Considering grammatical tone

[Trebor]

Hi all,

I'm seriously considering an overhaul of my naturalistic conlang, an isolate set in Finland/Russia, to include grammatical tone. I'd like to get your input on this idea, because I'm concerned about how to implement it most realistically.

1) No matter the case, nouns of one syllable maintain a low tone on the sole vowel or syllabic consonant in the singular and acquire a high tone there in the plural. Nouns of two or more syllables maintain a low tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant in the singular and acquire a high tone there in the plural.

2) To form the genetive, singular nouns of one syllable acquire a falling tone on the sole vowel or syllabic consonant. Plural nouns of one syllable, undergoing reduplication and consonantal dissimilation, maintain a high tone on the now-first vowel or syllabic consonant and acquire a falling tone on the now-second vowel or syllabic consonant. Singular nouns of two or more syllables maintain a low tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant and acquire a falling tone on the final vowel or syllabic consonant. Plural nouns of more than one syllable maintain a high tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant and acquire a falling tone on the final vowel or syllabic consonant.

3) The simple past tense is formed with a low-toned -V suffix, sometimes along with ablaut and consonantal shift in the verb root: e.g., jodolosi "he worked" (from dolos "to work"). The past tense with progressive aspect is formed with a high-toned -V suffix: e.g., jodolosí "he was working". The past tense with habitual aspect is formed with a CV- prefix in addition to the low-toned -V suffix: e.g., jotodolosi "he used to work/he would work".

The past tense with perfect aspect is formed with a falling tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant of the verb root in addition to the low-toned -V suffix: e.g., jodòlosi "he has worked". The past tense with perfect and habitual aspects is formed with the CV- prefix and a falling tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant of the verb root in addition to the low-toned -V suffix: e.g., jotodòlosi "he has been working".

The past tense with pluperfect aspect is formed with a high tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant of the verb root in addition to a falling-toned -V suffix: e.g., jodólosì "he had worked". The simple past tense with pluperfect and habitual aspects is formed with the CV- prefix and a high tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant of the verb root in addition to a falling-toned -V suffix: e.g., jotodólosì "he had been working".

4) The present tense with progressive aspect is formed by leaving the verb in its basic form: e.g., jodolos "he is working". The present tense with habitual aspect is formed with the CV-prefix: jotodolos "he works".

5) The simple future tense is formed with a low-toned -CV suffix: e.g., jodolossa "he will work". The simple future tense with progressive aspect is formed with a high-toned -CV suffix: e.g., jodolossá "he will be working". The future tense with habitual aspect is formed with the CV- prefix in addition to the low-toned -CV suffix: e.g., jotodolossa "he will work/he will be working".

The future tense with perfect aspect is formed with a falling tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant of the verb root in addition to the low-toned -CV suffix: e.g., jodòlossa "he will have worked". The future tense with perfect and habitual aspects is formed with the CV- prefix and a falling tone on the first vowel or syllabic consonant of the verb root in addition to the low-toned -CV suffix: e.g., jotodòlossa "he will have been working".

6) I am interested in the possibility of a dependent clause being formed with a high tone on the subject-concordance prefixes: e.g., jódolos "who is working/that he is working". My goal is not to complicate the grammar of this conlang as much as possible, though.

Thanks for your feedback.

(Cross-posted at UniLang.)

[Trebor]

A problem has arisen: how to handle "he was going to work" given the use of high tone in both the past and future tenses? I'd prefer not to have a new suffix for this usage.

And the question: what other possible wrenches that can be thrown into this seemingly-functional system come to mind?

[Pole, the]

A problem has arisen: how to handle "he was going to work" given the use of high tone in both the past and future tenses? I'd prefer not to have a new suffix for this usage.

Well, many languages live along well without such a tense.
Finnnish and Russian even go as far as having only two morphological (synthetic) tenses.

[kanejam]

You can just go without it, as most languages do, or make a periphrastic construction, possibly using the verb 'to be', if you have it, or 'to have'.

