Tonal Distribution in Chinese Dialects

Abstract

Earlier literature on tones of Chinese dialects tends to describe a tonal inventory and tone sandhi of an individual dialect or diachronic changes across dialects. However, a typological explanation of tonal systems across various Chinese dialects is still in need to understand the language specific features of Chinese tones as well as their similarities with other tone languages. This paper collects tones from 738 dialects of Chinese and examines the tone distribution from a typological perspective. Results of the paper reveal several important features of Chinese tones: (1) Chinese has significantly larger inventories than tone languages in general. (2) The frequency pattern of ‘level ＞ fall ＞ rise ＞ concave ＞ convex’ found in tone languages shows a negative relation between tonal markedness and distribution. Chinese dialects, however, are not in line with this frequency pattern, i.e., the relative frequency among level, fall, and rise may vary. (3) The most distinctive specificity pertaining to level tone in Chinese is that high register is notably favored for level tone. (4) The balanced distribution between fall and rise and that between concave and convex in terms of pitch register found in tone languages are not shown in Chinese. Rather, fall and rise seem to favor low register and high register, respectively. (5) Complex contour tones appear to realize within the same register rather than across registers. (6) Tones treated as checked tone in a Chinese philological tradition tend to realize as level. Given the paucity of comparative research on Chinese dialects and other tone languages, the findings of the present study contribute to achieve a better understanding of not only the tonal systems of Chinese dialects but also the tonal universals across languages.