Entering tone
Encyclopedia
A checked tone, commonly known by its Chinese calque
entering tone , is one of four syllable types
in the phonology
in Middle Chinese
which are commonly translated as tone. However, it is not a tone in the phonetic sense, but rather describes a syllable that ends in a stop consonant
, such as p, t, k, or glottal stop
. Note that separating the checked tone allows us to treat -p, -t, and -k as allophone
s of -m, -n, and -ng respectively because they are in a complementary distribution
in which stops appear only in the checked tone while nasals appear only in other tones. Due to the origin of tone in Chinese, the number of tones found in such syllables is smaller than the number of tones in other syllables, and in Chinese phonetics they have traditionally been counted separately. For instance, in Cantonese
, there are 6 tones in syllables which do not end in stops, but only three in syllables which do; therefore, although Cantonese only has 6 tones in the sense of 6 contrasting variations in pitch, it is often said to have 9.
Final stops, and therefore the checked "tones", have disappeared from most Mandarin dialects (a large dialect chain spoken in northern and southwestern China), but remain preserved in southeastern Chinese languages such as Cantonese, Min, and Hakka.
Tones are an indispensable part of Chinese literature, as characters in poetry and prose were chosen according to tones and rhymes for their euphony
. This use of language helps in reconstructing the pronunciation of Old Chinese
and Middle Chinese
, since the Chinese writing system is logographic
rather than phonetic.
ending with an unreleased
voiceless
plosive [p̚ ], [t̚ ], or [k̚ ]. In some variants of Chinese, the final plosive has become the glottal stop
[ʔ ̚].
. In addition, it is commonly thought that Old Chinese
had syllables ending in clusters /ps/, /ts/, and /ks/ (sometimes called the "long entering tone", while syllables ending in /p/, /t/ and /k/ are the "short entering tone"). These clusters later reduced to /s/; in turn this became /h/ and ultimately tone 3 in Middle Chinese
(the "departing tone").
The first Chinese philologists began to describe the phonology of Chinese during the Early Middle Chinese period (specifically, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, between 400
to 600
), under the influence of Buddhism
and the Sanskrit
language that arrived along with it. There were several unsuccessful attempts to classify the tones of Chinese, before the establishment of the traditional four-tone description between 483 and 493. It is based on the Vedic theory of three intonations (聲明論). The middle intonation, Udātta, maps to the level tone (平聲); the upwards intonation, Svarita, to the rising tone (上聲); the downward intonation, Anudātta, to the departing tone (去聲). The distinctive sound of syllables ending with a plosive did not fit the three intonations and was categorised as the entering tone (入聲). The use of four-tone system flourished in the Sui
and Tang
dynasties. An important rime dictionary
, Qieyun
was written in this period.
Note that modern linguistic descriptions of Middle Chinese
often refer to the level, rising and departing tones as tones 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
By the time of the Mongol invasion (the Yuan dynasty
, 1279–1368), former final stops had been reduced to a glottal stop
/ʔ/. It is sometimes thought that the influence of these invading nomads caused this final glottal stop to be lost, leading to the loss of "entering tone" syllables. The Zhongyuan Yinyun
, a rime book of 1324, already shows signs of the disappearance of the glottal stop and the emergence of the modern Mandarin tone system in its place. The precise time at which the loss occurred is unknown, though it was likely gone by the time of the Qing Dynasty
.
},
| hap
|hợp
|hé xɤ̌
|union; close
|-
|十
|是執切 [ʑĭĕp]
|[sip˥]
|[sip˥], [tsap˥]
|[sɐp˨]
|zipu, sipu
|,
| sip
|thập
|shí ʂɨ̌
|ten
|-
|佛
|符弗切 [bʰĭuət]
|[fut˥]
|[hut˥], [put˥]
|[fɐt˨]
|butu, putu
|,
| bul
|phật
|fó fuɔ̌
|Buddha
|-
|八
|博拔切 [pæt]
|[pat˩]
|[pat˩], [peʔ˩]
|[pɑt˧]
|pati, patu
|,
| pal
|bát
|bā pá
|eight
|-
|易
|羊益切 [jĭɛk]
|[ji˥˧], [jit˥]
|[ek˥], [iaʔ˥]
|[jɪk˨]
|yaku, eki
|,
| yeok
|dịch
|yì î
|change, exchange.
