4 ms·

That's to do with stress, not tone. For tone, think about the difference between English "(I know) you want to leave." vs "(Do) you want to leave?"

thaumasiotes 8y ago
English does have lexical tone in a single case, the three-tone sequence for "I don't know".
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Given that 'I don't know' isn't a lexical item but a phrase composed of at least four lexical items, I'm not quite sure what you have in mind.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > Given that 'I don't know' isn't a lexical item but a phrase composed of at least four lexical items, Well, the three words "I don't know", if fully realized, are only three lexical items. English has three words that can be spoken without opening your mouth, with the meanings "yes", "no", and "I don't know". Yes and no are conventionally spelled "uh-huh" and "uh-uh", and consist of voicing interrupted by an [h] (in the case of yes) or a glottal stop (in the case of no). The "I don't know" sequence consists of voicing broken into three tonal segments. It is a single three-syllable lexical item in which every syllable is "mm" (if your mouth is closed) or "uh" (if it's open), but which uses a tone sequence copied from the phrase "I don't know". It's a good model for how languages develop tone in the first place.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      I see what you mean. I wonder if that's really the only item of that type in English. > It's a good model for how languages develop tone in the first place. I'm not fully convinced for that. It's a really specialised instance and it's still standing in for a phrase (a whole proposition in fact) rather than a lexical item as such. Full-blown lexical tone, at least in some cases, seems to develop as the result of reinterpreting tonal correlates of some other phenomenon, e.g. Punjabi tone as resulting from reinterpretation of aspiration.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        > Full-blown lexical tone, at least in some cases, seems to develop as the result of reinterpreting tonal correlates of some other phenomenon I would have said that the "I don't know" sequence matches this description -- it's just the tonal contour of the original phrase, with the other details stripped out. I don't see how that differs from Punjabi syllables preserving their (originally) allophonic tone while losing their (originally) phonemic aspiration, such that the tone becomes phonemic. > I wonder if that's really the only item of that type in English. Obviously I can't guarantee that, but I think it's pretty likely for several reasons: - I can't think of anything similar. - The yes/no question answers (including the "I don't know" sequence) are a clear conceptual group and differ from normal English in a few ways. The "no", "uh-uh", is also (I conjecture) unique, being the only English lexical item to contain a phonemic glottal stop. (Plenty of English words feature an obligatory glottal stop, but that stop is allophonic, as when the /t/ of "kitten" is transformed into a glottal stop by the /n/ that follows it.) It is of interest that the only phonemic glottal stop and the only phonemic tone should occur in these two closely related words. I strongly suspect that this group of answer words has these unusual features because of the constraint that you can pronounce them without opening your mouth. - It's a single word that contains a lot more information than one English word should. For the Latin word "nescio" to mean "I don't know" is unsurprising; all Latin verbs are marked with subject agreement and in the case of a first person subject that is generally the only subject marking. English subject marking is almost always mandatory. This is just more evidence that the tone sequence is quite different from normal words. - English has a non-vestigial system of grammatical tone at the sentence level; tonal marking is obligatory for yes/no questions. But sentence-level grammatical tone can't really coexist with lexical tone. So I'd be very surprised to see other instances of lexical tone outside very special cases. (For example, the phrase "I don't know" can't ever be a yes/no question, and so can't conflict with the English interrogative tone.)
