studies in the Linguistic Sciences Volume 5, Number 2, Fall 1975 Tlii; UVOLUTIO.i OF TOlIEo III PU-lJAL.!"'- Tej K. Bhatia 0.1: Alone v/ita Lahnda and the Ueatern Pahari dialects, Punjabi is t.ie only modern Indo-Aryan lancuage which has developed toual contrasts. Punjabi has three phonemic tones. The leu tone ri is characterized 2 as a low-risins tone by Bailey (1915 :ix). The ui^h tone is a risin,;- fallinc tone; cf. Bailey 1915 :ix. The mid tone is never represented, since it is predictable by rules of redundancy; i.e. if a vovel does not bear any tone specification at the level of phonetic representation, it carries a mid tone. 0.2: At the sane time, Punjabi has lost tae old Indo-Aryan series of voiced aspirates, changing them into voiceless stops, initially, and voiced stops in other environments. Similarly, th6 Old Indo-Ar;''an Voiced H appears voiceless initiallj' and is lost elsewhere. Punjabi is largely surrounded by a Liadi speaking region ./iiicii aas retained h_ and the old voiced aspirated consonants. On the other side of Punjabi, "ashmiri is spoken. In this lancuage, the distinction betT.'eeii voiced aspirates and voiced unaspirates has been neutralized, and as a consequence, the voiced aspirates are realized as voiced aspirated sei^nents in all enviroriments. 0.3: As it turns out, there is a close correlation betveen the (re- tained) h and voiced aspirates of Hindi and tac Piiiijabi tones. Thus, in place of Lindi voiced aspirates, Punjabi shovs unvoiced unaspirated se:3ment£ in initial position followed by lovr tone; and in non-initial position, it shov;s voiced unaspirated stops either preceded by high tone or followed by low tone. Similarly, after initial li, Pmijabi offers low tone; aad correspondinc to hindi V_l^ (V) , Punjabi shov/s a sequence vritaout h_ and with either higli tone or low tone on the neichborine vowel(s). Coni)are the followinG table of (general correspondences. (For exaniples, cf. Section 1.3.1-2 below.} Hindi ->• Punjabi 1^ bh V ^ if J^ # h V ^ P h V V J bh"^ V f b ^ [accent] I '^ "*" [+accent] "| ^ i V brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and...