|-
|客
|苦格切 [kʰɐk]
|[hak˩],[kʰak˩]
|[kʰek], [kʰeʔ˩]
|[hɑk˧]
|kyaku, kaku
|,
| gaek
|khách
|kè kʰɤ̂
|guest
|}
of Sichuanese
. In other dialects, the entering tone has been lost, and words that had the tone have been distributed into the four modern tonal categories, depending on the initial consonant of each word.
Note that, in the Beijing
dialect that underlies Standard Mandarin
, syllables beginning with originally unvoiced consonants are redistributed across the four tones in a completely random pattern. For example, the three characters 积脊迹, all pronounced /tsjek/ in Middle Chinese
(William Baxter's reconstruction), are now pronounced jī jǐ jì, with tones 1 3 4 respectively. The two characters 割葛, both pronounced /kat/, are now pronounced gē (tone 1) and gé/gě (tone 2/3) respectively, with character 葛 splitting on semantic grounds (tone 3 when used as a component of a name, mostly tone 2 otherwise).
Similarly, the three characters 胳阁各 (Middle Chinese /kak/) are now pronounced gē gé gè, with tones 1 2 4, and the four characters 鸽蛤颌合 (Middle Chinese /kop/ are now pronounced gē gé gé gě, with tones 1 2 2 3. In these cases, the two sets of characters are significant in that each member of the same set has the same phonetic component, suggesting that the phonetic component of a character has little to do with the tone class that the character is assigned to. In other situations, however, the opposite appears to be the case. For example, the group 幅福蝠辐/腹复 of six homophonic characters, all pronounced /pjuwk/ in Middle Chinese and divided into a group of four with one phonetic and a group of two with a different phonetic, splits so that the first group of four is all pronounced fú (tone 2) and the second group of two is pronounced fù (tone 4). In situations like this, it may be that only one of the characters in each group normally occurs in speech with an identifiable tone, and as a result a "reading pronunciation" of the other characters was constructed based on the phonetic element of the character.
The chart below summarizes the distribution in the different dialects.
to their voiceless counterparts. To compensate for the loss of this difference, Cantonese has split each of the Middle Chinese tones into two, one for Middle Chinese voiced initial consonants (Yang) and one for Middle Chinese voiceless initial consonants (Yin). In addition, Cantonese has split the Yin-Entering tone into two, with a higher tone for short vowels and a lower tone for long vowels. As a result, Cantonese now has three entering tones:
The entering tone in Cantonese has retained its short and sharp character.
Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [ɛ] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in some of the modern Hakka as seen in the following table.
, including Taiwanese) has two entering tones:
A word may switch from one of these tones to the other due to tone sandhi
. Words with entering tones end with either a glottal stop ([-h]), [-p], [-t] or [-k] (all unaspirated). There are many words that have different finals in their literary and colloquial forms.
period, so these languages preserve the entering tone to varying degrees.
does not allow a syllable to end with a consonant, the endings -k, -p, -t were rendered as separate syllables -ku or -ki, -pu, and -ti (-chi) or -tu (-tsu) respectively. Later phonological changes
further altered some of the endings:
It is possible to recover the original ending by examining the historical kana
used in spelling a word.
keeps the -k and -p endings, while the -t ending has changed into -l.
Additionally, after the vowels ê or i, the ending -c changes to -ch, giving rise to -ich and -êch.
In addition, "ach" also occurs for some words of -k ending.
