Phonological Features of Tone

Author(s): William S-Y. Wang

Source: International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Apr., 1967), pp. 93-
105
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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 International Journal of American Linguistics
VOLUME XXXI TT April 1967 Number 2

PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TONE1

WILLIAM S-Y. WANG

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

1. General discussion ing the literature on languages of this type,

2. Tone features and segmental features our attention is particularly drawn to three
3. Presentation of phonological features linguistic areas: (i) certain clusters of Ameri-
4. A proposed set of tone features can Indian languages, (ii) the vast majority
5. Redundancy conventions of African languages, and (iii) almost all of
6. Phonetic interpretation the languages of the Sino-Tibetan family
7. Marking conventions together with many neighboring languages
8. Tone circle in Min of Southeast Asian. Typically, tone systems
of areas (i) and (ii) differ from those of area
1. 'Tone languages',2 in a broad sense, are
(iii) in several ways.
found in most parts of the world. In examin-One point of difference is in the use to
which tones are put. In languages of area
1 Versions of this paper have been presented to
(iii), tones are almost exclusively used lexi-
the linguistic groups at Berkeley, UCLA, and
Honolulu. Work discussed in this paper is sup- cally, with no correlation with the syntactic
or
ported in part by the Office of Naval Research. I morphological aspects of the language.
am indebted to W. L. Ballard for his assistance in There are exceptions, of course, such as the
collecting and systematizing the basic data on breathy
tone fall-rise tone in Vietnamese which
systems upon which the present discussion is
is 'sometimes used anaphorically to refer
based, and for several profitable discussions on
matters of interpretation. back to some "key" noun or nominal expres-
2 The most comprehensive investigation of tonein what has gone before',3 or the modi-
sion
languages to date continues to be K. L. Pike's fied tones in several Chinese dialects which
book of 1948, though new data have led to criti- serve a variety of connotative as well as
cisms of some of Pike's assumptions; e.g. W. E.
minor syntactic functions.4 Indeed, in the
Welmers, Tonemics, morphotonemics, and tonal
morphemes, General Linguistics 4.1-9 (Spring, Peking dialect there are two dozen or so
1949). A lucid discussion on the range of the term morphemes which change grammatical cate-
'tone language' by James D. McCawley in a paper gory according to tone. But these uses are
entitled What is a tone language? was presented marginal when they are compared to the ex-
to the Linguistic Society of America, August, 1964, tensive load that tones carry in the declen-
in which he correctly pointed out that attempts at
typology of this sort should be based primarily on sional and conjugational morphology of
the abstract form of phonological rules which the many languages in America and Africa, as
different tonal structures require. He argued con- exemplified in sections 3.11.2 and 3.11.3 of
vincingly that languages with the so-called pitch
Nida's Morphology,5 and documented abun-
accent, e.g. Japanese, though frequently grouped
with tone languages, are much more similar phono-
logically to certain non-tone languages. Indeed, it 3 Eugenie J. A. Henderson, Tonal exponents of
is an open question whether the distinction be- pronominal concord in Southern Vietnamese,
tween these two types of accent can be given any Indian Linguistics 22.86-97 (1961).
phonetic foundation. Although this distinction has 4 K. P. K. Whitaker, A Study of the modified
played a prominent role at least since Karl Verner tones in Spoken Cantonese, Asia Major 5.9-36,
used it as part of his famous historical thesis, our 184-207, (1956).
understanding of the physical basis of this distinc- 6 Eugene A. Nida, Morphology, 2nd ed., Ann
tion has not advanced much in the past century. Arbor (1949).
93

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94 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXXIII

