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The origin of tones in the
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languages of New Caledonia
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David Valls

Content
1.

Introduction.................................................................................................. 2

2.

Tones and Austronesian languages...............................................................3

3.

New Caledonia and its languages.................................................................4

4.

The hypothesis of tone development by contact..........................................6

5.

4.1.

The Lapita.............................................................................................. 6

4.2.

Oceanic-Papuan contact.........................................................................8

4.3.

Contact between Oceanic and non-Oceanic Austronesian languages. .13

4.4.

Contact between different Oceanic languages.....................................13

4.5.

Contact with colonial languages...........................................................14

Hypothesis of tone self-development..........................................................14

5.1.

Tonogenesis.......................................................................................... 14

5.2.

Tonogenesis in New Caledonia.............................................................18

6.

Conclusions................................................................................................. 21

7.

References.................................................................................................. 23

1. Introduction
In New Caledonia there are five languages with contrastive tones: Pac,
Cmuhi, Num, Drubea and Kwnyii. Ethnologue (SIL International, 2013) and
WALS (Matthew S. Dryer, 2013) classify Kwnyii as a dialect of Num.
Ethnologue also states that for some it is considered a separated language.
Other resources, such as Blust (2013, p. 659) and Rivierre (1993, p. 155) state
Kwnyii as separated language as for this essay this is not relevant at all.
I will work in two hypotheses on why these New Caledonian languages would
have developed tones. The first hypothesis is language contact. These five
languages could have developed tone due to language contact either by the
surrounding languages or because its speakers came from somewhere else
where they got in contact with tonal languages, and had brought the tones with
them to New Caledonia. The second hypothesis would be that these languages
would have developed tone by themselves, with no external influence. After
exposing the facts, in the conclusions Ill value which of the two hypotheses is
more plausible according to my personal view, but also according the general
view of the linguistic community exposed.
I must say that the references from these languages are scarce and that some
of the books are quite old already and hard or impossible to find anymore.

2. Tones and Austronesian languages

All these five languages belong to the Oceanic language subfamily, which at
the same time belongs to the Austronesian family. To be more precise their
exact filiation is the following: Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, CentralEastern

Malayo-Polynesian,

Eastern

Malayo-Polynesian,

Oceanic,

Central-

Eastern Oceanic, Remote Oceanic, New Caledonian (SIL International, 2013).

The Oceanic group contains some 450 languages spoken in Polynesia,
Melanesia east of the Mamberamo River in Papua, and Micronesia (exclusive of
Palauan and Chamorro). The first division within Oceanic appears to separate
the languages of the Admiralty Islands in western Melanesia from all others.
Figure 1: Map of the Oceanic languages area. Source: Blust (2013, p. 35)

Checking several resources, such as Blust (2013), Ross (1988) and Lynch
(2002) is possible to see that theres no evidence for tone in Proto-Oceanic or
even in Proto-Austronesian languages. Therefore tone it is a feature that has
developed in more recent times and, indeed, the rest of the languages from
New Caledonia do not have tone either. When it comes to Austronesian
languages, Remijsen (2001, p. 3) points out that tone is found in the following
3

areas: 1) some Chamic languages of mainland Southeast Asia, 2) May,

Matbat, Moor and other South Halmahera-West New Guinea languages of
western New Guinea and neighboring islands, 3) Kara, Barok and Patpatar of
New Ireland and 4) Yabem and Bukawa of the Huon Gulf region of New Guinea.
Remijsen (2001, p. 5) affirms that in some of these cases tonogenesis appears
to have been initiated by contact with tonal languages such as Mon-Khmer,
Vietnamese, Chinese and Tai-Kadai languages, but in others no such causal
factor can be identified. For example and just to show the power of contact
among languages, the Austronesian Utsat language, spoken by a Muslim
population on Hainan Island in southern China, has developed a full tonal
system with five contrasts (Maddieson & Pang, 1993, p. 77) due to the long
lasting contact with Tai-Kadai and Chinese languages, furthermore, this
language has gone almost completely monosyllabic due to this contact.

