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In Middle Chinese, each of the tone names carries the tone it identifies: 平 level ꜁ biajŋ, 上 rising ꜃ dʑɨaŋ, 去 departing kʰɨə ꜄, and 入 entering ȵip ꜇. [5] However, in some modern Chinese varieties, this is no longer true.
In tonal languages, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use. Pitch contours of the four Mandarin tones In contemporary standard Chinese (Mandarin), the tones are numbered from 1 to 4.
The Chinese names of the main four tones are respectively 阴平; 陰平; yīnpíng; 'dark level', 阳平; 陽平; yángpíng; 'light level', 上; shǎng [23] [24] or shàng [25] ('rising'), and 去; qù; 'departing'. As descriptions, they apply rather to the predecessor Middle Chinese tones than to the modern tones.
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the Qieyun, a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions.
Each of the 43 tables in the Yunjing is first divided into four large rows that correspond to the four tones of Middle Chinese: the level tone (Chinese: 平聲; pinyin: píngshēng), the rising tone (Chinese: 上聲; pinyin: shǎngshēng), the departing tone (Chinese: 去聲; pinyin: qùshēng), and the entering tone (Chinese: 入聲; pinyin: rùshēng). [1]
A rime table or rhyme table (simplified Chinese: 韵图; traditional Chinese: 韻圖; pinyin: yùntú; Wade–Giles: yün-t'u) is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the Qieyun (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties.
The voiceless stops that typify the entering tone date back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the parent language of Chinese as well as the Tibeto-Burman languages.In addition, Old Chinese is commonly thought to have syllables ending in clusters /ps/, /ts/, and /ks/ [1] [2] (sometimes called the "long entering tone" while syllables ending in /p/, /t/ and /k/ are the "short entering tone").
The centre of the study of Chinese historical phonology is the Qieyun, a rime dictionary created by Lu Fayan in 601 CE as a guide to the proper reading of classic texts. The dictionary divided characters between the four tones, which were subdivided into 193 rhyme groups and then into homophone groups.