Phonation types and morpho-phonological structure as linguistic prerequisites of tonogenesis

Abstract

This paper provides a systematic account of tonogenesis. The emergence of tone is a process of pitch upgrading from an accompanying feature of phonation types to a distinctive feature. It involves three linguistic processes: various phonation types, clear, breathy, falsetto, etc., which intrinsically induce pitch differences; sonorous monosyllabic morpheme structure that enhances the pitch differences; and phonologization, which conceptualizes the enhanced pitch differences to a phonological category, tone. A flowchart is designed to show how the preconditions lead to different phono morphological types of the world’s languages and finally output tone and its later development Furthermore, the geographic distributions and ecological constraints of non-modal voices and tone are explored