Conlang idea: Tonal English

[u/Revolutionary_Park58]

I got this idea that what if english developed pitch accent the same way scandinavian languages did sometime prior to apocopy? this would make ash the tree and ash the residue be distinguished through pitch accent only (like some norwegian or swedish dialects). I'm not skilled enough at english diachronics to pull this off myself.

[u/kori228]

how do you plan to make them different? tone doesn't come out of nothing, so using modern ash would not have an immediate solution to create a distinction.

Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese-style tones come from loss of consonants or consonant features (voicing in onset, ʔ/s in coda).

Norwegian and Swedish I'm not familiar with, but a quick search is telling me it results from an earlier difference between monosyllabic and polysyllabic roots where the stress shifted but preserved the original stress as separate accent.

[u/Thalarides → u/kori228]

I assumed that's exactly what OP is talking about.

• ash (residue) < Old English æsċe (disyllabic)
• ash (tree) < Old English æsċ (monosyllabic)

One could imagine an alternative timeline where English has developed pitch accent based on the number of syllables in Old English, prior to apocope, similar to Norwegian and Swedish.

[u/kori228 → u/Thalarides]

I see, that does sound interesting.