languages (and sounds of loanwords in Japanese, Vietnamese..) is too risky and complex to prove with a lot of room for error and thus I prefer to use words like "probably" and "it might be that". For instance if one very small detail in the reconstruction of Song dynasty Chinese proves to be wrong, it might imply that a whole deal of Old Chinese reconstruction is completely wrong too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 23 of 38 24 January 2011 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Right, but then French became something else. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 24 of 38 24 January 2011 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Vlad,
I agree with you completely. Plus if you consider that there were likely regional dialects in Old Chinese, the reconstructions are on even shakier ground. I was just trying to put the theory out there with some references that may be handy, and to say that IF those theories are true, then it reasonable to postulate that there were either no tones, or that the "tones" were different than we conceive of them now, or that they were redundant. And, as you point out, that is a big "if." 1 person has voted this message useful |
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