Calque
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
entering tone , is one of four syllable types
Four tones
The four tones of Chinese phonology are four traditional tone-classes of words derived from the four phonemic tones of Middle Chinese. They are even level , rising , going departing , and entering checked .-Names:In Middle Chinese, each of the tone names carries the tone it identifies: 平 even ,...
in the phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
in Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
which are commonly translated as tone. However, it is not a tone in the phonetic sense, but rather describes a syllable that ends in a stop consonant
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
, such as p, t, k, or glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
. Note that separating the checked tone allows us to treat -p, -t, and -k as allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s of -m, -n, and -ng respectively because they are in a complementary distribution
Complementary distribution
Complementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment...
in which stops appear only in the checked tone while nasals appear only in other tones. Due to the origin of tone in Chinese, the number of tones found in such syllables is smaller than the number of tones in other syllables, and in Chinese phonetics they have traditionally been counted separately. For instance, in Cantonese
Standard Cantonese
Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of Canton in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese....
, there are 6 tones in syllables which do not end in stops, but only three in syllables which do; therefore, although Cantonese only has 6 tones in the sense of 6 contrasting variations in pitch, it is often said to have 9.
Final stops, and therefore the checked "tones", have disappeared from most Mandarin dialects (a large dialect chain spoken in northern and southwestern China), but remain preserved in southeastern Chinese languages such as Cantonese, Min, and Hakka.
Tones are an indispensable part of Chinese literature, as characters in poetry and prose were chosen according to tones and rhymes for their euphony
Euphony
Phonaesthetics is the claim or study of inherent pleasantness or beauty or unpleasantness of the sound of certain words and sentences. Poetry is considered euphonic, as is well-crafted literary prose...
. This use of language helps in reconstructing the pronunciation of Old Chinese
Old Chinese
The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....
and Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
, since the Chinese writing system is logographic
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
rather than phonetic.
Phonetics
From a phonetic perspective, the entering tone is simply a syllableSyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
ending with an unreleased
Unreleased stop
An unreleased stop or unreleased plosive is a plosive consonant without an audible release burst. That is, the oral tract is blocked to pronounce the consonant, and there is no audible indication of when that occlusion ends...
voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
plosive [p̚ ], [t̚ ], or [k̚ ]. In some variants of Chinese, the final plosive has become the glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
[ʔ ̚].
History
The voiceless plosives that typify the entering tone date back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the parent language of Chinese as well as the Tibeto-Burman languagesTibeto-Burman languages
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken thoughout the highlands of southeast Asia, as well as lowland areas in Burma ....
. In addition, it is commonly thought that Old Chinese
Old Chinese
The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....
had syllables ending in clusters /ps/, /ts/, and /ks/ (sometimes called the "long entering tone", while syllables ending in /p/, /t/ and /k/ are the "short entering tone"). These clusters later reduced to /s/; in turn this became /h/ and ultimately tone 3 in Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
(the "departing tone").
The first Chinese philologists began to describe the phonology of Chinese during the Early Middle Chinese period (specifically, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, between 400
400
Year 400 was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Stilicho and Aurelianus...
to 600
600
Year 600 was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 600 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.- Europe :* Smallpox arrives in Europe for the first...
), under the influence of Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
and the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
language that arrived along with it. There were several unsuccessful attempts to classify the tones of Chinese, before the establishment of the traditional four-tone description between 483 and 493. It is based on the Vedic theory of three intonations (聲明論). The middle intonation, Udātta, maps to the level tone (平聲); the upwards intonation, Svarita, to the rising tone (上聲); the downward intonation, Anudātta, to the departing tone (去聲). The distinctive sound of syllables ending with a plosive did not fit the three intonations and was categorised as the entering tone (入聲). The use of four-tone system flourished in the Sui
Sui Dynasty
The Sui Dynasty was a powerful, but short-lived Imperial Chinese dynasty. Preceded by the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes. It was followed by the Tang Dynasty....
and Tang
Tang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
dynasties. An important rime dictionary
Rime dictionary
thumb|upright=1.0|A page from Shiyun Hebi , a rime dictionary of the [[Qing Dynasty]]A rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book is an ancient type of Chinese dictionary used for writing poetry or other genres requiring rhymes. A rime dictionary focuses on pronunciation and collates...
, Qieyun
Qieyun
The Qieyun is a Chinese rime dictionary, published in 601 CE during the Sui Dynasty. The title Qieyun literally means "cutting rimes" referring to the traditional Chinese fănqiè system of spelling, and is thus translatable as "Spelling Rimes."Lù Făyán was the chief editor...
was written in this period.
