tones (or not?)

[Cobie]

“by using modern methods of historical and comparative linguistics, most linguists do not find evidence that Old Chinese was tonal. And the well-attested tones of Middle and Modern Chinese varieties are thought to have emerged later, rather than inherited from Old Chinese.”

(https://www.quora.com/Did-ancient-Chinese-languages-have-tones)

 

 

[Master Logray]

Middle and Modern Chinese are tonal. They won't come from nowhere. It was not out of a imposed design.  The logical reasoning is that the tonality must have evolved from earlier not barely tonal or not so tonal versions to a fully tonal language. 

[Mig]

Interesting posting and the Quora answers are so diverse and I can smell the academic flavor of their lingo. It is true the importance of tones but common people don't talk like that, in conversation their sentences are fluid and when they speak very fast, it is only the context that helps in the conversation, an example is the crosstalk stand up comedy type where they speak fast, or even when they sing songs where tones are not necessarily used formally . As for tones in ancient Chinese, who knows what happened BC. And this made me wonder, were the DDJ or lún yǔ written using tones or was it a tendency for the language to become monosyllabic then tones evolved? Again, as for tones, it seems to me that there is this academic explanation, which I understand why, but tones as Kaiser Kuo mentioned in the Quora intervention, "dude" can use tones for the 4 tones in modern Chinese. Now, I have never understood when I hear native Chinese speak the standard language, I can hear stress or intonation in a sentence and tones are not necessarily used unless disambiguation to clarify the meaning of a word whether is one syllable or two syllables words.

[Mig]

1 hour ago, Master Logray said:

Middle and Modern Chinese are tonal. They won't come from nowhere. It was not out of a imposed design.  The logical reasoning is that the tonality must have evolved from earlier not barely tonal or not so tonal versions to a fully tonal language. 

What is your criteria to assert that it was not out of an imposed design? Wasn't the written script arbitrary imposed to pronounce words?

[Master Logray]

39 minutes ago, Mig said:

What is your criteria to assert that it was not out of an imposed design? Wasn't the written script arbitrary imposed to pronounce words?

 

It was not mentioned in history.  There are many variations of spoken languages in China till today.  All using roughly the same set of words.

 

[Cobie]

15 hours ago, Mig said:

… It is true the importance of tones but common people don't talk like that, in conversation their sentences are fluid and when they speak very fast, it is only the context that helps in the conversation, an example is the crosstalk stand up comedy type where they speak fast, or even when they sing songs where tones are not necessarily used formally.

 

Interesting. Fits with what I was told, that modern Chinese is slowly developing to losing the tones and becoming an agglutinative language.

 

 

Edited January 4 by Cobie

[Cobie]

15 hours ago, Mig said:

… As for tones in ancient Chinese, who knows what happened BC. And this made me wonder, were the DDJ or lún yǔ written using tones …

Yes that’s exactly what I wondered about too (and started me Googling ‘tones’). 

[Cobie]

Imo things seem to have been complicated later on by commentators. 

E.g. 導引 dao3 yin3 * imo equals 道陰 dao4 yin1 

 

* as in “ 氣功在黃帝內經稱為導引 

https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/54363-on-the-nature-and-utility-of-goal-posts-in-meditative-and-energetic-practice/?do=findComment&comment=999148

 

Edited January 4 by Cobie

[Mig]

On 1/4/2024 at 1:36 PM, Cobie said:

 

Interesting. Fits with what I was told, that modern Chinese is slowly developing to losing the tones and becoming an agglutinative language.

 

 

Not sure what you mean about agglunative language? Any examples to share? What I have noticed recently is the use of single syllables like instead of using two syllables words like kuaile: happy and say le only.

[Cobie]

17 hours ago, Mig said:

Not sure what you mean about agglunative language? …

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language 

 

 

Edited January 7 by Cobie

[Cobie]

On 04/01/2024 at 4:56 AM, Master Logray said:

Middle and Modern Chinese are tonal. They won't come from nowhere. It was not out of a imposed design.  The logical reasoning is that the tonality must have evolved from earlier not barely tonal or not so tonal versions to a fully tonal language. 

possibly tones and various characters were added later to make the sounds more ‘polite’.
 

E.g. 服務員 - waiter 

 

current tones/characters

服 fu2 - serve

務 wu4 - task

員 yuan2 - member

 

same sounds with other tones/characters

夫 fu1 - man 

無 wu2 - without

元 yuan2 - importance 

 

 

Edited June 12 by Cobie

[Master Logray]

12 hours ago, Cobie said:

possibly tones and various characters were added later to make the sounds more ‘polite’.
 

E.g. 服務員 - waiter 

 

current tones/characters

服 fu2 - serve

務 wu4 - task

員 yuan2 - member

 

same sounds with other tones/characters

夫 fu1 - man 

無 wu2 - without

元 yuan2 - importance 

 

 

 

I forgot what was discussed since it was so long.   There are different type of Chineses.  E.g. the southern ones like Hokkien and Cantonese significantly depend on tones to differentiate different words.  Mandarin has 4 tones, Hokkien has 8, Cantonese 9.   A more tonal language is very strict on tones otherwise it becomes another word.    So it is not very possible to use intonation to add to the sentiment or meaning.