Tone Languages

TONE LANGUAGES A Technique for Determining the Number and Type of Pitch Contrasts in a Language, with Studies in Tonemic Substitution and Fusion KENNETH L. PIKE ANN UNIVERSITY ARBOR OF M I C H I G A N PRESS Copyright 1948 by THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Second printing 1949 Third printing 1956 Fourth printing 1957 Fifth printing 1961 PHOTOLITHOPRINTED BY CUSHING - MALLOY, INC. ANN ARBOR. MICHIGAN. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE IN the summer of 1938, at Ann Arbor, Michigan, the basic thesis of this volume was presented at a luncheon conference of the Linguistic Institute sponsored Jointly by the University of Michigan and the Linguistic Society of America.-'- In the winter of 19^2-1+3 the preparation of the manuscript in substantially its present form was made possible by a grant from the Faculty Eesearch FundB of the University of Michigan and by my position as Research Associate of the English Language Institute . During the next few years the research in Mazateco was amplified in collaboration with Miss Eunice Victoria Pike, who had studied this language during the years 193^-^5 and who had participated in the earlier Mazateco investigation. The presentation of these additional data was made possible as part of the work undertaken by me as Lloyd Postdoctoral Fellow of the University of Michigan. At the same time brief notes were inserted on a few other languages (Mandarin, Maya, Zapoteco, Matlazinca, Chinanteco, and Otoml) and a number of items were added to the Bibliography. During the years 1935-1*-5 annual field trips to the Mixteco tribe of Oaxaca, Mexico, gave me opportunity to study the tone language of that tribe, under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics of Glendale, California (with academic sessions at the University of Oklahoma). The problems faced during that period resulted in the development of the procedures to solve them that constitute the nucleus of this volume. Later these solutions were tested in application to other tone languages of Mexico, both for their theoretical validity and for their outworking in the formation of practical orthographies for vernacular literatures. Classroom tests have been made with the material as it was presented in mimeographed form to several hundred students in sessions of the Summer Institute of Linguistics at Norman, Oklahoma, and, more recently (19^5), in sessions of the Linguistic Institute at Ann Arbor, Michigan. A number of the students had already done some work on tone languages of Africa and Asia and served as a control in keeping the material practical for other students preparing to reduce to writing tonal languages of these areas. In previous volumes, Phonetics and The Intonation of American English,* I reviewed the pertinent materials of other writers before presenting my own contribution. Although in this instance I have examined the works available to me that are concerned with tone languages, I have not set out to make a critical analysis of' them. The difference between the approach here and that in my earlier volumes is due to the nature of the materials themselves. In Phonetics sounds were analyzed that could be produced by the human voice, and such sounds were directly subject to test by any phonetician. In The Intonation of American English the data, again, were directly available to me for observation as a speaker of English. For tonal study, however, the data for each language would have to be analyzed separately, and the critical study of any one language would demand a considerable period of time, as well as informants who could speak the language. In that year, also, a brief statement of some of the principles of the present work appeared in my Phonemic Work Sheet (Siloam Springs, Arkansas), section _d, "Tests for Prosodic Features of Pitch, Quantity, Stress." T'honetlcs: