Tonogenesis in Kammu (or) When do tones leave the segment? Jan-Olof Svantesson (Lund) David House (KTH)
Kammu in northern Laos
Ban Tapaen, Laos, 1996
Words illustrating Kammu tonogenesis E KammuN KammuW Kammu taaŋtáaŋtáaŋ‘pack’ daaŋtàaŋt h àaŋ‘lizard’ t h aaŋt h áaŋt h áaŋ‘to clear’ raaŋráaŋráaŋ‘tooth’ raaŋràaŋràaŋ‘flower’ o
táaŋ tàaŋ Northern Kammu daaŋ taaŋ Eastern Kammu
Production experiment Northern Kammu speaker Eastern Kammu speaker Average tone curves normalized for duration
Perception experiment
Is Kammu a tone language? Eastern Kammu has no lexical tones Northern Kammu –Tones still belong to the initial consonants –Tone system maximally simple (two level tones) minimally contrastive (acoustically similar) Tonogenesis is an ongoing process