[Histling-l] Call for papers for a themed issue in Diachronica on 'The diachrony of tone: connecting the field'

Tue Nov 21 12:51:21 EST 2023

Call for papers for a themed issue in Diachronica on ‘The diachrony of
tone: connecting the field’

Theme editors: Sandra Auderset (University of Bern), Rikker Dockum
(Swarthmore College), Ryan Gehrmann (Payap University)

Context and background

Tone, that is the use of pitch to distinguish lexical and/or grammatical
forms, is an integral feature of many – possibly a majority of – languages
across the world (Yip 2002, Maddieson 2023). However, tonal phenomena are
conspicuously absent from most studies on language change. As a result,
interest and progress in the understanding of the origins and evolution of
suprasegmental contrasts lags behind that of segmental contrasts (Janda &
Joseph 2003, Dockum 2019, Campbell 2021).

Since the latter half of the 20th century, steady progress has been made in
the investigation of tonogenesis, and various pathways by which a language
may develop novel tonal contrasts have been described. The
transphonologization of historically segmental contrasts into tone
(i.e. desegmentalization
(Gehrmann 2022)) is well documented and has received a good deal of
attention in the literature (Haudricourt 1954, Hyman 1976). Prosodic
contrasts may also give rise to tones (e.g. Cushitic (Kießling 2004)), and
tonal contrasts can also be acquired through contact and bilingualism
between a non-tonal language with a tonal one (e.g. Southern Qiang (Evans
2001), Mal (L-Thongkum & Intajamornrak 2008)).

In other language families, tonogenesis occurred so long ago the original
mechanisms by which tones arose may no longer be recoverable (e.g.
Otomanguean (Rensch 1976, Kaufman forthcoming), Niger-Congo (Hyman 2016)).
Nevertheless, these families offer ample opportunity to explore the concept
of tone change, which has received less scholarly attention than
tonogenesis and has often gone unaddressed in language families with old
tone systems (Auderset 2022). This can be at least partially attributed to
impressionistic statements on the diachronic volatility of tones (Ratliff
2015; Cahill 2011; Beam de Azcona 2007; Morey 2005; Dürr 1990, among
others), and a prevailing assumption that tones play at best a minor role
in unraveling the history of a language family.

There is thus a considerable gap in the field of historical linguistics
when it comes to the diachronic study of tones. Some welcome exceptions to
this include a recent collected volume on tone neutralization and phonetic
tone change (Kubozono & Giriko 2018), a synthesis of work on tone change in
Asia (Yang & Xu 2019) and several studies looking at historical tone change
in individual languages or clusters of related languages (Yang et al. 2022,
Yang 2022, Yang 2023). This gap also applies to computer-assisted methods,
such as automatic alignment and cognate detection (List et al. 2018), and
quantitative methods, such as Bayesian phylogenetics (Greenhill et al.
2020), which have gained traction in the field over the past two decades.
Studies using such methodologies have been applied to few language families
with tonal contrasts (e.g. Sagart et al. 2019 and Zhang et al. 2019, both
on Sino-Tibetan) and none have addressed tone, despite evidence of
historical tone categories having significant phylogenetic signal (Dockum
2018, 2019, Auderset 2022).

Topics of interest

As a result of the issues mentioned above, comparatively few linguists
focus on the diachronic study of tone. Individual specialists tend to sort
themselves into regional and language family niches, leaving the field
fragmented with little dialogue or cross-pollination between interested
scholars. Given that the diachronic study of tone is in need of intensified
research, the absence of exchange between scholars creates a further
impediment to progress in this area.

This themed issue aims to address this by bringing together contributions
from linguists from different regions and language families who work on
tone diachrony. Papers should address topics in the diachronic study of
tone, either in a single language, a language (sub-)family, a geographical
region, or cross-linguistically. Topics include but are not limited to:

   -

   phonological environments that condition the emergence of tone contrasts
   or tone changes in existing tones;
   -

   morphosyntactic patterns involving the innovation of new tone contrasts
   or changes to existing tone contrasts;
   -

   underlying articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual mechanisms of
   tonogenesis and/or tone change;
   -

   methodological considerations in the study of tone diachrony, e.g. the
   comparability of tonal systems in the absence of detailed phonetic studies,
   and the creation of reusable datasets and databases;
   -

   addressing similarities and differences, both theoretically and
   empirically, in the study of tonal and segmental change;
   -

   the contribution of tone to our understanding of the linguistic past,
   including subgrouping and classification in a language family, explaining
   historical contact phenomena between languages and language families, etc.;
   -

   the relationship of historical tone studies with language documentation
   and description of tonal languages and language families;
   -

   descriptions of tone change in under-described languages

Submissions

The submissions should be in the format of short journal papers. The word
limit per submission is 6,000 words. Submissions can be in English,
Spanish, French, or German. Authors are encouraged to consult the
general submission
guidelines of Diachronica
<https://www.benjamins.com/series/dia/dia_submit.pdf>.

Important dates

Submissions due: February 29, 2024

Author notifications: Summer 2024

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