dantly in the literature which dealsarea with

(iii), however, is by paradigmatic re-
these languages.6 placement. Characteristically, tone x is re-
The tone paradigms of languages of area
placed by tone y when it is within some
(iii) are typically more complex. Iflinguistic
we count environment, and it is irrelevant
each distinct pitch shape in citation mono-
whether tone y is present elsewhere in the
syllables as a tone, then paradigmssequence
of 6 orof7 tones. Frequently the phono-
tones are quite common. According to aenvironment
logical re- in which tone x occurs
cent study, Cantonese may have as is many as
also irrelevant for the sandhi. Some very
complex
10 tones.7 On the other hand, although a few situations of paradigmatic sandhi
American Indian languages also are
appear
found to
in the Min and Wu dialects of
have complex paradigms, languages of areas
Chinese, an example of which is given in 8
(i) and (ii) in general do not have of
as this
manypaper.
distinct shapes. Most languages of these two
areas have simply two or three noncontour
2. Recently I have examined a large num-
tones; a relatively small number of berthese
of tone languages, mostly of area (iii),
languages have contour tones in addition.8
with a view towards constructing a set of
Yet another point of difference can be features of tone. These features
phonological
seen in the way tone sandhi operates. The
are proposed here as an addition to a general
sequence of tones in many Bantu languages,
theory of phonology. They are designed to
for example, undergoes a form of sandhi that the two dozen or so features
complement
is essentially by syntagmatic displacement,
which are currently used in the phonological
i.e., a kind of tonal 'musical chairs'classification
in which of segmental sounds.
each syllable receives its tone from
Toneits
features, of course, are not com-
(usually left) neighbor. The sandhi in the
pletely independent of the segmental fea-
so-called terrace-level tone languagestures.
of West
They have a particularly close rela-
Africa is also syntagmatic in the sense that
tion, synchronically and diachronically, with
the pitch value of an unaccented syllable is
features which are controlled primarily at
usually predicted from the pitch value
the of the e.g. voicing, aspiration, glottali-
larynx,
left neighbor.9 Tone sandhi in languages of
zation, length, breathiness, etc. This relation
6 See, for example, Robert E. Longacre, is easily
Triqueunderstandable since the primary
tone morphemics, A L 1.4.5-42 (April, 1959); A.
Meeussen, Syntactic tones of nouns in Ganda: a
preliminary synthesis, Linguistic Research this tonalin
phenomenon within the broader frame-
Belgium 77-86, Universa Wetteren, Belgium work of Niger-Congo languages, Lg 37.294-308,
(1966). 1961. These African languages are terrace-level
7 Fd-Bang Zong, On the split of the Yin-ping languages of the descending variety in that the
tone in Cantonese (in Chinese), Zhongguo Yuwen pitch of the voice characteristically progresses
132.376-89 (1964). from high to low. Eunice Pike recently called
8 Some especially challenging cases are these my attention to a terrace-level language of the
Mexican Indian languages of the Oto-Manguean ascending variety, i.e., the Acatlan dialect of
family: Robert E. Longacre, Five phonemic pitch Mixtec, where the voice pitch may be raised an
levels in Trique, Acta Linguistica 7.62-82 (1952); indefinite number of steps theoretically, by the
Frank E. Robbins, Quiotepec Chinantec syllable repeated occurrence of the tone feature 'step-up'.
patterning, IJAL 27.237-50 (1961); William R. I am grateful to Miss Pike for showing me an
Merrifield, Palantla Chinantec syllable types, unpublished paper on this subject, which she
A L 5.5.1-16 (1963). co-authored with Kent Wistram. The tone features
9 For a clearly presented example of a terrace- 'step-up' and 'step-down' are not discussed in
level tone language in Ghana, see Paul Schachter, the present study since they call into play a type
Phonetic similarity in tonemic analysis, Lg of phonological formalism that remains to be de-
37.231-8 (1961). In the same issue of Language, veloped should they prove necessary at the sys-
H. A. Gleason, Jr. gives additional discussion of tematic phonemic level of representation.

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NO. 2 PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TONE 95

