Origin of Chinese Tones

[Hann]

Hey there all, hope the New Year is going well for everyone.

Ok, I have been going over my texts alot recently as all my friends are stuck doing the family thing this week. I have been converting the characters into different colors based on the tones. It helps me to remember which is which.

Anyways, while doing this I have been doing alot of thinking about the language and how exactly, did they decide to designate certain characters as certain tones? I have heard many stories of how the Emperor wanted the language to be especially confusing for the common folks etc, but is there really no rhyme or reason to the designation of tones? That seems totally illogical. I am not saying there is a simple method behind their madness, but their must be something....mustn't there? Yes, I can picture a bunch of eunuchs sitting around smoking some opium and just shouting out characters and then another shouting out a tone, and then them all having a good laugh about how this language will torment people for ages. But, is that what really happened?

Has there ever been any formal academic research on the assigning of tones?

Thanks for any info, and Roddy I wasnt sure where this thread should go but this place seemed logical in a "it wont get lost" sorta way. But move where you see fit.

[jbiesnecker]

No idea where tones come from (drug-crazed eunuchs seems as likely as anything to me--though not opium-addicted, as opium came much much later), but coloring characters based on their tones is a great idea!

How do you handle 多音字?

[imron]

how exactly, did they decide to designate certain characters as certain tones?

I think you're misunderstanding an important aspect of the Chinese language. It's not like the Chinese spoke without tones, and just decided to add them to make life more difficult for people. Tones are, and probably always have been, an intrinsic part of the language. As different to a native speaker of Chinese, as 's' and 'th' are to a native speaker of English.

So they wouldn't have sat around going "let's make 妈 the first tone, 麻 the second tone, 马 the third and 骂 the fourth". These words already had tones because that's just the way that the Chinese language differentiates sounds, and they were no more assigned than "sink" and "think" were assigned 's' and 'th' in the English language. Tones get much less confusing when you start to see them as completely different sounds, rather than a modifier you apply to a sound.

[wrwills]

My understanding is that it's fairly widely accepted that Old Chinese (ie the Chinese of the 诗经 and the 易经) was in fact toneless and that it had a much wider variety of sounds than modern Chinese.

My main source for this is the introduction to "An Introduction to Literary CHinese" by Michael Fuller but this wikipedia article also provides support:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

"Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. It possessed a rich sound system in which aspiration or rough breathing differentiated the consonants, but probably had no tones yet."

Of course, the question as to how particular words got their tones is probably not answerable.

[Hann]

Thanks for the insight so far. I will keep searching around on this one.

And I am aware of the opium and the tones thing White Samurai. I was trying to bring a litle levity to this. But, I think it is a truly interesting topic and based on the preceding post, you might want to double check your sources. The question seems to be that there were no tones before, so maybe it is not I, yet you, that has some misconceptions on the language! Where is that tongue in cheek smily face when i need him?

Quest/Skyle? Either of you have any thoughts?

It is hard to do internet searches on this one, since most of the words lead you to similar yet not precise results. My uni library opens up again later this week, and I will try to get some answers.

But, if anyone has any insight or thoughts or possible solutions please pass them along. This might just turn out to be a brain-storming session, but that's still great.

[imron]

Well, I guess I learnt something today then - although I might add that the article only mentions that tones probably didn't exist, but doesn't conclude for certain that they didn't.

However I think my main point is still valid, namely that tones are a natural part of the language rather than something that were assigned. Even if they didn't exist initially, there's no reason to suggest they didn't develop naturally (but perhaps once again I can been shown wrong).

I lean towards this argument if for no other reason than Chinese speakers don't consider themselves to be speaking in tones, and also as there is no indication of tones for the characters - and if you're going about assigning thousands of characters a tone, you'd probably want some kind of indication somewhere. The fact that many characters do have a phonetic part to them, show that however perverse the creators of the written language were in trying to be in making it difficult for others to learn, they were still inclined to leave hints here and there.

Anyway the source for all of the above is simply my own brain (already shown to be flawed and prone to misjudgement) and based on no research whatsoever. Still, it's one thing to throw into the brainstorming pot.

[Hann]

Here are 2 interesting articles from JSTOR, but they exceed the forums limits so I cant paste them here.

1) Tones and Prosody in Middle Chinese and The Origin of The Rising Tone

Mei Tsu-lin

Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 30, 1970 (1970) , pp. 86-110

2) Myth and Reality in the Theory of Chinese Tonal System

Janos Karpati

Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 22, Fasc. 1/4 (1980) , pp. 5-14

I was unable to download the 2nd one, so if someone is able to could they pm me, and then email it to me. From reading the 1st page of 2nd article it seems to call into question some of the earlier work, but not certain of this. But these articles might be a start down the path.

[ala]

Modern Chinese tones come from the loss/drop of final and initial consonants in Archaic Chinese.

For example, the number 2 二 was pronounced "gnis" in archaic Chinese. The -s final was replaced with 去声 (Qu tone), which in Mandarin is pronounced with a down tone. In Shanghainese today, 2 is pronounced "gni" without the -s. In Tibetan today, 2 is still pronounced "gnis", hence Tibetan is only slightly tonal, because it retains much of consonants that existed in archaic Chinese.

Same thing with -p, -t, -k finals, which became 入声 (Ru tone).

For example number 1 used to be pronounced "it" in archaic Chinese, 6 was pronounced "lok", 10 was pronounced "zjep", and 杀 (to kill) was pronounced "sat", the character 佛 (Buddha) was pronounced "bwut". Cantonese still has -p, -t, -k finals, while Shanghainese has combined them to be just a glottal stop, and Mandarin doesn't have any trace of the finals and so has merged them with other tones.

The loss of voiced consonants (like English b, d, g, z, zh, v, j) in most Chinese dialects including Mandarin and Cantonese also created a whole bunch of tones, giving Cantonese from 4 to 8/9 tones. Whereas in Shanghainese (a Wu dialect), voiced consonants still exists, so tones are less important since the consonants are more important. For example, 是 in Cantonese is a low tone, and 试 is a high tone, but both are pronounced "si" in Cantonese (only difference is in tones), whereas in Shanghainese 是 is "zu" (English z) and 试 is "su", so no need for tones to differentiate.

[amego]

Ooo Cool...so i see that Archaic Chinese has a whole lot more sounds, very interesting and colourful.

[Hann]

Could someone please try to download the 2nd article than email it to Roddy, for him to post it.

I sent him the 1st one and it should be up soon.

Cheers

[roddy]

First one is available here 2.2MB

[CleverClogs]

For completeness' sake, here's a link to the second PDF: http://www.dmu.uem.br/aulas/etno/Karpati_MythRealityChineseTonalSystem.pdf - it was working just a few minutes ago.

[djeasily]

"My understanding is that it's fairly widely accepted that Old Chinese (ie the Chinese of the 诗经 and the 易经) was in fact toneless and that it had a much wider variety of sounds than modern Chinese.
My main source for this is the introduction to "An Introduction to Literary CHinese" by Michael Fuller but this wikipedia article also provides support:"

 

I couldn't agree more. Ancient Chinese was most likely toneless. This holds true for most of the languages that use tones nowadays (in ancient times they were toneless). For many people tones are difficult to learn and most people (mainly foreigners) think that tones make the language more difficult, however tonality has been introduced to Chinese and other languages exactly because the opposite seems to be true! Tones have been created for "economy in language", not the other way around!