Phonetic Explanations for the Development of Tones

TLDR

Contrastive tone arises from articulatory reinterpretation of segmentally induced perturbations in fundamental frequency, a process widespread across languages and likely rooted in human articulatory and auditory mechanisms. The paper reviews promising explanations for well‑attested tonal sound patterns. The authors examine various explanatory models for tonal sound patterns.

Abstract

The development of contrastive tone because of the articulatory reinterpretation of segmentally-caused perturbations in intrinsic fundamental frequency is well attested in a number of unrelated languages. Considering the wide-spread character of this process, it is likely that its' seeds' can be found in the functioning of the human articulatory and/or auditory mechanisms. This paper reviews what the authors consider promising explanations for well-attested tonal sound patterns, e.g. tone originating from the effect of prevocalic stop consonants or postvocalic glottal consonants, and tone rarely or never originating from the influence of postvocalic non-glottal consonants or from vowel height.*