Deinonysus wrote:As I understand it, although there are many patterns that a Japanese word can have, there is a much more limited number of patterns that a word can have given that a certain syllable receives the accent.
Ah, I see what you mean now. Yes, at least in Tokyo-type pitch accent Japanese variants, the placement of the accent determines the pitch of every syllable in a word. There are 5 other variants of pitch accent rules (2 of which are intermediate between Tokyo-type and another variety), and I don't know they're inner workings well enough to comment on them.
Deinonysus wrote:Now, it's hard to find any two papers that agree on how tone works in Xhosa, but based on my current limited understanding, tone isn't determined at the word level but at the morpheme level, so a prefix might have a certain tone pattern, and the root may have another certain tone pattern, and then a suffix may have another tone pattern, so there won't be an overall predictable tone pattern for an entire word based around any particular syllable.
So Xhosa is like Mandarin in this regard: each part of the word has its own inherent pitch contour and the pitch contour of one morpheme doesn't affect the pitch contour of other morphemes in a word (unless there are tone sandhi). I'd still be interested to know if Xhosa's tones can be identified in isolation, because that would also set it apart from Japanese. In Japanese, one-mora words with different pitch accents aren't distinguishable unless they are followed by a grammatical particle, the copula or another inherently accentless part of speech, at which point there would be a change in pitch which differentiates the two words. I've always assumed that this would not be the case with Xhosa and that you could tell the pitches apart regardless of their environment, but I don't know nearly enough about the language.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I think it might be interesting to share. While each morpheme in a Japanese word doesn't carry its own pitch contour, morphemes do actually affect the overall pitch contour of a word. There's an interesting memo out of the University of Osaka (in Japanese) that describers three types of particles (clitics) and auxiliary verbs (verbal morphemes) in regards to pitch accent: 乗っとられ型 ("hijacked" type), 乗っとり型 ("hijack" type), 協力型 ("cooperation" type).
乗っとられ型 ("hijacked" type)
The hijacked morphemes have their own accent that overwrites the accent of an accented verb but that is overwritten in an unaccented verb.
Examples (the bolded syllables are high pitch; they don't indicate the placement of the accent):
取る (to eat: とる to-ru) is an accented word with the accent on と to. If "H" is high and "L" is low, then it's pattern would be HL.
(さ)せる (sa)seru is a morpheme that attaches to the root of a verb and gives the verb a causal meaning. It doesn't make much sense to talk about it's pitch pattern in isolation because it doesn't occur in isolation, but it is normally accented on せ se.
If we combine the two we get 取らせる (とらせる to-ra-se-ru), so LHHL. There is a drop after せ se because (さ)せる (sa)seru's accent is respected.
If we take an unaccented verb like 乗る (to ride: のる no-ru), then the accent on (さ)せる isn't respected: 乗らせる (のらせる no-ra-se-ru). There is no drop after せ se because (さ)せる (sa)seru's accent is overwritten by the verb's unaccented pitch pattern.
Summary:
Accented verb:
取る (to eat: とる to-ru) HL
取らせる (とらせる to-ra-se-ru) LHHL
Unaccented verb:
乗る (to ride: のる no-ru) LH
乗らせる (のらせる no-ra-se-ru) LHHH
乗っとり型 ("hijack" type)
These morphemes hijack the accent of a word and force its accent on it in all cases.
A common example is the polite morpheme ます masu, which is accented on ま (ma). All words will take this accent no matter what.
To take the same verbs from before:
Accented verb:
取る (to eat: とる to-ru) HL
取ります (とります to-ri-ma-su) LHHL
Unaccented verb:
乗る (to ride: のる no-ru) LH
乗ります (のります no-ri-ma-su) LHHL
In both cases, there is a drop after ま ma because ます masu always enforces its accent.
協力型 ("cooperation" type)
These morphemes have their own accent, but never affect the accent of the word beforehand even if that means giving up its own accent.
An example would be そう sou which is used to indicate hearsay. It is accented on そ so. An accented word will keep its accent and cause そう sou to lose its accent, whereas an accented word will keep its accent and let そう sou keep its accent.
Accented verb:
取る (to eat: とる to-ru) HL
取るそう (とるそう to-ru-so-u) HLLL
Unaccented verb:
乗る (to ride: のる no-ru) LH
乗るそう (のるそう no-ru-so-u) LHHL
Similar phenomena can happen to nouns with morphemes like らしい rashii which can have two different meanings depending on how it interacts with the noun’s accent. When it’s used to describe some form of hearsay, it follows the accent of the noun it follows, but when it’s used to create an adjective describing something that appears like the noun, then it overwrites that noun’s accent and enforces its own accent on し shi.
雨 (rain: あめ ame) is an accented word with the accent on あ a.
雨 (rain: あめ a-me) HL
雨らしい (it looks like rain [i.e. they're announcing rain]: あめらしい a-me-ra-shi-i) HLLLL or HLLHL. The accent of 雨 ame is respected.
雨らしい (rain-like: あめらしい a-me-ra-shi-i) LHHHL. The accent of 雨 ame is not respected.
There are also suffixes in Japanese that affect the accent of a word. There are two according to the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute:
後部一型 (koubuichi-gata) which indicates that the suffix will overwrite the accent of the word that it attaches to and have its accent on its first mora regardless whether or not the suffix has an accent if it can appear on its own.
前部末型 (zenbumatsu-gata) which indicates that the word to which the suffix is attaching will have its accent overwritten and placed on its final syllable (not mora)
And then there are compound words where each part keeps its respective accent...
Anyways... This is still quite predictable if you know the pitch accent pattern of the word and its morphemes, but it's just to show that knowing the pitch accent of a word on its own doesn't guarantee that you can predict its accent in every situation because morphology can shake things up quite a bit.