English equivalents of tones/pitches.

[shibo77]

When you are asking a question, you add the question particle but you also raise the intonation of your voice like in English. Not raising the intonation and simply add the question particle would also work, but I think it will make you seem depressed to the listener...

I think 吗ma5 and 呢ne5 are always unstressed and used in questions.

The "neutral tone" is not really a tone like the other four tones. There are some differing ideas of what the "neutral tone" is. There are two kinds, one in repeated words, for example 妈妈ma1ma5 "mother", which is a stress accent, and colloquial speech, for example 中国人zhong1guo5ren5(zhong1guo2ren2) "Chinese (person/people)", which is a pitch accent.

Language is formed from 语素(I don't know the English), basically a combination of sound and meaning. If the language assigns different meanings to different sounds, then it is by itself a 语素. In English you can say [a:] with any tone and you would still be understood because English makes no difference in tonal accents, for example, if I say father as "发fa1ther", or "罚fa2ther", or "法fa3ther", or "发fa4ther", it would sound strange, but they would all be grouped with the meaning of "father", or if they are not understood, they cannot take on another meaning. But in the Chinese language, tonal accents are distinguishable parts, 罚fa2 would signify "punishment", and 法fa3 would signify "law".

No equivalents.

-Shìbó

[skylee]

morpheme ~ 語素/詞素

[Altair]

Harpoon,

I am just guessing here, but I think the information about ma5 being said with a light first tone is incorrect. I think its actual pitch is determined by the overall sentence intonation and the preceding tone.

Speaking practically, I think what I do is pronounce ma5 as a logical continuation of the preceding tone, perhaps with a slight drop in pitch from what would normally be expected. After a third-tone word, I use the ma5 in place of the rise in pitch that is deleted from third-tone words before other syllables.

I use more or less the same scheme for ne5.

And what do you mean the words rise during questions? I thought you just add the question particle?

Chinese (and English) have several ways to make questions. Although adding ma5 is the most general way to do so, it is not appropriate in every case. A question can even be formed by pure changes in intonation, without making any structural changes at all in a statement.

Chinese (like English) has special question intonations. Apparently, the most common ones (or all?) involve beginning the question with higher than normal pitches. After that, some types of questions taper down at the end to normal pitch levels. Others keep a higher than normal pitch throughout the sentence.

Aside form being aware of the existence of different intonations, I would advise ignoring this issue early on in study. Generally, you can assimulate the necessary aspects of this unconsciously through most of the common converstional and listening methods of learning.

[Harpoon]

罚fa2 would signify "punishment"' date=' and 法fa3 would signify "law".

No equivalents.

-Shìbó [/quote']

what about all the other things that come up for fa2 and fa3? Unusuable by themselves? or how tone 3s often get slurred into tone 2s during rapid speech?

hmm so you say that you raise your pitch when asking a question, but Altair mentions starting the question with a higher pitch and tapering down, or retaining a higher pitch throughout the question?

i honestly belive that this would slightly interfere with tones and the context understanding of native speakers would come into play more.

[beirne]

what about all the other things that come up for fa2 and fa3? Unusuable by themselves? or how tone 3s often get slurred into tone 2s during rapid speech?

Fa3 is represented by three characters, but the two other than law are obscure. Fa3 as in law is a bound form, so it is a meaning component and not a word. There are ten characters pronounced fa2 but most of them are bound forms or obscure.

Regarding the slurred tones, think about the different ways people speak English. Many Canadians and Americans pronounce the ou in "about" differently. Some people leave off the "g" in words ending in "-ing". Some blacks pronounce "ask" as "ax". Often unstressed vowels are pronounced as schwas. Immigrants pronounce English in all sorts of ways. A speaker of old English would wonder how we understand words like knight and knee without pronouncing the "k" or lots of words with a silent "gh". There are no end to non-standard pronunciations yet people understand each other in English. The tones are the same way. The are just another phonemic component of Chinese that gets varied. People get by.

BTW, many southern Chinese pronounce s and sh the same way. Z and zh as well. That has been a lot bigger problem for me than the tones yet I have survived.

[Altair]

i honestly belive that this would slightly interfere with tones and the context understanding of native speakers would come into play more.

Sentence intonation does indeed modify the pitch of individual words and does so in quite complex ways. Despite this, the underlying tone of the words remains important and generally identifiable in stressed syllables.

The precise rules for how sentence intonation affects the pitch and stress of individual words have not been defiied by linguists, but anyone learning Chinese will pick up the important aspects of the system unconciously and does not need to care about the inadequacies of linguists.