The tones of Limburg

Introduction

Limburgian speakers are often well aware that their language distinguishes words by tone, just as Chinese. Standard Chinese has four distinctive tones. The meaning of ma, for example, is ‘mother’, ‘hemp’, ‘horse’ or ‘scold’, depending on the tone used.

Limburgian has two tones, which are known as ‘stoottoon’ (‘push tone’) en ‘sleeptoon’ (‘dragging tone’). Just as in Chinese, two Limburgian words may differ by tone only. The word kiëske of the Belgian-Limburg dialect of Hasselt, for example, means ‘little stocking’ when bearing sleeptoon but ‘little cheese’ when bearing stoottoon. We also know that some Limburgian words use tone to distinguish between singular and plural. In the Roermond dialect, for example, the word bein means ‘leg’ when it has sleeptoon but ‘legs’ when it has stoottoon.

In the remaining part of this chapter we will deal with two questions: ‘Where do the tones come from?’ and ‘How are these tones pronounced?’

Where do the tones come from?

The tonal dialects of Limburg belong to a larger area encompassing the provinces of Limburg in the Netherlands and Belgium and western North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany stretching from Cologne in the North-East to Trier in the South-West (see map).

Distribution of the ‘Limburgian’ tone contrast. The map is based on literature of the early 20th century. Nowadays, the tonal contrast may be restricted to a smaller area.

Cologne is commonly regarded as the historical centre of the Limburgian tone contrast. A common view is that the tone contrast developed in medieval times through loss of unstressed e at the ends of words, which were subsequently kept distinct from words without historical e by a tonal feature. This explanation, however, is problematic, since the pronunciation of the words that lose unstressed e is in fact reminiscent of the sleeptoon, while generally such words have

stoottoon. Syllables with stoottoon show falling pitch, while syllables with sleeptoon often show high-level pitch. Moreover, syllables bearing sleeptoon are often longer than those bearing stoottoon.

The figure below shows what would happen in Standard Dutch if in a word like ene the unstressed e remains unpronounced. Compared to the pronunciation of een (‘one’-SG), we see a high level tone, as the larger part of the falling movement has disappeared along with the unstressed e. In addition, apocope, which is the name for the disappearance of the unstressed e, is accompanied by lengthening of the remaining syllable. When a sentence like Jullie moeten slapen (‘You must go to bed’) is pronounced without unstressed e’s, such as in Jullie moet’ slaap’, the remaining vowels will often be somewhat longer than in the monosyllabic words moet and slaap. But in general, apocope led to stoottoon rather than to sleeptoon.

Pitch contours of the Dutch words een and ene. In the disyllabic word, the pitch lowers only in the second syllables, that is later than in the monosyllabic word.

According to a recent hypothesis, sleeptoon developed as an imitation of vowel lengthening in neighboring dialects. In Dutch, there are about 30 words that have a short vowel in the plural but a long vowel in the singular. Examples are spel – spelen (‘play – plays’), dal-dalen (‘valley – valleys’) and slot-sloten (‘castle – castles’). In both Dutch and German the vowel of the plural form was originally short as well, but in medieval times this vowel became long in open syllables: dal – da.le became dal-daa.le (a is a short vowel, aa is a long vowel, and the dot marks the syllable boundary). Later, German short vowels in singular forms became long as well, as in daal –daa.le, now Tal – Täler. The dialect of Cologne represents an intermediate state both geographicaly and phonologically. The vowels in singular forms were lengthened, as in German, but without making them identical to the long vowels of the plural forms. These not-really-long vowels became sleeptoon. Indeed, in the Limburgian dialects that distinguish between singular and plural by tone, the singular form has sleeptoon, while the plural form has stoottoon.

But what could have kept the Cologne speakers from using really long vowels in the singular? Here, apocope comes into play. When in German the vowels of the plural forms became long, the Cologne speakers  had just dropped the unstressed e in the plural form. A long vowel in the singular form thus would have led to a merger of the singular and plural form, as in een daal – twee daal. The nice thing about this explanation is not only that it explains why singlar forms have the longer sleeptoon instead of the shorter stoottoon, but also why the dragging tone (sleeptoon) sounds so dragging, because it must have started out as a long, monotonously high version of the short vowel! 

