[ʔ]→[∅]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 5/5

Tonogenesis Laryngeal Coda Pitch Contour Consonants Sino-Tibetan Austroasiatic Coda Loss Tai-Kadai

Glottal stop to Empty sound / Zero

In Haudricourt's (1954) model of Tonogenesis, the elision of a final glottal stop [ʔ] is the primary driver for the development of a rising Pitch Contour. This Laryngeal Coda originally caused a rise in the fundamental frequency of the preceding vowel; when the stop was lost, this pitch contrast was phonemicized as a tone.

Phonetic Effects

Elision, Deletion, Tonogenesis, Pitch Rise, Coda Loss

Language Examples

Vietnamese Austroasiatic

*paʔ→bả [ʔaː˦ˀ]— The loss of final glottal stop in Mon-Khmer roots led to the development of the hỏi/ngã tones (rising) in Vietnamese.

Historical *-ʔ→Sắc / Hỏi tones— The loss of final glottal stops led to the development of the rising tones.

Middle Chinese Sino-Tibetan

*pauʔ→bǎo [pɑu˧˥]— The 'Rising' category (Shàng sheng) in Middle Chinese is widely reconstructed as having a glottal coda [ʔ] which was subsequently lost.

Old Chinese *-ʔ→Middle Chinese Shǎng (上) tone— The Shǎng (rising) tone developed from an original glottal coda.

Thai Tai-Kadai

*kaʔ→kâ /kaː˥˩/— In Tai-Kadai, final glottal features interacted with vowel length and initial voicing to produce distinct tonal contours during the Register Split.

Related Transformations

Reverse

More Tai-Kadai Shifts

[a] → [ã] — Assimilatory Nasalization [b] → [p] — Voice Loss [tɕ] → [ɕ] — Lenition [d] → [t] — Voice Loss [dz] → [l] — Deaffrication

Sources & References

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