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Leonardo scripsit:
> Isn't it a case of an Indo-European-centered point of view? I have
> already heard that most world languages do have tones
It's true that WALS says it underestimates the number of tonal languages
due to undersampling of the huge Niger-Congo family. Still, most
tonal languages carry only a single bit of information in the high/low
tone contrast: only 16% of all languages have more complex systems.
Tones tend to be a regional phenomenon, even cutting across language
family boundaries, as in eastern Asia.
What I didn't know before reading the WALS article is that complexity
of tone correlates positively with complexity of both consonant and
vowel systems. Languages with six tones have on average 26 consonants
and 7 vowels: ones like Gua\spi with only 20 consonants and 6 vowels
are unusual.
--
Go, and never darken my towels again! John Cowan
--Rufus T. Firefly http://ccil.org/~cowan