determinant of tone is the rate are ofsometimes

laryngealrelevant for the initial conso-
vibration. nant, sometimes for the nuclear vowel, and
Indeed the development of some types of sometimes for the final consonant in various
tonal distinctions probably can be explained phonological rules. If we were to add a
in terms of oppositions which are originally column of tone features to a phonological
segmental.10 As an example, although matrix of segmental features, then it be-
Middle Chinese (ca. 600 A.D.) is tradition- comes arbitrary where precisely to insert
ally regarded as having four distinct tones, this column. Furthermore, segmental fea-
from physiological considerations we know tures are usually not relevant in the various
that it must have had eight pitch shapes. types of tone sandhi; that is to say, the inter-
Four lower pitch ones appeared only with action of tones in a sequence is independent
syllables with voiced initials, the remaining of the nature of the segments which occur
only with unvoiced initials. The phonetic dif- with the tones. Phonetically, of course, the
ference between the four pairs of pitch domain of the tone is over the entire voiced
shapes is intrinsic in that it can be predicted portion of the syllable. From these considera-
from the mechanical properties of the speech tions, it is preferable to formalize the tone
mechanism." Like the pitch difference be- features differently from the segmental fea-
tween English /pin/ and /bin/ it is not tures and regard them as features of indi-
phonemic even though it is perceptually vidual syllables. In Chinese, this is almost
quite noticeable. When the voicing distinc- equivalent to marking these features on indi-
tion was obliterated through historical vidual morphemes since almost all mor-
change, as evidenced in most Chinese dia- phemes can be represented as single phono-
lects today, the phonetic differences in thelogical syllables. For languages with many
pitch shapes in certain cases became dis-polysyllabic morphemes, it appears that the
tinctive. syllable may need to be given independent
It is more difficult to provide a phonetictheoretical status in order for it to bear the
motivation for the extrinsic relationship that phonological features of tone.
has been observed between tones and vowel
height. This is reported to exist subpho- 3. The features of tone, much as other
nemically in Peking Chinese, where certain phonological features, are selected for the
mid vowels have a lower articulation with dual purpose of (i) describing the alterna-
tions, both synchronic and diachronic, that
two of the four tones.'2 Much more striking,
however, are the morphophonemic alterna- are found in language, and (ii) providing the
tions in Foochow Chinese, where whole setsabstract linguistic basis from which physical
of the vowels are raised and diphthongs
phonetic interpretations are made. As a
monophthongized when certain tone sandhi consequence of the lack of a perfect match
rules are applied.'3 between these two functions a universal set
In languages like Chinese the tone featuresof phonological features usually contains a
10 A broad-gauged study of this phenomenon certain
is amount of internal redundancy in
presented by A. G. Haudricourt in his Bipartition that some combinations of the feature speci-
et tripartition dans les systemes de tons, Bulletinfications are not permitted in principle. State-
de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris 56.163-80
ments regarding permitted feature combina-
(1961).
11 A discussion of intrinsic pitch variation is tions are 'redundancy conventions'. The
given by Peter Ladefoged; see p. 42 of his A Pho- term 'convention' refers to language-uni-
netic Study of West African Languages, Cam- versal statements while 'rule' refers to
bridge University Press, 1964. language-specific statements.
12 Lawton Hartman, Lg 20. 28-42 (1944).
13 Ya-Xifi Lan, Foochow phonology (in Philosophy, National Taiwan University (Decem-
ber 1953), 241-331.
Chinese), Journal of Literature, History, and

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96 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXXIII

Of the permitted combinationsfactors'6

of tone (emotive
fea- ones like speaker's mood
tures, it appears from the languages ex-cognitive ones like in-
and voice volume;
amined that some combinations are favored tonation, contrastive accent; intrinsic ones
over others, as is the case with segmental like tongue height and degree of supraglottal
features. The present theory attempts to closure; etc.). What is said below about the
incorporate this aspect of tone systems by phonetic value of the tone features must be
'marking conventions', using the notion of understood as descriptions of idealized pat-
terns distilled out of speech events rather
'markedness' as it has been recently refined
by Halle and Chomsky.14 As will be seen than,
in say, what can be measured directly
7, this notion allows us to state in a precise
from narrow band spectrograms. Using the
way the relative complexity of different 'tone letter' notation proposed by Y. R.
types of feature combinations. Within such Chao,17
a we present below an illustrative set
framework the combinations which tend to of 13 tones as shown in Table I, together
be favored are the ones which minimize the with a set of six features. Certain features
total complexity of the paradigm. which are primarily associated with seg-
mental oppositions, such as the laryngeal
ones mentioned above in 2, may also par-
4. The rapid advances in physical pho-
ticipate in distinguishing tones in phono-
netics during the past two decades have
logical representations.
made it increasingly clear that there is fre-
quently a considerable discrepancy between As can be seen from Table I, the -CONTOUR
a linguist's phonetic interpretation oftones
a (i.e. tones 1 through 5) are divided into
five levels by the features HIGH, CENTRAL and
speech wave and what the speech wave ac-
MID. The +CONTOUR tones go either in one
tually contains.16 The parameter of voice
direction or in two directions; the former
pitch varies according to a variety of other
(i.e. tones 6 through 9) are either +RISING
14 The notion of 'marked' and 'unmarked' has or +FALLING, while the latter (i.e. tones 9
been used by N. S. Troubetzkoy in connection through 13) are both +RISING and +FALL-
ING. The bidirectional tones are further
with what he called 'privative oppositions', i.e.
oppositions which are characterized by the divided by the feature CONVEX.
presence or absence of certain features such as
Although tones in some languages have
voicing, nasality, rounding. In his Principes de
been
Phonologie, the notion was mentioned briefly but transcribed with as many as nine pho-
not developed. Recently Halle and Chomsky in-netic levels of pitch, I have not been able to
tegrated this notion into their framework offind any language that has more than five
generative phonology in an attempt to capture the
distinctive pitch levels, which turns out to
aysmmetric nature of phonological features; see
be exactly the maximum number that Chao
their Sound Pattern of English, now in press with
allows for in his insightful notation. In fact,
Harper and Row. For reasons which have mostly
to do with the physical constraints on the speechthe only clear cases I know of where there
mechanism, the two specifications of a phonologi-are five distinctive pitch levels are some
cal feature frequently are not symmetric with each
Black Miao languages recorded by Kun
other. Furthermore, such asymmetry may be
context-sensitive, e.g. the dependence of voicingChang and by F. K. Li. These are the only
on consonantality, or it may be context-free, e.g.
sounds are generally unglottalized. This observa- 16 An attempt has been made to categorize the
tion is equivalent to the one I am making regard- various linguistic functions of voice pitch in the
ing certain combinations of feature specificationsreference given in footnote 11. A pioneering paper
being favored over others. in this area is Y. R. Chao's Tone and intonation
15 For a discussion of a phonological entity in Chinese, Bulletin of the Institute of History
that has been particularly elusive to phonetic and Philology (Academia Sinica) 4.121-34 (1933).
investigation, see my Stress in English, Language 17 Yuen-Ren Chao, A system of tone letters, Le
Learning 12.69-77 (1962). Maitre Phon6tique 45.24-27 (1920).

