339. Tonoexodus 2

In a recent comment, Maju called our attention to a very interesting new article in which a possible connection between tonal and non-tonal languages is tested and discussed: Real-Time Correlates of Phonological Quantity Reveal Unity of Tonal and Non-Tonal Languages, by Juhani Jarvikivi1, Martti Vainio and Daniel Aalto. (How does he find this stuff?) The authors point specifically to the influence of tone in certain non-tonal "quantity languages," (i.e. languages in which differences in syllable length have phonemic import), citing evidence suggesting

that in non-tonal quantity languages such as, Estonian,
Finnish, Japanese, and Serbo-Croatian, tonal differences affect
speakers’ judgments of vowel length, in so far
as the available evidence can be taken to suggest that the speakers
of these languages tend to categorize syllables or words as long
more often than short when the target syllable has a falling rather
than a level tone. (p.2)

To further test this hypothesis, the authors performed experiments with Finnish speaking subjects, to determine the effects of certain tonal configurations on their perception of lexical difference. For them, the results of these experiments "are clear: whether the first syllable has a falling or a level (high) tone is a robust online cue to . . . lexical identity in Finnish" (p. 4).

In a Discussion section, they elaborate on the meaning of their results:

In contrast to the usual assumption that there is a clear-cut
conceptual distinction between tone and non-tonal quantity
languages, we have put forth the idea that, cognitively, these two phonological systems could perhaps be seen as two variants of . . . the same underlying mechanisms. In addition to reviewing the available evidence that we thought would point this way, we carried out two experiments investigating whether pitch information would affect perception of length and thus word recognition in a language with a par excellence example of a quantity-based lexical-phonological system. The answer based on the two experiments was a clear affirmative (p.4).

In short, "our results showed that pitch information is an important co-index of the quantity opposition in Finnish." On this basis, they make a rather startling claim: "Consequently, . . . our results imply that in terms of the production and perception mechanisms, pitch in Finnish is probably in all respects like pitch in any prototypical tone language, e.g., Mandarin Chinese" (p. 5).

In more general terms,

we would like to argue that rather than a
discrete categorical classification of languages into tone languages
and non-tone languages, a more fine-grained account is needed
that takes into account the extent to which (in this case) pitch
information is actually used to distinguish phonological categories
in processing. This would not only sharpen our criteria of tone
languages, but would also provide a more realistic, more refined,
explanandum for studies of linguistic evolution. (p. 6)

Moreover,

With regard to tonogenesis - at least in some cases - it
may be that tone in the phonetic sense has been present all along
and only surfaces phonologically when other linguistic factors force
the change. Importantly, our results suggest that there is no
unidirectional link from perceptual sensitivity to pitch information
to the emergence of a tone language. (p. 6)

The authors never go far as to question the tonogenesis dogma per se, but their work certainly raises many questions regarding its validity as a "unidirectional link" in linguistic evolution.

What I find especially intriguing in this research is the fact that two of the three European languages they cite as typical "quantity languages," Finnish and Estonian, are Uralic languages, thus among the very few non-Indoeuropean languages on that continent. Since the establishment of Indoeuropean throughout almost all of Europe appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon, and Uralic is widespread among languages spoken by indigenous peoples scattered through vast regions of northern Europe and Asia, it seems likely that the Uralic complex could predate Indoeuropean and thus might represent an earlier stage of lingustic evolution.

Indeed, according to a very interesting paper by Mario Alinei (Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Palaeolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia, with an excursus on Slavic ethnogenesis, 2003), a new theory of Uralic origins

was advanced about thirty years ago and is now universally recognized by linguists as well as archaeologists: it is called the Uralic Continuity Theory (UCT) and claims an
uninterrupted continuity of Uralic populations and languages from [the] Paleolithic (Meinander 1973, Nuñez 1987, 1989, 1996, 1997, 1998)

According to this theory, which historically represents the first claim of uninterrupted continuity of a European people from [the] Paleolithic, Uralic people must belong to the populations of Homo sapiens sapiens coming from Africa, who occupied mid-eastern Europe in Paleolithic glacial times . . . and followed the retreating icecap in [the] Mesolithic, eventually settling in their present territories . . . (pp. 12-13)

I don't want to pursue my speculations too far, since my knowledge of historical linguistics is very limited and I might well be on the wrong track entirely. Nor are such speculations really necessary with regard to the overall argument I've been presenting over the last few posts. Nevertheless, I do find the link between tonal languages and non-tonal quantity languages very interesting and definitely worthy of further investigation. As I wrote in my response to Maju's comment,

If the earliest language was indeed tonal, as I strongly suspect (due to the saturation of tone languages in Africa, and the lack of evidence for "tonogenesis" on that continent), then the association these linguists found between tone and quantity could represent a first step in an evolution from tonal to non-tonal language. . . . I'm now wondering whether Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian and Saami were among the "native European" language families displaced by the advent of Indoeuropean. If so, then the close association with tone language demonstrated in this paper would make a great deal of sense. . . The evolution from a tone to a quantity language would have been the exact opposite of the "tonogenesis" so confidently assumed by so many linguists.