Tibetan and tones

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>     | bsnams nas mnyan yod kyi grong khyer chen por bsod snyoms kyi
>     | phyir zhugs so, ,de nas bcom ldan 'das mnyan yod kyi grong khyer
>     | chen por bsod snyoms kyi phyir gshegs nas bsod


One, it's not mind-boggling. Russian does it occasionally (Mtsevsk,
vskhlipnut'), southern Sakao systematically (tmhert, tmkkleprn),
and later Etruscan lost all post-tonic vowels, so that a
typical Etruscan word pattern was CVCC....

Two, I don't buy that "tones out of consonants" theory. Tones
are the first thing mastered by babies learning their 
language. They are the easiest thing to hear and to 
articulate. I have argued elsewhere, on the strength of tones,
that the stupidity of the claim that the Neanderthals did not have
language, because they could not articulate our consonants and
vowels very well. Just two consonants (e.g. a cough and a retch 
[hey Mark ;-]), two vowels, eight tones, a (C)V syllable
pattern... count them: 3x2x8 = 48 possible syllables. 
Rotokas, which has 5 vowels and 6 consonants, but is without
tones, manages only 35!

Three, granting the tones-out-of-consonants theory, how
come Mandarin has fewer tones than Cantonese, and also
has retained *fewer* consonants? How come Shanghaiese,
which has lost the most consonants, has only three 
tones? How come Shanghai students once developed a slang with
NO tones? (If I remember correctly, that was in the 1930's)

Frogguy