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NO. 2 PHONOLOGICAL FEATUR ES OF TONE 97

languages,18 in other words, distinguished

which exploit from the level tones by some
the feature MID of Table I. According
other feature.21to
The recognition of contour
tones is crucial
Chang,"9 the Yong-C6ng language has ain the analysis of certain
rising tone and two falling tones typesinofaddition
tone systems if we are to capture
to five level tones; the level tones may
all and only be
the consistent characteristics in
exemplified by mo5 name, me4 the eye, phonological
mjo3 ear,structure. If it turns out
ko2 road and mjol fish. The Tai-Gong
that FALLINGlan-
is the only relevant feature for
guage20 has a falling tone and two rising
a particular tone, then over-differentiation
would only lead
tones; its level tones may be exemplified by to chaos when we try to
la5 short, la4 classifier, la3 cave,
mark la2 topitch
what move level the tone falls from or
away, and laW candle. In these
what examples,
level it falls to. This would be like try-
lower numbers indicate lower ing pitch levels.
to mark, say, seven degrees of aspiration
The above observation on the number of for English stop consonants. As Gleason re-
TABLE I
TONES AND THEIR FEATURES
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1-1r --_I _ _ n IYY"
CONTOUR - - + + + + + + +
HIGH
HIGH+ - -1- - - 4- - + - + - 4- - ' + - - + + - + - + - + -

CENTRAL + + - -

MID - - - , - +- - -? --- -

RISING
RISING - + + - - - + + + + +
FALLING - - - + + + + + +
L_____ __ ____
CONVEX
- . . . - . - - - - - - I- - ++
L-_ - - _ _ _ _ _ _

levels is only valid, of course,

markedif we recognize
in connection with Doke's attempt
in some cases contour tones in the
to describe paradigm.
Zulu tones with nine levels, "the
Thus in Trique, only four phonemic
phonemic levels
contrasts in the pitch system in-
(the tone features HIGHvolve
and CENTRAL)
other ap- level;" it
dimensions than mere
pear to be necessary, since
comes the fifth
as no surprise thatlevel
the nine-level sys-
goes only with a contour tone
tem whichproved
of transcription can'utterly
be impos-
sible to teach to Zulu students'.22 Doke's
18 Some Tai languages of Gtiizhou are also re-
case of nine pitch levels provides a rather ex-
ported to have five level tones; cf. Report of the
Survey of Biyi Languages, Peking, 1959 (in treme example of phonetics running wild in
Chinese). I have not studied whether any of these the absence of theoretic constraint. None-
theless, I suspect that many tone descrip-
levels can be predicted by other features which are
independently distinctive, such as syllable lengthtions of the languages of areas (i) and (ii)
or consonant voicing.
can be re-examined with profit to see if new
9 Kun Chang, Some questions concerning
Miao-Yao tones (in Chinese), Bulletin of the regularities can be discovered when contour
Institute of History and Philology (Academia tones are added to the paradigm.
Sinica) 16.93-110 (1947).
20 The data here were gathered by F. K. Li some 21 In Longacre's analysis a phonemic fifth level
years ago and reported by Julia Kwan in a Uni- is posited but no contour tones are used; the
versity of Washington M.A. thesis (1966), Phon- reference is given in fn. 8.
ology of a Black Miao Dialect. 22 H. A. Gleason, Lg 32.570 (1956).

