Tones was: Re: NGL: Proposal: Syllabic and Word Structure

[Pytr Klark <Peter.M.Clark-1@TC.UMN.EDU>]

> Searching on Internet, I found a site with words in Thai, Vietnamese,
> Chinese in wav files. I liked very much the tonal languages. Is it possible
> to use all existent tones in a language?
        Possible, sure, but I wouldn't recommend it. I think the max
number of tones used by any one language is seven (or was it nine) for a
dialect of Cantonese. Someone more knowledgable will surely correct me if
I err. anyways, that (to my English mind, which we all know is essentially
Chinese spoken in the first tone) is a lot of tones. Of course, if you
have no intention of speaking the language, then you could very well
inflict your imaginary speakers with twenty different tones. Of course, I
wonder how long a language with twenty different pitches for "ma" (to take
the infamous example from Chinese) would stay unchanged. Not long, I
imagine.
        Anyways, there really isn't a list of existing tones. You can
pretty much make up your own. You can have high, mid, low, falling,
rising, high falling, mid falling, low falling, high rising, mid rising,
low rising, etc., etc., etc. You can make tones based around the octave or
some other system of notes for a musical language.
        Solresol was tonal, right? Or was it just supposed to be
sung/spoken in different pitches?
        :Peter
 _____           _______________________________________________________
   |  \        O)   Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we   )
  _|__/         |   tap crude rythems for bears to dance to, while we   |
 / |eter        |   long to make music that will melt the stars.        |
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