How are the tones pronounced?

The question how stoottoon and sleeptoon are pronounced is not easy to answer for two reasons. First, the dialects show a good deal of variation in the pronunciation of the two tones, just as in other parts of their sound systems. Second, the pronunciation of the tones depends on the place of the accented syllable in the sentence and on the intonational contour used. In present-day Cologne, for example, stoottoon is realized with a steep fall in all positions, whereas sleeptoon is pronounced with a high level tone in non-final position but with a high level pitch plus a fall on the sentence-final syllable.

The dialectal differences can be illustrated by the pronunciation of the two tones in the dialects of Roermond, Venlo, Hasselt, and Tongeren in final position of sentences with a neutral intonation contour. Such an intonation contour typically occurs on a sentence like Ich zèg “biën” (sleeptoon: ‘I say “leg”’, stoottoon: ‘I say “legs”’), but also when the word “biën” is uttered in isolation.

Stoottoon and sleeptoon (dotted line) in sentence-final position in four Limburgian dialects. The vertical interrupted lines mark the borders of the sentence-final syllable.

In the two dialects spoken in the Netherlands, sleeptoon has a falling-rising pitch, as in Roermond, or a falling pitch that flattens at the end or rises a bit, as in Venlo, while both dialects pronounce stoottoon with a steep fall. Compared to the ‘northern’ stoottoon, the falling movement of the stoottoon in Hasselt and Tongeren appears to be delayed. In Tongeren, the falling movement starts even later such that it partly falls ‘outside the sentence’.

In the two Belgian dialects, sleeptoon starts low and rises only in the second half of the accented syllable. In Hasselt, the pitch stays high till the end of the sentence, while Tongeren shows a rising pitch till the end. Again, the Tongeren sleeptoon appears to be displaced to the right when compared to the Hasselt sleeptoon. In both dialects, the sleeptoon appears to lack the  final falling movement, which has shifted all the way off the sentence, so to speak.  By the way, the ‘truncation’ of the final fall, as this process is called, can increase the perceived difference between stoottoon and sleeptoon in final position. As a result of truncation, a difference between an early and late rise-fall may become a difference between a rise-fall and a rise.

The table illustrates some of the variation found among the Limburgian dialects, but our picture is far from complete. For a number of additional dialects, such as Maasbracht, Maastricht en Moresnet,  we know how the tones are pronounced, but for many others, such as the dialects of Kerkrade, Klimmen and Kaulille, we have nearly no information. Additionally, we must keep in mind that in the Cologne dialect often ‘the same tones’ are pronounced differently depending on whether they occur in the middle of the sentence or at its end. And in interrogative intonation, the differences are even larger. In the dialect of Roermond, for example, a rise on a final syllable signals a sleeptoon, whereas in the dialect of Venlo a rise marks stoottoon. As a result, Bein? with a rise means ‘Leg?’ or ‘Legs?’, depending on who is the speaker. And what would it mean in Reuver, which town lies half-way in between?

Rich vowel systems

In many dialects, stoottoon and sleeptoon differ not only in pitch. In the southern part of Dutch Limburg and in Belgian Limburg, sleeptoon often has a longer duration than stoottoon. It is also often the case that sleeptoon has a another vowel than stoottoon. In Maasmechelen, for example, sleeptoon accompanies éé en óó, while stoottoon accompanies èè en òò, and in the dialect of Maastricht a diphthong with stoottoon sounds much like a monophthong,  such that ei, for example, sounds like èè. What remains when a dialect loses the tonal contrast are often these additional distinctions resulting in remarkably rich vowel systems. On average, the languages in the world have about 8 vowels, and the number of consonants tends to be twice that of the number of vowels. The dialect of Weert has in addition to its 22 consonants 28 vowels, 12 long, 10 b short and 6 diphthongs. In a recent book, the linguist Peter Ladefoged has suggested that this dialect might have the richest vowel system of the world.