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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: ASCII Marking of Chinese Tones
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References: <Pine.SUN.3.93.960417212803.23101A-100000@access2.digex.net> <4l87tn$rr4@reznor.larc.nasa.gov>
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 18:08:49 GMT
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In article <4l87tn$rr4@reznor.larc.nasa.gov>, Fei Li  <fli@htc-tech.com> wrote:
>Paul O Bartlett <pobart@access.digex.net> wrote:
>>    From time to time someone will post an article with ASCII
>>Romanizations of words in one of the Chinese dialects and will include
>>digits.  I presume these digits indicate the tones.  However, I am not
>>familiar with the scheme.  Could someone please sketch it out?  Thanks.
>>
>  In the Pinyin system the four tones of Mandarin are represented by
>  accents writen on top of the vowels. I don't know if there
>  is an official rule for their ASCII representation, but People
>  from mainland China usually use 1,2,3, and 4 to indicate the four
>  tones ( actually five tones if the "light tone" is included, which
>  does not have an accent over the vowel). 
>
>  These four accents are: (1) -, (2) /, (3) \/ ,(4) \

Often described as "high level", "rising", "dipping" or "fall-rise", and
"falling" respectively.  I had held off answering this post because I had
hoped someone would give the exact tone contours, but no one has.  Please,
someone correct me if I have them wrong, but I think they are:

First tone:  55
Second tone: 35
Third tone:  324
Fourth tone: 52
"Neutral tone": 33

	The "neutral tone" is that adopted by the second syllable in 
many compounds and other syllables that are not given "full tone value."
I'm not sure if this is the same as Fei Li's "light tone" or not.

	So how do these numbers relate to tone contour?  Phoneticians
divide the range of pitch in a normal utterance into five levels (5 
being the highest and 1 the lowest).  Graphically, one could represent
the pitch contour of the five tones above as follows:
	____
5		  /		\
4		 /	    /	 \  	____
3		/	\  /	  \
2			 \/	   \  
1				

(Of course, the actual tone values in connecting speech depend on the
effects of tone sandhi, the pitch contour of the utterance, and other
factors.)  Note how the pinyin diacritics (macron, acute accent, 
ha^cek/breve, grave accent) suggest these contours.  These diacritics 
are also used in conjunction with the Taiwanese "Mapodoufu" system.  
Since there is no way to display them in ASCII, we have to resort to 
numbers.

	A similar system has been developed by Yale for Cantonese, only
lacking the breve and employing a silent <h> after the vowel to mark
low tones.  However, there is no generally agreed upon numbering system
for the ten (or eleven) tones of Cantonese, so many posters leave off
indications of tone entirely or use the five-level numbering system
sketched out above (Mr. Zhong is particularly consciencious in doing this).
 




-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
