Tones in Danish dialects compared with Low German and Franconian tones

Abstract

The article deals with tonal differences in Danish, northern Low German, and Franconian dialects, which appeared after the apocope. Dissyllabic words and forms become monosyllabic, but they continue to differ due to differences in accents: CVC — CVCV > CVC1 — CVC2, as in /hu.’s/ n. sg. hus ‘house’ — /hu.sә/ n. pl. huse ‘houses’ > /hu.s1/ — /hu.s2/ in Southern Jutlandic, /hu.s/ n.sg. nom/acc. Haus ‘house’ — /hu.sә/ Hause ‘house’ dat. sg. > /hu.s1/ — /hu.s2/ in northern Low German dialects and /haus/ n. sg. nom./acc. Haus ‘house’ — /hausә/ dat. sg. Hause ‘house’ > /haus1/ — /haus2/ in Franconian Arzbach dialect. The appearance of such tonal differences is associated with a sharp increase in monosyllabic words. The development in the Danish apocopated dialects has much in common with the development in northern Low German and Franconian dialects. It concerns not only the appearance of tones due to the apocope and the same lexical and morphological distribution of the accents in related words and forms (see above), but even the spread of the accent of apocope to original monosyllabic words with a special phonemic basis (spontaneous accentuation), the long phonetic duration of which was realized by the speakers as an accent of the apocope. Tonal differences of root morphemes, along with the coincidence of the root with the syllable and with the increase of the difference between syllable-initial and syllablefinal consonants, turn out to be one of the most important means of segmentation of the root morpheme in a text. The question is also raised about the possible contact nature of the apocope and of the appearance of the tonal differences.