Many people say that Cantonese has nine tones. Here are examples:
分 fan1 (55)
粉 fan2 (35)
訓 fan3 (33)
焚 fan4 (21)
奮 fan5 (13)
份 fan6 (22)
忽 fat7 (5)
發 faat8 (3)
佛 fat9 (2)
In the above list, I have written the pronunciation of the tone in Jyutping (like the Cantonese version of
Pinyin), where the small number indicates the tone category (Tone 1, Tone 2, etc.). After each one, in
parentheses, I have written the phonetic tone description using Chao letters (if you don't remember what
these mean, check the Phonetics module for a reminder).
Tones 1-6 are considered "full" tones, and tones 7-9 are considered "short" or "checked" tones.
Think about this group of words using all the concepts you've learned so far from phonology. Look for minimal
pairs, look for complementary distributions, think about things that might be different versions of the same
tone vs. things that might really be different tones. After thinking about this, do you agree that there are
9 tones? Why or why not?
The standard phonological analysis of Cantonese is that there are actually six tones, not nine. Notice that
tones 1-6 are in complementary distribution with tones 7-9: tones 1-6 only occur in "open"
syllables (syllables that end with a vowel or nasal), and tones 7-9 only occur in "checked" syllables
(syllables that end with a stop like [p], [t], or [k]):
Open syllables |
Checked syllables |
Tone 1 (55) Tone 2 (35) Tone 3 (33) Tone 4 (21) Tone 5 (13) Tone 6 (22)
|
Tone 7 (5) Tone 8 (3) Tone 9 (2) |
In other words, Tone 7 is probably just another version of the higher tones: historically, when those tones
were in a checked syllable, they got shortened into this tone. Likewise, Tone 9 is just another version of
the lower tones, etc.
This is another example of a situation where examining phonotactics (which tones appear in which kinds of
syllables) shows us something about the phoneme inventory.
Now let's think about standard Mandarin. People usually stay Mandarin has four tones (or sometimes they say
it has 5 tones, if they are counting 轻声 [neutral tone]). But in the Phonetics module we already
saw examples of more: for example, Tone 3 is sometimes a full tone 3 (with Chao numbers 213: it starts out in
the middle, then gets low, then rises again), and sometimes a half tone 3 (with Chao numbers 21: it goes down
and doesn't come up). There are other similar variations: for example, a "full" tone 4, when pronounced by itself,
has Chao numbers 51 (it starts very high and drops very low), but a tone 4 in a compound word with another
syllable after it (like 罷工) is pronounced more like 53 (it doesn't drop quite as much). Why are
these not treated as different tones? Using phonology concepts, explain why people treat Mandarin as having
four tones—i.e., why are "213" and "21" both considered to be Tone 3, and why are "51" and "53" both
considered to be Tone 4?