Note that modern linguistic descriptions of Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
often refer to the level, rising and departing tones as tones 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
By the time of the Mongol invasion (the Yuan dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was a ruling dynasty founded by the Mongol leader Kublai Khan, who ruled most of present-day China, all of modern Mongolia and its surrounding areas, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. It is considered both as a division of the Mongol Empire and as an...
, 1279–1368), former final stops had been reduced to a glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
/ʔ/. It is sometimes thought that the influence of these invading nomads caused this final glottal stop to be lost, leading to the loss of "entering tone" syllables. The Zhongyuan Yinyun
Zhongyuán Yinyùn
Zhongyuan Yinyun , literally meaning "The phonology of the Central Plains", is a rime book from the Yuan Dynasty compiled by Zhou Deqing in 1324...
, a rime book of 1324, already shows signs of the disappearance of the glottal stop and the emergence of the modern Mandarin tone system in its place. The precise time at which the loss occurred is unknown, though it was likely gone by the time of the Qing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
.
Example
| Chinese character |
Fanqie Fanqiè In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:... Spelling and Middle Chinese Middle Chinese Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties... Reconstruction |
Hakka Hakka The Hakka , sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese who speak the Hakka language and have links to the provincial areas of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Fujian in China.... |
Hokkien Hokkien Hokkien is a Hokkien word corresponding to Standard Chinese "Fujian". It may refer to:* Hokkien dialect, a dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken in Southern Fujian , Taiwan, South-east Asia, and elsewhere.... |
Cantonese Standard Cantonese Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of Canton in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese.... |
Classical Japanese Classical Japanese language The is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period . It is based on Early Middle Japanese, the language as spoken during the Heian era , but exhibits some later influences. Its use started to decline during the late Meiji period when novelists... |
Early Modern Japanese kana |
Korean Korean language Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing... |
Vietnamese Vietnamese language Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam... |
Mandarin Standard Chinese Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore.... (no entering tone) |
Main meaning (in English) |
| 合 | 侯閤切 [ɣɒp] | [hap˥] | [hɐʔ˥] | [hap˨] | gapu, kapu |
| hap
|hợp
|hé xɤ̌
|union; close
|-
|十
|是執切 [ʑĭĕp]
|[sip˥]
|[sip˥], [tsap˥]
|[sɐp˨]
|zipu, sipu
|,
| sip
|thập
|shí ʂɨ̌
|ten
|-
|佛
|符弗切 [bʰĭuət]
|[fut˥]
|[hut˥], [put˥]
|[fɐt˨]
|butu, putu
|,
| bul
|phật
|fó fuɔ̌
|Buddha
|-
|八
|博拔切 [pæt]
|[pat˩]
|[pat˩], [peʔ˩]
|[pɑt˧]
|pati, patu
|,
| pal
|bát
|bā pá
|eight
|-
|易
|羊益切 [jĭɛk]
|[ji˥˧], [jit˥]
|[ek˥], [iaʔ˥]
|[jɪk˨]
|yaku, eki
|,
| yeok
|dịch
|yì î
|change, exchange.
|-
|客
|苦格切 [kʰɐk]
|[hak˩],[kʰak˩]
|[kʰek], [kʰeʔ˩]
|[hɑk˧]
|kyaku, kaku
|,
| gaek
|khách
|kè kʰɤ̂
|guest
|}
Mandarin
The entering tone is extant in Jianghuai Mandarin and the Minjiang dialectMinjiang dialect
Minjiang dialect , is a branch of Sichuanese, spoken mainly in the Minjiang River valley or along the Yangtze River in the southern and western parts of the Sichuan Basin...
of Sichuanese
Sichuanese Mandarin
Sichuanese Mandarin , commonly known as Sichuanese, Szechuanese or Szechwanese , is a branch of Southwestern Mandarin, spoken mainly in Sichuan and Chongqing, which was part of Sichuan until 1997, and the adjacent regions of their neighboring provinces, such as Hubei, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and...