        _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        > it's just the tonal contour of the original phrase, with the other details stripped out. I don't see how that differs from Punjabi syllables preserving their (originally) allophonic tone while losing their (originally) phonemic aspiration, such that the tone becomes phonemic. because, as you elaborate, the English example you mention is really isolated - it's not enough to spawn a system of tone. Even in this case (the "I don't know" sequence), the tone isn't really contrastive. > the phrase "I don't know" can't ever be a yes/no question Sure it can, though the contexts wouldn't be that frequent. And some speakers have final rising tone even on non-yes/no questions. > English has a non-vestigial system of grammatical tone at the sentence level And of course there's more than just question-associated tone, there's also focus-associated tonal prosody.
- natch 8y ago
  That can be said in many different ways, so it’s not clear what you mean.
natch 8y ago
No, you’re talking about a different thing. Each of the listed words can also have stress applied, or not, in different ways and still be differentiated by the “tone” as it would be called in Chinese. I’m not calling it tone since we don’t really have a word for it other than “pronunciation” but it’s essentially the same thing as what is happening in Chinese with tones, albeit with a very limited set of cases rather than being a pervasive feature of the language. But feel free to call the thing I’m talking about whatever you want. But calling it “stress” doesn’t make it the same thing as the kind of stress that you were talking about with your example sentences.
- natch 8y ago
  Compare: Did HE contract the disease? Did he CONTRACT the disease? In each of these sentences, if you pronounce “contract” as it were a noun describing a legal agreement, you are going to sound somewhat off. Same with the other words listed. Well, that is, unless you and your listeners don’t know how to pronounce “contract” differently in each usage. But again this is only one of the examples.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    This is what I get from your examples - four possibilites: 1. Did HE contráct the disease? - "Was it that person (or someone else) who got infected with the disease?" 2. Did HE cóntract the disease? - "Was it that person (or someone else) who commissioned a third party (to create?) the disease?" 3. Did he CONTRÁCT the disease? - "Is the thing that happened with him and the disease that he got infected with the disease, or something else?" 4. Did he CÓNTRACT the disease? - "Is the thing that happened with him and the disease that he got a third party to create the disease, or something else?" The ALLCAPS is likely focus prosody, but there's still a differenced from 'catching' and 'commissioning' which is usually referred to a difference in the placement of 'stress' within the word - whether it's on the first syllable or the second syllable (in this case). Since English is stress-timed, it also affects vowel quality. But that's rather different from tone. (Or, to abstract away from terminology the difference between English 'cóntract' (commission) and 'contráct' (catch) is different from what goes on in Mandarin with tone distinguishing between lexical items.)