3. New Caledonia and its languages

The relatively large island of New Caledonia, with an area of 19,100 square
kilometers, lies some 1,600 kilometers to east of the Great Barrier Reef and the
coast of Queensland, Australia. The three main islands of the Loyalty group
(Uvea, Lifou, and Mare) lie about 160 kilometers east of New Caledonia. The
entire group, apart from the Belep Islands north of the main island, lies below
20 degrees south latitude, and the Isle of Pines, off the southern tip of New
Caledonia, lies just within the Tropic of Capricorn. Blust (2013, p. 120) gives 40
languages for New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands, of which two are extinct.
However, these includes French, Javanese, Vietnamese, Bislama, and the
French-based creole Tayo (also called Caldoche or Kaldosh), as well as the postcolonial Polynesian introductions Tahitian, East Futunan and Wallisian. The
number of native Austronesian languages is thus 34, of which two are extinct.
New Caledonia is considered a province of the Republic of France, although it
would not be an euphemism calling it a colony, more than a province. Who has
a province some 15,000 kilometers away from the metropolis?

In general, the languages of this region are quite small. Two of the four largest
languages are spoken in the Loyalties, and two others were introduced by
immigrant laborers from French Polynesia (Wallisian), and Indonesia (New
Caledonian Javanese) (Blust, 2013, p. 125). The largest native New Caledonian
language is thus Pac, one of the tonal languages, with about 7,300 speakers in
2009. Unlike the Solomons, where 93 percent of the population is of Melanesian
descent, or Vanuatu, where this figure reaches 98 percent, only 42.5% of the
216,494 residents of New Caledonia and the Loyalties in July, 2005 were of
Melanesian origin. This gives a native population of about 92,000 with 32
languages, hence an average language size of about 2,875, the smallest in the
Pacific apart from Vanuatu (Blust, 2013, p. 145).
Figure 2: Map of New Caledonia in context. Source: Google Maps.

According to Ethnologue the number of speakers of the tonal languages is as it

follows:
Language

Number of Speakers

Pac

(year)
7300 (2009)

Cmuhi

2600 (2009)

Num and Kwnyii1

2180 (2009)

Drubea

2009 (1996)

Figure 3: Area of where these tonal languages are spoken. Source: Google Maps

4. The hypothesis of tone development by contact

As we have seen in chapter 2, tones as well as many other features can be
developed or acquired by contact with other languages. In this chapter we will
analyze the chances for these tonal systems to have been developed from
contact with existing tonal languages. Given the demographic characteristics of
1 Since Ethnologue does not distinguish Kwnyii from Num theres no way to
know the speakers of each. I could not find any other source of information for
the amount of speakers.
6

languages in Oceania, it is not surprising that there has been contact of various
kinds among them. In the western part of the region, there are many languages
with small populations and small territories. An area of just a few square
kilometers may therefore house a number of distinct languages. The area
covered by individual languages in the eastern part of the region is often much
larger, though much of this territory is sea. However, people's seafaring skills
were correspondingly greater in Eastern Oceania, and the sea was more a
vehicle for, rather than a barrier to, inter-language contact. See Figure 1 in
Chapter 2 for the geographical references just mentioned.

4.1. The Lapita

To understand a bit the possible contacts and migrations among populations
and languages in the Oceanic area it is important to know where New
Caledonian came from, and this fact is linked to the Lapita people.
The Lapita culture or tradition was a pre-historic Pacific Ocean people and
society dating from about 1600 BCE to 500 BCE. Archaeologists believe that
the Lapita was the ancestor of historic cultures in Polynesia, Micronesia, and
some coastal areas of Melanesia. The characteristics of the Lapita culture are
the extension of human settlement to previously uninhabited Pacific islands
scattered over a large area. Their origin is believed to be in New Britain. It is
where Proto-Oceanic was born and the Lapita were speakers of it. It seems that
the Lapita were advanced people in terms of navigation and capable of
reaching out and finding islands separated from each other by hundreds of
kilometers of empty ocean.
The rapid spread of Lapita pottery through Island Melanesia and into western
Polynesia indicates a highly mobile population capable of open sea navigation.
They probably were engaged in long- distance trade of both manufactured and
natural products. Among the latter, obsidian a volcanic kind of stone from
either of two traceable sources, Lou Island in the Admiralty group, and the
Talasea Peninsula of New Britain, has been found in archaeological sites as far
east as the southeast Solomons, and as far west as Sabah in northern Borneo
(Sheppard, 2011, p. 801).
7