. In other dialects, the entering tone has been lost, and words that had the tone have been distributed into the four modern tonal categories, depending on the initial consonant of each word.
Note that, in the Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
dialect that underlies Standard Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, syllables beginning with originally unvoiced consonants are redistributed across the four tones in a completely random pattern. For example, the three characters 积脊迹, all pronounced /tsjek/ in Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
(William Baxter's reconstruction), are now pronounced jī jǐ jì, with tones 1 3 4 respectively. The two characters 割葛, both pronounced /kat/, are now pronounced gē (tone 1) and gé/gě (tone 2/3) respectively, with character 葛 splitting on semantic grounds (tone 3 when used as a component of a name, mostly tone 2 otherwise).
Similarly, the three characters 胳阁各 (Middle Chinese /kak/) are now pronounced gē gé gè, with tones 1 2 4, and the four characters 鸽蛤颌合 (Middle Chinese /kop/ are now pronounced gē gé gé gě, with tones 1 2 2 3. In these cases, the two sets of characters are significant in that each member of the same set has the same phonetic component, suggesting that the phonetic component of a character has little to do with the tone class that the character is assigned to. In other situations, however, the opposite appears to be the case. For example, the group 幅福蝠辐/腹复 of six homophonic characters, all pronounced /pjuwk/ in Middle Chinese and divided into a group of four with one phonetic and a group of two with a different phonetic, splits so that the first group of four is all pronounced fú (tone 2) and the second group of two is pronounced fù (tone 4). In situations like this, it may be that only one of the characters in each group normally occurs in speech with an identifiable tone, and as a result a "reading pronunciation" of the other characters was constructed based on the phonetic element of the character.
The chart below summarizes the distribution in the different dialects.
| Voiceless | Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... or /l/ |
Voiced obstruent Obstruent An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants.... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Peninsular Mandarin | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Northeastern Mandarin | 1, 2, 3, 4 (mostly 3; otherwise, no pattern) | 4 | 2 |
| Beijing Mandarin | 1, 2, 3, 4 (no obvious pattern) | 4 | 2 |
| Northcentral Mandarin | 1 | 4 | 2 |
| Central Plains Mandarin | 1 | 2 | |
| Northwestern Mandarin | 4 | 2 | |
| Southwestern Mandarin | 2(mainly), 1, 4 or preserved(Minjiang dialect Minjiang dialect Minjiang dialect , is a branch of Sichuanese, spoken mainly in the Minjiang River valley or along the Yangtze River in the southern and western parts of the Sichuan Basin... ) |
||
| Yangtze Mandarin (Jianghuai Mandarin) | (entering tone preserved) | ||
Cantonese
Like most other variants of Chinese, Cantonese has changed initial voiced plosives, affricates and fricatives of Middle ChineseMiddle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
to their voiceless counterparts. To compensate for the loss of this difference, Cantonese has split each of the Middle Chinese tones into two, one for Middle Chinese voiced initial consonants (Yang) and one for Middle Chinese voiceless initial consonants (Yin). In addition, Cantonese has split the Yin-Entering tone into two, with a higher tone for short vowels and a lower tone for long vowels. As a result, Cantonese now has three entering tones:
- Upper (Short Yin, 陰入)
- Middle (Long Yin, 中入), was derived from Upper (陰入)
- Lower (Yang, 陽入)
The entering tone in Cantonese has retained its short and sharp character.
Hakka
Hakka preserves all of the entering tones of Middle Chinese and it is split into two registers. The Meixian Hakka dialect often taken as the paradigm gives the following:- 陰入 [ ˩ ] a low pitched checked tone
- 陽入 [ ˥ ] a high pitched checked tone
Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [ɛ] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in some of the modern Hakka as seen in the following table.
