Tai Tonogenesis Revisited: Evidence from Thirty Modern Tai Varieties

Abstract

Tonogenesis is treated as the very first step of the arising of tones in Proto-Tai (PT). Since it is commonly agreed with that PT tone *A was unmarked and tone *D was on checked syllables ending with -p/-t/-k codas as preserved well in most Tai daughter languages, in previous studies, the arguments mainly revolve around the origins of tones *B and *C of the PT or even the whole Kra-Dai languages, as in the following chart. However, none of them were based on the comparison of modern Tai tones, because it was believed that the altered tone distribution of modern Tai varieties has blinded the original appearance of tones in PT. In this paper, we believe that evidence from a comparision of tones from thirty modern Tai varieties effectively suggests that four tone categories arose after the decaying or weakening of the syllable finals *-h and *-ʔ in the early stage of PT, for keeping the semantic distinctions. Early plain syllables with modal voice developed into an unmarked level tone *A, syllables with a final*-h decayed to a rapid falling tone *B to cause an incidental creaky voice, syllables with a final *-ʔ was weakened to cause a rising glottalized tone C*, and syllables with final oral stops *-p/t/k were preserved to form the fourth tonal category D*.