Among other Oceanic languages of this area, subgrouping considerations

suggest that speakers of Proto-Micronesian entered the region in the east
(Kiribati-Nauru), possibly from the southeast Solomons. From the initial point of
entry they quickly settled the high islands of Kosrae, Pohnpei and Chuuk, and
then gradually expanded westward into the atoll world of the western
Carolines. In Vanuatu and southern Melanesia (New Caledonia and the
Loyalties) the earliest archaeological evidence for human settlement is
associated with the Lapita cultural complex, and hence with speakers of
Oceanic languages (Sheppard, 2011, p. 803).
The population of New Caledonia is of a general Melanesian physical type, but
some individuals particularly in the north show a striking phenotypic
resemblance to aboriginal Australians. On the other hand, unlike most parts of
Melanesia, in which a big man system of acquired rank is prevalent,
hereditary rank is important in many of the native cultures of New Caledonia
and the Loyalties. (Blust, 2013, p. 63)
Anyhow, from a historical point of view, we can see that inhabitants from New
Caledonia are mainly of Lapita origin, although that there could be some
Australian or Papuan substrate. If before the arrival of the Lapita people the
islands were already inhabited by people of Australian or Papuan inheritance,
languages from the North of New Caledonia could have taken tone as long as
the languages already spoken there would have had tone, however little is
known from the previous inhabitants. The other fact is that the people form
south New Caledonia has Melanesian appearance, Proto-Oceanic language did
not have tones, and we do have tonal languages in the south of New Caledonia.

4.2. Oceanic-Papuan contact

Figure 4: Map of West Papua and Papua New Guinea. Source: Google Maps

The great bulk of the Austronesian languages of the New Guinea region belong
to the Oceanic subgroup; indeed, all languages east of Cenderawasih 2 Bay
belong to it. Most of the remaining Austronesian languages of West Papua
belong to the South Halmahera-West New Guinea group. As the name implies,
it links most closely to the Austronesian languages of the southern half of the
island of Halmahera. The exception is a small set of languages in the Bomberai
Peninsula, which forms a subgroup with the language of the Tanimbar Islands of
Maluku and which belongs with them to the Central Malayo-Polynesian
subgroup (Blust, 2013, p. 132). As said before, Proto-Oceanic may have been
spoken somewhere along the north coast of New Britain (Foley, 2006, p. 361)
by the Lapita (Foley, 2006, p. 362). Other researchers dispute the claim that
the Oceanic speakers were the originators of this culture complex and
maintained instead that it predated their arrival in New Britain (Foley, 2006, p.
362). New Britain, the possible homeland of the Oceanic languages, is situated
far to the east of Cenderawasih Bay, the location of the closest South
Halmahera-West New Guinea languages, which are the closest living relatives
2 Although theres a map, it is impossible to show with detail all these names
as it would require filling this essay with maps. The given map is just a
reference, for more accurate information I recommend to take a map a part.
9