| Character | Guangyun Guangyun The Guangyun is a Chinese rime dictionary that was compiled from 1007 to 1008 under the auspices of Emperor Zhenzong of Song. Chen Pengnian and Qiu Yong were the chief editors.... Fanqie Fanqiè In Chinese phonology, fanqie is a method to indicate the pronunciation of a character by using two other characters.-The Origin:... |
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties... reconstruction |
Hakka Chinese | Main meaning in English English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria... |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 職 | 之翼切 | tɕĭək | tsit˩ | vocation, profession |
| 力 | 林直切 | lĭək | lit˥ | strength, power |
| 食 | 乗力切 | dʑʰĭək | sit˥ | eat, consume |
| 色 | 所力切 | ʃĭək | sɛt˩ | colour, hue |
| 德 | 多則切 | tək | tɛt˩ | virtue |
| 刻 | 苦得切 | kʰək | kʰɛt˩ | carve, engrave, a moment |
| 北 | 博墨切 | pək | pɛt˩ | north |
| 國 | 古或切 | kuək | kʷɛt˩ | country, state |
Min
Southern Min (Min NanMin Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
, including Taiwanese) has two entering tones:
- Upper (Yin, 陰入), tone number marked as 4
- Lower (Yang, 陽入), tone number marked as 8
A word may switch from one of these tones to the other due to tone sandhi
Tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is a feature of tonal languages in which the tones assigned to individual words vary based on the pronunciation of the words that surround them in a phrase or sentence. It is a type of sandhi, or fusional change, from the Sanskrit word for "joining".-Languages with tone sandhi:Not all...
. Words with entering tones end with either a glottal stop ([-h]), [-p], [-t] or [-k] (all unaspirated). There are many words that have different finals in their literary and colloquial forms.
Entering tone in Sino-Xenic
Many Chinese words were borrowed into Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese during the Middle ChineseMiddle Chinese
Middle Chinese , also called Ancient Chinese by the linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties...
period, so these languages preserve the entering tone to varying degrees.
Japanese
Because JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
does not allow a syllable to end with a consonant, the endings -k, -p, -t were rendered as separate syllables -ku or -ki, -pu, and -ti (-chi) or -tu (-tsu) respectively. Later phonological changes
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...
further altered some of the endings:
- In some cases where the ending is immediately followed by an unvoiced consonant in a compound, the ending is lost, and the consonant becomes geminate.
- Examples: gaku + kou becomes gakkou (school), and shitsu + hai becomes shippai (failure)
- The -pu ending changes into -u. (pu>fu>hu>u). This process can be followed by -au -> -ou and -iu -> -yū.
- Example: jipu (ten) becomes jū
It is possible to recover the original ending by examining the historical kana
Historical kana usage
The , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation...
used in spelling a word.
Korean
KoreanKorean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
keeps the -k and -p endings, while the -t ending has changed into -l.
Vietnamese
Vietnamese preserves all of the endings -p, -t, -k (spelt -p, -t, -c, respectively).Additionally, after the vowels ê or i, the ending -c changes to -ch, giving rise to -ich and -êch.
In addition, "ach" also occurs for some words of -k ending.
Reconstruction of entering tones from languages that lack it
Although it is hard to distinguish words of entering tone origin based on Mandarin pronunciation only, it is possible to do so to an extent with the help of the phonetic component of each Chinese character. Although this is not completely accurate, it is a quick way to identify characters of the entering tone.- If a character has a phonetic component and is known to have an entering tone, other characters that have that phonetic component probably have an entering tone. For example, if one already knows that 白 (white) is of the entering tone, then one can conjecture that 拍 (beat), 柏 (fir), 帛 (white cloth), 迫 (urgent) are also of entering tone.
- Characters that begin with voicelessVoicelessIn linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
unaspiratedAspiration (phonetics)In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
obstruentObstruentAn obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....
s and have a second tone in Mandarin almost always have an entering tone.
See also
- Historical Chinese phonologyHistorical Chinese phonologyHistorical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European...
- Sino-Japanese vocabulary
- Sino-Korean vocabulary
- Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
- Tone nameTone nameIn the Chinese and Vietnamese languages, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use.*In Chinese, tone names are given in terms of the four tones, namely level , rising , departing , and entering , as well as dark and light , and high and low .* Standard Vietnamese has six...