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20 Tense change indicated by tone Pike 1956:58
Present Future
a. t ʃ︢i˧ni˧˩
t ʃ︢i˩ni˩
‘you eat’ ‘you will eat’
b. t ʃ︢ʔa˦na˩tʃ︢ei˩
t ʃ︢ʔa˩na˩tʃ︢ei˩
‘you deceive’ ‘you will deceive’
In 20a and b the present tense of each verb contains tones that are lexically determined, in other words, no specific tonal pattern appears on the verb to indicate present tense. The first example, 20a, has a Mid tone
on the first syllable followed by a falling tone on the second while the second example, 20b, has a Mid- high tone on the first syllable followed by two syllables with Low tones. In the future tense of each verb, all
of the tones are Low. In this case, the Low tones on the first syllable of the verbs indicate that the tense of the verb is future.
These grammatical usages of tone are not pursued in depth by Pike. The limited number of examples clearly indicates that this is not the focus of her paper. She discusses tone changes produced by
the phrasal position of the lexeme only slightly more than these semantically rich instances of grammatical tone.
2.2.3.2 Change Caused by Phrasal Position
In this section, I discuss the effects that Pike states are a result of the position of a word in its phrase. Simply stated, if a Mid-high tone occurs phrase medially it is expressed as a High tone. This
process occurs whether the Mid-high tone is a level tone i.e., M
1
or the final member of a rising tone i.e., M
2
-M
1
and L-M
1
, and does not affect the meaning of the word. In addition, word order in Soyaltepec is variable; therefore, a change in the word order usually does not change the meaning of the sentence.
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Example 21 demonstrates two phrases that involve a word with a Mid-high underlying tone. Each phrase is acceptable in either order. In the left column, the underlying Mid-high tone is phrase final
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The emphasis or focus of the sentence may change based on word order; however, sometimes the word order can be a personal choice. Further discourse analysis is needed to give credence to theories relating to
word order.
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and it surfaces as a Mid-high tone. In the right column, the underlying Mid-high tone is phrase medial and it surfaces as a High tone. The syllable which contains the underlying Mid-high tone is underlined for
clarity. 21
Mid-high tone phrase medial raising Pike 1956:65 .
Phrase final Phrase medial
a. fue˥ ts︢i˧ni˧ʔna˦
t s︢i˧ni˧ʔna˥ fue˥
‘goes, my uncle’ ‘my uncle goes’
b. ts︢ʔa˧ts︢e˧ si˧nga˦
si ˧nga˥ ts︢ʔa˧ts︢e˧
‘he bought a shirt’ ‘a shirt, he bought’
In 21a the subject and verb are alternating while in 21b the verb is alternating with the object there is a null subject. The tone levels of the other words in the phrase are irrelevant to the raising of the Mid-high
tone. In 21a the verb is expressed with a High tone whether it is first or last in the phrase and in 21b the verb has a Mid tone in both locations. In both cases, it is a noun that experiences the tonal change. Pike
does not give any other examples to indicate if the part of speech is relevant or not, she also does not give any examples in which the rising of the Mid-high tone in the medial position occurs before a low-toned
syllable. Normally when the Mid to Mid-high contour occurs phrase medially, the split and shift contour
sandhi, previously described in §2.2.2.1, occurs leaving a Mid tone on the syllable in question and
transferring the Mid-high tone to the following syllable. However, there are some phrase medial environments which block this sandhi from occurring so that the contour is forced to remain intact. In this
context, the Mid-high endpoint of the contour is raised to a High, just as if it were a level tone. The examples Pike gives of the M
2
-M
1
˧˦ contour tone being raised to the M
2
-H ˧˥ contour tone appear in 22.
Two of these examples, 22b-c, involve numbers which have a fixed word order within the noun phrase, so altering the word order of these phrases is not grammatically possible. The tones as they appear in isolation
are indicated in the left column and the phrase medial sandhi is indicated in the right column. The syllables of interest are underlined for clarity.
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22 M
1
raising when final member of contour phrase medially Pike 1956:66 Tones in isolation
Expressed phrase medially a.
kã˧˦ kã˧˥ ts︢u˥
‘twenty’ ‘twenty, he says’
b. hõ˧˦
hõ ˧˥ nte˦˥
‘six’ ‘six shoes’
c. hĩ˧˦
hĩ˧˥ ɲu˧me˥ ‘eight’
‘eight bumblebees’ In each of these examples, the vowel is nasalized; however, this is coincidental and irrelevant to the tone.
The example in 22a demonstrates the aforementioned raising process when the M
2
-M
1
contour precedes a H tone which blocks the sandhi from occurring. In 22b it precedes a M
1
-H rising tone which is another sandhi blocking environment. Lastly, in 22c it precedes a word with the nonperturbable word tone
sequence M H. None of these environments allow the contour sandhi to occur. In each case, the M
1
of the contour is raised to a H and a M
2
-H contour surfaces. Pike does not provide any examples of other nonperturbable environments which presumably would also prevent the splitting of the contour and cause a
Mid to High or Low to High contour to occur phrase medially. Pike does provide one example of a number with a M
2
-M
1
˧˦ contour tone that occurs phrase finally which is reproduced here as 23. 23
M
2
-M
1
contour surfacing phrase finally Pike 1956: 66 Tone in isolation
Expressed phrase finally hõ˧˦
ts︢a˧khyẽ˥ hõ˧˦ ‘six’
‘he ate six’ In this example, the Mid to Mid-high tone remains intact phrase finally, demonstrating that it can surface in
a phrase with its underlying tone. Pike also states that the Mid-high tone in the Low to Mid-high ˩˦
contour tone is raised to High producing a Low to High ˩˥ contour tone when in the same environment.
She does not give any examples of this transformation.
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The Mid-high tone can only appear word finally when it is also phrase final, otherwise it is raised to a High tone or altered by one of the sandhi processes that have been described.
2.2.4 Change Caused by Zero Syllable with Positive Tone