of Oceanic languages. This suggests either the unlikely scenario of a direct onestep migration to New Britain from much farther to the west or, more likely, a
step-by-step migration along the north coast of New Guinea, with all traces
having been erased by a later east-to-west back-migration along this coast by
Oceanic speakers.
From the New Britain region, ancestral speakers of Oceanic languages spread
rapidly out into the more remote southwest Pacific. Within the New Britain
region there are three subgroups of Oceanic languages, among the nine or so
now fairly well established Oceanic subgroups in the Pacific (Foley, 2006, p.
364). The Admiralties cluster, found in and around Manus Island; the Saint
Matthias group, in the islands of the same name north of New Ireland; and West
Oceanic, which includes all the remaining Oceanic languages of the region.
Western Oceanic, in turn, is composed of three very large and diverse groups:
the Papuan Tip cluster, along the southeast coast of New Guinea and the
adjoining islands groups; the Meso-Melanesian cluster, covering New Ireland,
northerly coastal areas of New Britain, and the northwest half of the Solomon
Islands, including Bougainville; and finally, the North New Guinea cluster, found
in the west and on the south coast of New Britain and spreading from east to
west along the north New Guinea coast from the Huon Gulf to the Sarmi coast
in West Papua (Foley, 2006, p. 364). The central position of New Britain in the
distribution of these subgroups is evidence for its claim to be a central
dispersal point of migration, a possible homeland of Proto-Oceanic. Much less is
known of the other two groups of Austronesian languages found in the far west
of the New Guinea region. The South Halmahera-West New Guinea languages
are the closest relatives of the Oceanic languages, both genetically and
geographically. They spread from the languages of the islands Biak and Yapen
and from the coastal mainland of Cenderawasih Bay, along the north coast of
the Birds Head, through the Raja Empat Islands off the western tip of West
Papua, and on to the southern half of Halmahera. They are thus restricted to
the far northwest of the New Guinea region. The southwest appears to be
occupied by the Central Malayo-Polynesian subgroup. On mainland New
Guinea, only a small number of languages along the south coast of the Birds
Head of West Papua belong to the Central Malayo-Polynesian subgroup. They in
10

turn are included with the languages of the island groups south of West PapuaKei, Taninber, and Aru, forming a subsubgroup within Central MalayoPolynesian, which suggests a migration into West Papua from one of the
islands, probably Tanimbar (Blust, 2013, p. 10), the most distant of the three.
In coastal areas, for example, we find Oceanic languages interspersed with
Papuan, and although Oceanic languages predominate in the islands, there are
nevertheless many insular Papuan languages as well. Given that many Western
Oceanic languages are geographically contiguous with Papuan languages, and
that most languages of both groups are spoken by small populations, the
potential for sociolinguistic contact between Oceanic and Papuan languages is
considerable. Lexical copying, for example, occurs frequently, and in both
directions. In a number of parts of the region, however, contact has resulted in
widespread bilingualism (Lynch, et al., 2002, p. 15).
In the following map we can see New Britain, where supposedly Oceanic
languages had originated and spread out from. White dots show none tonal
languages, red dots show complex tone languages and pink dots simple tone
languages. As we can see, there are some tonal languages around, but going
south, towards New Caledonia, all are none tonal.
Figure 5: Adapted map of the origin of the Oceanic languages and tonal languages
around. Source: (Matthew S. Dryer, 2013)

11

Three languages spoken in the extreme southeast of Solomon Islands Aiwo in

the Reef Islands and Santa Cruz and Nanggu in the Santa Cruz group have
been classified as (a) Papuan, with heavy Oceanic admixture, and (b) Oceanic,
with heavy Papuan admixture (Lynch, et al., 2002, p. 16) , however according
to Figure 5, these languages are non-tonal.
As for the above explanations it is not only clear that Austronesian and
Oceanic languages have had contact for a long time with Papuan languages,
but also that all kind of borrowings have been going on into both directions. At
the same time it is not quite clear whether Oceanic languages have had and
have contact with tonal Papuan languages or not, but in the following map, we
can appreciate that tonal languages are not that close from places such as New
Britain, Halmahera Island and Cenderawasih Bay.
Figure 6: Location of places where Oceanic are and surrounding tonal languages in
red and pink dots. Source: (Matthew S. Dryer, 2013)