And is there always a single tone per word? That makes this... grammatical pitch accent?? Cool

[Miekko]

A problem has arisen: how to handle "he was going to work" given the use of high tone in both the past and future tenses? I'd prefer not to have a new suffix for this usage.

Well, many languages live along well without such a tense.
Finnnish and Russian even go as far as having only two morphological (synthetic) tenses.

As does English, you know.

[Trebor]

Well, many languages live along well without such a tense.

Sure. But my conlang is more agglutinative than Finnish: its typology borders on polysynthetic, since it has some noun incorporation.

Finnnish and Russian even go as far as having only two morphological (synthetic) tenses.

How would you render, e.g., "He was going to go out to shovel the snow, but decided to stay in because an ugly storm was brewing," in those languages?

[Trebor]

You can just go without it, as most languages do, or make a periphrastic construction, possibly using the verb 'to be', if you have it, or 'to have'.

Even Finnish has adopted auxiliary-verb constructions for, e.g., the pluperfect, but I'm doing my best to keep my conlang as "pure" as possible. Despite the two languages being neighbours in my alternate universe, I don't want Kosi to turn into a creature which follows the Standard Average European model.

And is there always a single tone per word? That makes this... grammatical pitch accent?? Cool

Every syllable has an inherent low tone except when a noun is marked for plural/genitive or a verb for tense/aspect. Would this phenomenon be grammatical tone or pitch-accent...?

[gach]

Finnnish and Russian even go as far as having only two morphological (synthetic) tenses.

How would you render, e.g., "He was going to go out to shovel the snow, but decided to stay in because an ugly storm was brewing," in those languages?

With complex tense and aspect you will encounter periphrasis in Finnish. The core of your main clause, "He was going to go out", would translate as

Hän ol-i men-o-ssa ulos
he be-PST go-ACT.NOM-INE out

This uses the copula + verb-3rd.infinitive-inessive construction that indicates either the progressive or prospective aspect depending on context and telicity of the verb. (The verb mennä ("go") happens to behave a bit badly in using an action nominaliser with the marker -o instead of the regular -ma marker, but the construction is still the same. For a bit more discussion refer to my posts on non-finite clauses.) This is all put into past tense by inflecting the finite auxiliary accordingly.

Maybe even more relevant for you is the fact that Finnish has a small group verbs with monosyllabic stems ending in an /i/ glide which absorb the plural affix -i into themselves. Thus, on surface these verbs don't seem to make any morphological distinction of tense at all; uin means both "I swim" and "I swam". The lack of surfaced tense marking isn't compensated in any way and these verbs don't really attract time adverbs to themselves any more than any other verb. They just go by with a little bit more of ambiguity. The verbs include:

uida, "swim"
puida, "thresh"
soida, "ring, sound"
naida, "marry"

The point is that if you have a system where some words fail to distinguish all the available grammatical categories, the best solution might leave it as such. There isn't always any pressure to regain lost distinctions.

[Aurora Rossa]

If your language is especially agglutinative and even polysynthetic, it would make sense to express more complex aspectual or temporal notions through derivational affixes of some kind. You might also want to consider whether tone encodes something besides traditional tense on verbs. Perhaps it expresses the perfective instead, while suffixes express whether the verb takes place in the past or future.

[Miekko]

Maybe even more relevant for you is the fact that Finnish has a small group verbs with monosyllabic stems ending in an /i/ glide which absorb the plural affix -i into themselves. Thus, on surface these verbs don't seem to make any morphological distinction of tense at all; uin means both "I swim" and "I swam". The lack of surfaced tense marking isn't compensated in any way and these verbs don't really attract time adverbs to themselves any more than any other verb. They just go by with a little bit more of ambiguity. The verbs include:

uida, "swim"
puida, "thresh"
soida, "ring, sound"
naida, "marry"

The point is that if you have a system where some words fail to distinguish all the available grammatical categories, the best solution might leave it as such. There isn't always any pressure to regain lost distinctions.

What's kind of awesomely quirky with Finnish is that these distinguish tense in the negative by the same manner as all other verbs.