thaumasiotes 8y ago

English does have lexical tone in a single case, the three-tone sequence for "I don't know".

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Given that 'I don't know' isn't a lexical item but a phrase composed of at least four lexical items, I'm not quite sure what you have in mind.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > Given that 'I don't know' isn't a lexical item but a phrase composed of at least four lexical items, Well, the three words "I don't know", if fully realized, are only three lexical items. English has three words that can be spoken without opening your mouth, with the meanings "yes", "no", and "I don't know". Yes and no are conventionally spelled "uh-huh" and "uh-uh", and consist of voicing interrupted by an [h] (in the case of yes) or a glottal stop (in the case of no). The "I don't know" sequence consists of voicing broken into three tonal segments. It is a single three-syllable lexical item in which every syllable is "mm" (if your mouth is closed) or "uh" (if it's open), but which uses a tone sequence copied from the phrase "I don't know". It's a good model for how languages develop tone in the first place.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    I see what you mean. I wonder if that's really the only item of that type in English. > It's a good model for how languages develop tone in the first place. I'm not fully convinced for that. It's a really specialised instance and it's still standing in for a phrase (a whole proposition in fact) rather than a lexical item as such. Full-blown lexical tone, at least in some cases, seems to develop as the result of reinterpreting tonal correlates of some other phenomenon, e.g. Punjabi tone as resulting from reinterpretation of aspiration.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > Full-blown lexical tone, at least in some cases, seems to develop as the result of reinterpreting tonal correlates of some other phenomenon I would have said that the "I don't know" sequence matches this description -- it's just the tonal contour of the original phrase, with the other details stripped out. I don't see how that differs from Punjabi syllables preserving their (originally) allophonic tone while losing their (originally) phonemic aspiration, such that the tone becomes phonemic. > I wonder if that's really the only item of that type in English. Obviously I can't guarantee that, but I think it's pretty likely for several reasons: - I can't think of anything similar. - The yes/no question answers (including the "I don't know" sequence) are a clear conceptual group and differ from normal English in a few ways. The "no", "uh-uh", is also (I conjecture) unique, being the only English lexical item to contain a phonemic glottal stop. (Plenty of English words feature an obligatory glottal stop, but that stop is allophonic, as when the /t/ of "kitten" is transformed into a glottal stop by the /n/ that follows it.) It is of interest that the only phonemic glottal stop and the only phonemic tone should occur in these two closely related words. I strongly suspect that this group of answer words has these unusual features because of the constraint that you can pronounce them without opening your mouth. - It's a single word that contains a lot more information than one English word should. For the Latin word "nescio" to mean "I don't know" is unsurprising; all Latin verbs are marked with subject agreement and in the case of a first person subject that is generally the only subject marking. English subject marking is almost always mandatory. This is just more evidence that the tone sequence is quite different from normal words. - English has a non-vestigial system of grammatical tone at the sentence level; tonal marking is obligatory for yes/no questions. But sentence-level grammatical tone can't really coexist with lexical tone. So I'd be very surprised to see other instances of lexical tone outside very special cases. (For example, the phrase "I don't know" can't ever be a yes/no question, and so can't conflict with the English interrogative tone.)
      - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
        > it's just the tonal contour of the original phrase, with the other details stripped out. I don't see how that differs from Punjabi syllables preserving their (originally) allophonic tone while losing their (originally) phonemic aspiration, such that the tone becomes phonemic. because, as you elaborate, the English example you mention is really isolated - it's not enough to spawn a system of tone. Even in this case (the "I don't know" sequence), the tone isn't really contrastive. > the phrase "I don't know" can't ever be a yes/no question Sure it can, though the contexts wouldn't be that frequent. And some speakers have final rising tone even on non-yes/no questions. > English has a non-vestigial system of grammatical tone at the sentence level And of course there's more than just question-associated tone, there's also focus-associated tonal prosody.
natch 8y ago
That can be said in many different ways, so it’s not clear what you mean.

natch 8y ago

No, you’re talking about a different thing. Each of the listed words can also have stress applied, or not, in different ways and still be differentiated by the “tone” as it would be called in Chinese. I’m not calling it tone since we don’t really have a word for it other than “pronunciation” but it’s essentially the same thing as what is happening in Chinese with tones, albeit with a very limited set of cases rather than being a pervasive feature of the language. But feel free to call the thing I’m talking about whatever you want. But calling it “stress” doesn’t make it the same thing as the kind of stress that you were talking about with your example sentences.

natch 8y ago
Compare: Did HE contract the disease? Did he CONTRACT the disease? In each of these sentences, if you pronounce “contract” as it were a noun describing a legal agreement, you are going to sound somewhat off. Same with the other words listed. Well, that is, unless you and your listeners don’t know how to pronounce “contract” differently in each usage. But again this is only one of the examples.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  This is what I get from your examples - four possibilites: 1. Did HE contráct the disease? - "Was it that person (or someone else) who got infected with the disease?" 2. Did HE cóntract the disease? - "Was it that person (or someone else) who commissioned a third party (to create?) the disease?" 3. Did he CONTRÁCT the disease? - "Is the thing that happened with him and the disease that he got infected with the disease, or something else?" 4. Did he CÓNTRACT the disease? - "Is the thing that happened with him and the disease that he got a third party to create the disease, or something else?" The ALLCAPS is likely focus prosody, but there's still a differenced from 'catching' and 'commissioning' which is usually referred to a difference in the placement of 'stress' within the word - whether it's on the first syllable or the second syllable (in this case). Since English is stress-timed, it also affects vowel quality. But that's rather different from tone. (Or, to abstract away from terminology the difference between English 'cóntract' (commission) and 'contráct' (catch) is different from what goes on in Mandarin with tone distinguishing between lexical items.)