One more doubtless fact is that Oceanic languages spread out from north to
south, form Papua to New Zealand, including New Caledonia in the middle of
12

their way. However, none of the authors Blust (2013), Foley (2006), Lynch
(2002) and Ross (1988) claim tonal borrowing, not even clear lexical borrowing
from Papuan languages to the New Caledonian ones. Since the origin of the
Oceanic languages seems to be in New Britain, it might have been possible
that some of these languages had just spread out way down south with few or
no contact with tonal Papuan languages.
Figure 7: Possible trip from New Britain to New Caledonia. No tonal languages are
found until New Caledonia. Source: (Matthew S. Dryer, 2013)

4.3. Contact between Oceanic and non-Oceanic Austronesian

languages

Yapese, spoken at the western end of Micronesia, sits between non-Oceanic

Palauan and the Oceanic languages of the Caroline Islands. Until recently it was
the one Austronesian language which had defied classification as either
Oceanic or non-Oceanic. It is now fairly clear that Yapese is Oceanic, the
descendant of an early immigrant language from Melanesia which has
borrowed extensively from nearby Palauan and perhaps another unidentified
non-Oceanic source, as well as taking on a heavy admixture from the rather
different Micronesian Oceanic languages of the Carolines (Lynch, et al., 2002, p.
13

16). According to WALS (Matthew S. Dryer, 2013), Paluan is not a tonal

language and anyway, theres no found relationship in terms of close contact
between these two languages and the ones in New Caledonia.

4.4. Contact between different Oceanic languages

In all parts of the region, there has also been contact between speakers of
different Oceanic languages. In many cases where the languages are very
closely related or have very similar phonological and morphosyntactic histories,
such contact is difficult to identify. The more different or distantly related two
languages are, however, the easier it is to establish if there has been
significant contact between them (as in the case in 4.3 of Yapese Oceanic-nonOceanic Austronesian contact). However, since in general Oceanic languages
lack of tones, these ones could not have developed into New Caledonian
language from contact with other Oceanic languages.

4.5. Contact with colonial languages

Contact with languages not native to the Pacific has been much more recent
and, because of this, is generally much more superficial in nature, except in
cases like Hawaii, for example, where the dominance of English has led to the
near disappearance of the Hawaiian language. In most cases, this contact has
resulted in lexical copying of terms referring to newly introduced items, ideas
or social and religious practices. The languages of other colonial powers
German, Dutch, Japanese and Spanish have made their contributions to the
lexicons of some Oceanic languages, as have (though to a much smaller
extent) the languages of immigrant Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Javanese and
other Asian communities. For political reasons, French has been the main
contributor of new lexical entries in New Caledonia, however, contact is very
recent and French is not a tonal language.

14

5. Hypothesis of tone self-development

5.1. Tonogenesis
Some languages in the world had self-developed tones without any external
influence; the birth of these tones is called tonogenesis. It is not always
possible to reconstruct tone, but there are enough cases in which it can be
done to enable us to make some general statements about where tones come
from. So in this chapter well see some successful cases of tone reconstruction.
The main and the first achievement on tonogenesis was the one made in
Vietnamese. The problem of the origin of tones in Vietnamese was first
discussed by the sinologist Henri Maspero (1912), quoted by Ferlus (2002, p.
298). He demonstrated, with the help of Sino-Vietnamese (the Vietnamese
pronunciation of Chinese characters), that the six tones of Vietnamese could be
analyzed into two series: ngang-sk-hi corresponding to ancient voiceless
initials and huyn-nng-ngaa corresponding to ancient voiced initials (Ferlus,
2002, p. 298). A further contribution was made by Andre G. Haudricourt in his
seminal article De l'origine des tons en vietnamien 3(1954). He showed that the
three tones of Ancient Vietnamese originated from ancient laryngeal finals. In
short, sk-nng tones derived from an ancient final glottal stop and hi-ngaa
tones from an ancient final spirant, while, by contrast, ngang-huyn tones
developed in final vowel context.
To put the case simply, tones in Viet-Muong were generated by two major
phenomena: 1) Loss of laryngeal features in rhymes with - and h in two
phases. The first phase is the change of - into a pitch/contour melody,
presumed rising and slightly constricted, that contrasts with - in a two-tone
system. The second phase is the loss of the laryngeal spirant -h, creating a
third pitch/contour melody that contrasts with the two previous ones in a threetone system. 2) Devoicing of plosive initials (confusion of voiced into voiceless)
associated with tone splitting (Ferlus, 2002, p. 298).

