Tonal Languages - Mechanics

Mechanics

Most languages use pitch as intonation to convey prosody and pragmatics, but this does not make them tonal languages. In tonal languages, each syllable has an inherent pitch contour, and thus minimal pairs (or larger minimal sets) exist between syllables with the same segmental features but different tones.

Here is a minimal tone set from Mandarin Chinese, which has five tones, here transcribed by diacritics over the vowels:

1. A high level tone: /á/ (pinyin ⟨ā⟩)
2. A tone starting with mid pitch and rising to a high pitch: /ǎ/ (pinyin ⟨á⟩)
3. A low tone with a slight fall (if there is no following syllable, it may start with a dip then rise to a high pitch): /à/ (pinyin ⟨ǎ⟩)
4. A short, sharply falling tone, starting high and falling to the bottom of the speaker's vocal range: /â/ (pinyin ⟨à⟩)
5. A very short, neutral tone, sometimes indicated by a dot (·) in Pinyin, has no specific contour; its pitch depends on the tones of the preceding and following syllables. Mandarin speakers refer to this tone as the "light tone" (simplified Chinese: 轻声; traditional Chinese: 輕聲; pinyin: qīng shēng), also called the "fifth tone", "zeroth tone", or "neutral tone". This tone occurs only on unstressed syllables. Its occurrence on single syllable words is marginal, only with a small number of grammatical particles. There is a strong tendency in modern Mandarin for the second syllable of disyllabic words to be pronounced with a light tone.

These tones combine with a syllable such as "ma" to produce different words. A minimal set based on "ma" are, in pinyin transcription,

1. mā(媽/妈) "mum/mom"
2. má(麻/麻) "hemp"
3. mǎ(馬/马) "horse"
4. mà(罵/骂) "scold"
5. ma(嗎/吗) (an interrogative particle)

These may be combined into the rather contrived sentence,

妈妈骂马的麻吗?/媽媽罵馬的麻嗎?

Pinyin: māma mà mǎ de má ma?

IPA /má ma mâ ma᷉ tɤ mǎ ma/

English: "Is mom scolding the horse's hemp?"

A well-known tongue-twister in the Thai language is:

ไหมใหม่ไหม้มั้ย

IPA: /mǎi mài mâi mái/

"Does new silk burn?"

Vietnamese has its version: bấy nay bây bầy bẩy bẫy bậy

IPA: /bʌ̌j naj bʌj bʌ̂j bʌ᷉j bʌ̌ˀj bʌ̂ˀj/

"All along you've set up the seven traps incorrectly!"

Tone is most frequently manifested on vowels, but in most tonal languages where voiced syllabic consonants occur they will bear tone as well. This is especially common with syllabic nasals, for example in many Bantu and Kru languages, but also occurs in Serbo-Croatian and Yorùbá.

Tones can interact in complex ways through a process known as tone sandhi.