In formal language, is more or less tone used?

[hwangd01]

Hello, thanks for your kind and informative replies to my previous question about tones. I am, as you might guess, a tone retard , as I am trying to teach myself Mandarin. Having only learned nontonal languages before, I find the whole thing incredibly fascinating.

In the nontonal languages that I have learned or tried to learn (Korean, English, Spanish, Russian), it seems that, as the context becomes more formal, less intonation is used. It is as if vocal contours are considered too folksy or informal or emotional. Flat speech is what one hears on news broadcasts, etc. (Except in contexts where one is supposed to be emotional, such as political rhetoric, or sermons). This is my observation, though others may not agree.

Does the same hold true in the tonal languages, such as the Chinese languages? Or is the opposite true, such that in formal contexts, tones are used more explicitly, to eliminate ambiguity?

-Fascinated in Santa Cruz

[anonymoose]

I don't think the intonation depends on how formal the language is as such, but certainly does vary between different situations. I think you also have to differentiate between word tones and sentence tonal contours, the latter of which applies to any language.

For example, if you listen to news broadcasts in Chinese, there will not be a lot by way of sentence tonal contours, but the word tones will be present as usual. On the other hand, if you watch one of the countless soppy Chinese/Korean soap operas, the girls will speak with very girly sentence tonal contours which go up and down more than Bill Clinton's pants. And if you listen to a chinese political speech, the speed is usually quite slow, and the word tones tend to be quite exagerated.

[<<恒心>>]

Iteresting question...

The only example I can think of where over-the-top tones is analagous to formality and/or encouraged, indulged, etc. would be when somebody shows off their 学问 and decides to regale people with excerpts from "Su Shi's Greatest Hits" (or what have you) that they memorized 50 years ago and only now have found the perfect occasion to recite. Mercifully, this tends to be pretty rare and might just be a side-effect of heavy 茅台酒 consumption (my pet theory.)

[djwebb2004]

It is certainly true that newsbroadcasters speak the more standard Putonghua with more clipped tones. I read somewhere that mainland news broadcasts had a wider tone register than their Taiwan equivalents, where the tones are flatter and that this gave the Communist style impression of struggle on the mainland. However, I don/t think tones are deliberately exaggerated in the news to heighten a sense of struggle. It is just that Taiwanese don't do the tones in a completely standard way. I think youwill find that the Putonghua tone register of 5 to 1 is often more of a 4-2 in some cities. The Kunming dialect first tone is officially a 44 rather than a 55 for instance.