3 I could not find this article anywhere.

15

The relative chronology of these two major phenomena for each language led
to different types of tone systems (Ferlus, 2002, p. 299). If the devoicing of
plosive initials took place after the complete loss of the two laryngeal features
- and -h, then the language developed a six-tone basic system as in northern
Viet-Muong languages (Vietnamese, Muong, Tho). If the devoicing took place
after the change of the laryngeal constriction -, while final spirant -h was still
preserved, then the language developed a four-tone basic system as in
southern Viet-Muong languages (Maleng, Arem, Sch/Ruu C, Thavung) (Ferlus,
2002, p. 299).
As was mentioned above, the origin of Vietnamese tones was clearly explained
by Andre G. Haudricourt in 1954. According to the author, sk-nng tones
derive from an ancient final glottal stop, hi-ngaa tones from an ancient final
spirant while, by contrast, ngang-huyn tones developed within vowel-final
contexts. He reconstructed Vietnamese tonogenesis in terms of three stages:
1. Ancient Vietnamese was a toneless language.
2. The final glottal stop - changed into a rising contour. The final spirant
-h changed into a falling contour. The final - remained at an even pitch. The
result was a three tone system made up of the ancestors of the three pairs,
ngang-huyn (from -), sk-nng (from -) and hi-ngaa (from -h).
3. The confusion of voiced initial obstruents into voiceless split the threetone system into two series. The result was a six-tone system.
The same type of explanation can be extended to all Viet-Muong languages,
including those that show a four-tones system with the final -h preserved, as
well as so-called register languages (Ferlus, 2002, p. 301) .
Another source of tonal contrast is a voicing contrast in obstruents. Voiced
obstruents are known to lower the pitch of the following vowel, and voiceless
obstruents may even raise it (Yip, 2002, p. 34). There are various reasons for
this. Voicing in obstruents is associated with slacker vocal folds, and a lowered
larynx. Both these tend to lower pitch, at least at the start of the following
vowel. Voiceless obstruents seem to have tenser vocal folds, and thus tend to
raise the pitch on the following vowel. If the consonants lose their voicing
16

contrast over time, the pitch difference may persist, and the burden of contrast
is then shifted from a voicing contrast in the consonant to a tone contrast in
the vowel (Yip, 2002, p. 35).
Lets take a look at an example. In Kammu, a Mon-Khmer language of
Cambodia (Yip, 2002, p. 36), the southern dialects have a contrast in onset
voicing on obstruents, but the northern dialects have lost the voiced set and
instead they contrast a H tone where the north has a voiceless onset, and a L
tone where the north has a voiced one:
(1) Kammu dialects
South

North

klaa kla eagle

glaa

kla stone

If a language is already tonal from some other source, such as final consonants
in example (2) , this change may double the number of tones. For example, in
Cantonese Chinese we see a six-tone system arising out of a three-tone system
as the result of the influence of the historically voiced onsets, all now voiceless.
Stop-final syllables underwent a secondary split probably related to vowel
tenseness, and are excluded from the following table (Yip, 2002, p. 36) .
(2) Cantonese tonal split
Historically voiceless onsets si53/55

si35

sei44

govern excrement four

Historically voiced onsets
word

tshi21
rely on

tshi24

si33

serve

This type of change is extremely widespread throughout East and South-East

Asia, as documented by Haudricourt in 1954 and quoted by Yip (2002). The
intermediate stages in the development of tone can often be observed in
related languages. For example, in Shanghai Chinese there is still a voicing
17

