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The Origin of TONAL languages? | ||
Tags: Tonal languages | History | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5082 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes  Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 9 of 12 12 May 2011 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I asked myself the same question, but I didn't get any answer until I asked that to my
friend (who speaks 4 languages). His theory is that they didn't have much creativity to create new words (perhaps they didn't know exactly how to do that), so they used the same short words (short sounds) with different intonations. Some studies say that the more phonemes a language has, the more closer to Africa (very old continent - our acenstors) it is. It means that the first languages were born in Africa, where the humans started to have the skill of speaking. !Xóõ is a good example of lots of phonemes. It's hard to imagine a big word like "inconstitucionalicimamente" (Portuguese) instead of fã, fá, fà, (short sounds) in the first languages. Maybe he's right. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 10 of 12 13 May 2011 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've seen it claimed many times in reputable sources that the ancestral Chinese language was non-tonal. Someone on this forum once even claimed that the origin of tones was documented in writing while it happened. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jsun Groupie Joined 5086 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes | Message 11 of 12 27 May 2011 at 7:00am | IP Logged | |||||
The common ancestor of Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages is Qiang 羌語, which is a non-tonal language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Qiang_language Ancient Sinitic language were thought to have consonant cluster like English such as pr. Some scholars claim Chinese become tonal as it is losing consonant cluster and voiced consonant. However, how every Sinitic language lost consonant cluster is a mystery. Not even nowadays Beijing can force Mandarin to everyone. The prevalence of Mandarin in China is just a bit over 50%. How could everyone lose consonant cluster in that time??? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jsun Groupie Joined 5086 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes | Message 12 of 12 27 May 2011 at 7:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not sure if I can make such as conclusion.
A non-tonal language is usually 1. have lots of voiced consonant 2. have complex consonant cluster 3. polysyllabic Thai has voiced consonant and complex consonant cluster however it is mostly monosyllable.Therefore, it is a tonal language. Hmong has a really complex consonant system however it is monosyllable. Therefore, it is also language with many tones. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/newmong.php A language becomes tonal is usually a monosyllable language that has lost the contrast between voiced and voiceless in consonant. As in Lhasa Tibetan, tone develops as voiced consonant disappears and contour occurs after losing final consonant, like losing final s. I think the development Chinese character confine people to think in one syllable after one syllable. Since Mandarin only has 4 tones but it lost many consonants and final consonants like p,t,k,m, Mandarin becomes polysyllable. Nowadays, as you read news about China, government officials alway make mistake when writing sentences because they input through Hanyu pinyin, Edited by jsun on 27 May 2011 at 7:28am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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