tones

bababardwan

January 18, 2010, 11:05 PM posted in General Discussion

A couple of silly questions on tones.

Does anyone know if there is an even distribution of tones amongst the characters or if someone has ever done a breakdown and given the percentages.I seem to be noticing a lot of fourth tones lately [maybe cos it's my fav though]?

I also take it there has never been any rhyme or reason to how tones were assigned [presumably because the roots are so ancient].Would have been nice n tidy if all verbs were 4th tone,nouns say first tone,grammar particles neutral,adjectives maybe third tone,question particles 2nd maybe.But keeping us guessing keeps things interesting I s'pose.

John

January 19, 2010, 03:10 AM

Bababardwan,

This kind of research has been done, but it all depends on what kind of sample you use to obtain your data. For Chinese, most large corpora are newspaper-based, which may not be entirely representative of the language in general. For tonal distribution, however, it's probably pretty close.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the answer off the top of my head, and the most well-known frequency list, Jun Da's, doesn't seem to have this data.

Here's hoping another poddie has the time to google up this data!

bababardwan

thanks John.Yeah,point well taken about the data set.

changye

January 19, 2010, 12:50 PM

Just an aside, if you are in China and have interest in Chinese characters, I strongly recommend you get a copy of 《汉字知识与汉字问题》 (Chinese Philology, Knowledge and Issues) published by 商务印书馆 in 2009.

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20618393

This is one of the best books on Chinese characters I've ever read, which gives you comprehensive (and concise/exact) knowledges about a lot of issues surrounding Chinese characters.

第一章　汉字是什么时候产生的
第二章　汉字是怎么产生的
第三章　汉字的造字方法
第四章　汉字形体的演变
第五章　汉字的名称
第六章　汉字的数量
第七章　常用的字典和词典

第一章　繁简字的问题
第二章　异体字的问题
第三章　异义字的问题
第四章　异音字的问题
第五章　两组相互混用的字
第六章　异形词的问题
第七章　方言字的问题
第八章　汉字部首的问题
第九章汉字印刷体字形的问题
第十章汉字笔画的问题
第十一章　现代汉字规范化的问题
第十二章　写错字的问题
第十三章　读错字的问题
第十四章汉字形体说解的问题
第十五章　汉字标音的历史
第十六章　汉字书法字体的问题

This book only has 200 pages and written in plain Chinese. Its target readers are Mandarin teachers. I guarantee, with this book you can play a "know-it-all" with regards to Chinese characters, hehe.

Unfortunately, this book doesn't give you information on Chinese phonology.

simonpettersson

January 19, 2010, 04:22 AM

Man, seriously? Your fav is the fourth tone? It's terrible! The third tone can beat the fourth tone any day of the week.

bababardwan

how so?

simonpettersson

Well, it's got the tone sandhi rule, for one. It's the only tone that can be repeated without sounding like a broken record. Also, it dips and then rises. That's a pretty awesome tone contour right there, man! Cantonese has tons of rising, falling and level tones, but no dipping tone. And let's not forget that it's the tone that makes you dig deep into your voice register for your masucline baritone sounds. It's the manliest tone, no doubt.

bababardwan

January 19, 2010, 04:27 AM

how so?

changye

January 19, 2010, 04:29 AM

You said "how tones were assigned?", and I must say it's a very difficult question to answer. I think probably there is no significant relationship between tones and parts of speech.

All I can say is that the most common tone is "flat tone" (平声) both in modern and middle Chinese. For the record, the same is true for Cantonese.

In Chinese phonology, first and second tones (in modern Chinese) are called "阴平" and "阳平" respectively, and both were categorized into one group "平声" (flat tone) in rhyme books published in middle China.

In modern Chinese, first (阴平) and second (阳平) tones account for more than fifty percent, and in middle Chinese flat tones (平声) accounted for about forty percent. Do you like flat tone? hehe

bababardwan

Do I like flat tone? Well of course in reality I like 'em all because they all contribute to the musicality of the language.I think the number of tones in Mandarin is perfectly to my liking..enough to give it a musicality and variety without going as far as Cantonese to make it a bigger challenge.But spitting out an emphatic fourth is both easy and satisfying.

bababardwan

January 19, 2010, 04:30 AM

thanks changye :) Oh right,sounds like the stop consonants make the diff.Am I right in supposing there is no rationale to the tones?

btw those percentages seem to leave nothing in store for neutral tone.I thought it would be the least frequent but I still wouldn't have had it at zero or a fraction of a percent.

John

January 19, 2010, 04:31 AM

Changye,

What is your source? Can you provide a link?

Please remember that there is no "absolute answer" to a question like this... the answer is always dependent on the dataset.

If you're talking about historical data, you're dealing mainly with the written language, which may or may correspond closely to the spoken language, often influenced greatly by dialects.

changye

January 19, 2010, 03:27 AM

Here is the distribution of modern tones among 7,366 frequently used Chinese characters.

first tone 1834 (25%)
second tone 1960 (26%)
third tone 1227 (17%)
fourth tone 2345 (32%)

Very roughly speaking, middle Chinese also had similar tendency, although it had so-called "stop consonant" (入声，entering tone), which doesn't exist in modern Mandarin anymore.

In comparison with middle Chinese, modern Mandarin has more fourth tones than middle Chinese, because a lot of 入声 (stop consonant) changed into fourth tone in the past one thousand years.

P/S. Your hunch is right.....fourth tone 32%

bababardwan

thanks changye :) Oh right,sounds like the stop consonants make the diff.Am I right in supposing there is no rationale to the tones?

btw those percentages seem to leave nothing in store for neutral tone.I thought it would be the least frequent but I still wouldn't have had it at zero or a fraction of a percent.

John

Changye,

What is your source? Can you provide a link?

Please remember that there is no "absolute answer" to a question like this... the answer is always dependent on the dataset.

If you're talking about historical data, you're dealing mainly with the written language, which may or may correspond closely to the spoken language, often influenced greatly by dialects.

changye

Hi john

http://chinese.exponode.com/2_3.htm

http://chinese.exponode.com/0_1.htm

There is no trick. The date is based on tones shown in modern dictionaries.

John

Changye,

Thanks! This paper looks really cool... I will have to spend more time on it when I get a chance.

changye

Hi bababardwan

Neutral tone is different from other tones. The tone appears/exists mainly in conversations due to "laziness of speakers". In other words, any character can be pronounced with neutral tone under some conditions.

bababardwan

January 19, 2010, 04:38 AM

go_manly

January 19, 2010, 04:41 AM

Just did a count on the Jun Da list, and the percentages match Changye's almost exactly, albeit with a higher number of characters.

1st: 2644

2nd: 2769

3rd: 1710

4th: 3395

The total here is 10518, even though there are only 9933 characters in the list. I'm sure you all understand the reason for the discrepancy.

For the record, my favourite tone is the 2nd, least favourite is the first.

tones

bababardwan

John

bababardwan

changye

simonpettersson

bababardwan

simonpettersson

bababardwan

changye

bababardwan

bababardwan

John

changye

bababardwan

John

changye

John

changye

bababardwan

go_manly

changye

bodawei

matthiask

orangina

changye

bodawei

changye

orangina

bababardwan