contrast in the obstruents, and these consonants are followed by breathy

voiced vowels with lower tones. The tonal contrasts have appeared, but the
voicing contrast on the onsets has not yet disappeared (Yip, 2002, p. 36).
Tones have arisen from other laryngeal contrasts in consonants, but the effects
of voiceless aspiration and glottalization on obstruents are not nearly as
consistent as those of voicing (Yip, 2002, p. 37). There is often claimed to be a
tendency for voiceless aspirated stops to give rise to higher tones than
unaspirated stops, but while this has happened in some languages in others
the reverse is the case (Yip, 2002, p. 37).
One relatively clear development is the influence of post-vocalic glottal stop
and [h]. Glottal stop raised the end of the tone, leaving a rise, whereas [h]
lowered it, leaving a fall (Yip, 2002, p. 38).
Although I feel that some of the details are not that clear, we could summarize
tonogenesis with the following statement: tonal contrasts developed from the
loss

of

laryngeal

distinctions,

particularly

voicing,

in

the

surrounding

consonants (Yip, 2002, p. 38). This does not mean that modern tone languages
cant also have a voicing contrast, and indeed many do. There could be many
reasons for this: for example, the voicing contrast may have re-emerged after
tonogenesis took place, or tones may have arisen from an aspiration contrast
instead (Yip, 2002, p. 38). Sometimes tones developed too long ago that
theres no way how did come out.

5.2. Tonogenesis in New Caledonia

In New Caledonias Mainland former reduplicative forms at one stage produced
geminate consonants (Rivierre, et al., 1993, p. 155). Then, according to
Haudricourt4 (1968) quoted by Rivierre (1993), these geminates developed into

4 Book impossible to find, so I had to rely in quotations from other authors. La

langue de Gomen et la langue de Touho en Nouvelle-Caldonie, in Bulletin de la
Socit Linguistique de Paris, Tome 63, fasc. 1, pp. 218-235.
18

either the aspirated consonants or the tones that are found in several
languages of New Caledonia.
I will try to describe the nature of these reduplicative processes which, in fact,
were no longer productive in Proto-New Caledonias Mainland (Rivierre, et al.,
1993, p. 154). Rather, aspirates most probably existed in that Proto-language
and were thus directly the origin of tones that appeared later in languages of
the center and southernmost part of the Mainland.
Cmuhi and Pac, localized in the Center North of Mainland, and Drubea,
Num, and Kwnyii in the Far South apparently had a parallel development of
tone in non-tonal environments (Rivierre, et al., 1993, p. 155).
Rivierre (1993, p. 156) says that in 1968, Haudricourt proposed an explanation
for this tonogenesis in an article entitled , the main points of which are as
follows:
1. There is a regular correspondence between the aspirates of some
northern languages, the voiceless fricatives of others, and high tone of
the tonal languages of the Center. These correspondences relate to oral
and nasal consonants but exclude prenasalized consonants.
2. High tone and aspirated consonants have the same origin: they result
from previous syllable reduplications.
Rivierre (1993, p. 156) says that Haudricourt supports this view with two
observations:
First, syllabic reduplication can produce geminate consonants through the loss
of an unstressed pretonic vowel: C1(V1)C1V1 C1C1V1
The phonemic long consonants which result from this development are indeed
sometimes aspirated, as in certain Polynesian Outliers.
Secondly, Haudricourt notes that a number of commonly reduplicated words in
Melanesia and Polynesia have cognate forms with high tone in the Northern
tonal languages. According to Haudricourt, the correspondences observed in
the Mainland can be explained by the developmental pattern shown in Figure 8.

19

Figure 8: Developmental pattern explaining the correspondences between aspirated

consonants and high tone. Source: (Rivierre, et al., 1993, p. 156)

That

is,

syllable

reduplication

produces

long

consonants,

which

then,

depending on the language group, either develop into aspirated consonants or

produce tones.
His theory thus presupposes the existence of five Proto-dialects with geminate
consonants, developing independently either into languages with tone or into
languages with aspirated consonants Figure 9.
Figure 9: Haudricourts hyptohesys

Haudricourt points implicitly to inherited reduplications to explain these

phonological developments. We do indeed find that the syllable reduplications
reconstructed in POC (Proto-Oceanic) turn up as aspirated consonants,
voiceless fricatives, or high tone in the languages from the northern part of the
Mainland. The examples given in Figure 10 thus support Haudricourt's
hypothesis.
Figure 10: syllable reduplications in POC.

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21

6. Conclusions
In this essay, we have seen two hypotheses about how tones could have
originated in the tonal languages of New Caledonia. The contact hypothesis is
plausible in many other languages, only that in order for one language to
acquire such feature, there must be a prolonged contact in time, and it seems
that this is not the case with these New Caledonian languages, or at least
theres no information about it, besides lexical items from other languages
would be very noticeable in these languages. Therefore, the contact hypothesis
as a way of acquiring tone is not very probable. Anyway, the Lapita people
ancestors of the current inhabitants of New Caledonia spoke Proto-Oceanic,
which it did not have tones.
We have seen of how a language that has no tones can generate tones. And we
had reviewed Haudricourt's hypothesis which explains how the tones were
generated in New Caledonian languages. The process is summarized as
follows:
-

From a syllable reduplication a language may produce geminate

consonants and then the language may go to high tone or aspirated
consonants:
*papa in POC may lead to one of the following option: p hwa /

wa

(aspirated) or pw / pwu (tonal).

So, according to all the given and examined data, the most plausible
hypothesis

is

tone

self-development

due

to

phonetic

causes.

The

contact/migration theory it is too vague in many aspects, since many of the

explained facts are also hypotheses that some of them get lost in time and still
need to be, somehow, proven. Haudricourts hypothesis is tangible, it is well
shown and proved.
Maybe we should ask why this phenomenon is not given in other languages.
The phenomenon of reduplication and gemination is very common among the

22

languages of the world, and in fact, according to available data 60-70% of the
world's languages are tonal languages (Yip, 2002, p. 1), which is a lot.
In classical Latin, for example, there were many geminate sounds: cc, dd, ll, bb,
mm, nn, rr, ss, tt, pp (Borrell & Mir, 2001), but it did not produce tone, instead
there was a relaxation of sounds in most cases, that made gemination to be
lost. Let's look at some examples from Latin to Catalan:
kppa copa 'cup'
crassum gras 'fat'
gibbus gibus gep hump
tottus totus tot 'all'
Or even modern Catalan has plenty of geminated sounds such as:
batlle [] mayor
allot [ll] boy
immediat [mm] immediate
Which again, tend to be relaxed and even in some dialects some have
disappeared such as [ll].
So going further, we should ask why in some languages this phenomenon leads
to tone development and in some others these geminate sounds just melt into
a simpler sound, but the answer to this question it would be part of another
essay.

23

7. References
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Ferlus, M., 2002. The origin of tones in Viet-Muong. Paris: National Center for
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Foley, W. A., 2006. The languages of New Guinea. Annual Review of
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Gordon, M. & Maddieson, I., 2004. The phonetics of Pac vowels. Oceanic
Linguistics , 43(2), pp. 296 - 310.
Lynch, J., Ross, M. & Crowley, T., 2002. The Oceanic languages. Great Britain:
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Maddieson, I. & Pang, K.-f., 1993. Tone in Utsat. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i
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Matthew S. Dryer, M. H., 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures online.
[On line]
Available at: www.wals.info
[Last access: 15 12 2013].
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Leiden: Universiteit Leiden.
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Nouvelle Caldonie. Paris: SELAF .
Rivierre, J.-C., Edmondson, J. A. & Gregerson, K. J., 1993. Tonality in
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Ross, M., 1988. Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of Western
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[Last access: 8 12 2013].

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Tryon, D. T., 1995. Comparative Austronesian Dictionary. An introduction to

Austronesian Studies. Part 1. Fascicle 1 & 2.. Berlin - New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Yip, M., 2002. Tone. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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