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98 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXXIII

Related to the difficulties due to overdif- 52/51/42 are obviously nond

ferentiation within single tone paradigms is any purpose, and are probabl
the situation we encounter when we compare than real. This overdifferen
tones of different paradigms or different a notational device which, in o
reports on the same tone paradigm. Here versally applicable, must pr
again the crucial step is to separate pho- distinctions than any singl
netic differences which are distinctive from have. (In fact, the tone let
those which reflect nondistinctive variations pitch levels at each of three
within or between speakers, or the habits of total of 125 tones.)
the phoneticians who made the transcrip- Our line of reasoning is stren
tion. Consider, for example, the data on the we examine lines 9 and 10 a
first eight sites reported in the dialect survey of discrepancy between diff
of Jiangsu.23 For each site the values for the the same site is not uncomm
four lexical tones, originally given in Chao's ture on Chinese dialects. He
tone letters, are presented below in numeri- same type of variation that
cal form: does not represent any consistent or system-
atic property of Sizhou speech. Wheth
1. 213 55 35 52
2. 212 55 35 52 seventh tone in this dialect (which is a short
3. 313 55 35 51 tone) rises or not is a matter that needs more
4. 313 55 24 51 refined phonetic study. As for the difference
5. 313 55 24 52 between the two reports on the fifth tone,
6. 213 54 24 52 the system of phonological features pr
7. 213 55 24 51
8. 23A 55 24 52 here w
principle: 331 is
Let us consider the above data
tion with the tones reported for
number 34 covered by the Jia
Line 9 gives the values of the Sf
according to the survey. Line
tone values as they are reported
recent source.24 use of only 13 tones in connection with these
9. 44 13 52 412 31 5 2
features, the redundancy is considera
10. 44 24 41 513 331 4 23 This redun
ventions which predict ce
The lesson from the above data is quite of f
clear. It is evident from the values given in hi
lines 1 through 8 that these sites have the Of
same four tone paradigm, which can be dis- th
tinguished by the same two features, i.e. nolo
FALLING and RISING. The only point that is
somewhat uncertain is that the second tone d
of site 6 is reported to fall slightly, whereas d
we are interpreting it here to be -FALLING. t
The variations 213/212/313, 35/24 and To i
to Table I. Let us make th
23 Outline of the Dialects of Jiangsu Prov
and ShAnghAi,
and ShAnghGai, Nanking
Nanking (1960).
(1960). In Chinese. t
In Chinese.
24 Phonetic Dictionary of Chinese Dialects, c
Peking (1962). In Chinese. hence yielding a paradigm of 13 tones. Given

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NO. 2 PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TONE 99

FALLING CONTOUR
these feature specifications, all of the re-
maining feature specifications of Table I can 7
+
+

be predicted by the following redundancy

conventions:
CONTOUR RISING
1. [--CONTOUR] -- - RISING

-FALLING

-CONVEX -

2. f[+HIGH]} - [-MID] -A+ \ I +A

- CENTRAL] (1) (6) (8) (1) (6) (8) (6)
(6)

3. [+CENTRAL] -- [-CONT 'OUR]

Peking Chaozhou Canton
4. {[+RISING] > [+CONT OUR]
[+FALLING]j + N FIG. 1. Fragments of stone system

5. [+CONTOUR] -*r F-CENT

'RAL1
L-MID J and RISING, even though no parad
6.[ [-RISING] ever use all three of these. For th
-- [-CONVEX]
\[-FALLING]/ of describing tone alternations, this
lar redundancy is essential.
The redundancy that is embodied in the To illustrate, let us take three tone
system of tone features is of three types. have roughly the values of tones 1
First there is the type that follows directly in Table I. Tones of these values occur in
from the phonetic meaning of the features; the Chinese dialects of Peking,25 Canton,26
this type of redundancy can be exemplified and Chaozhou27 together with other tones.
by convention 1 above. Secondly, redun- But the behavior of these tones in the three
dancy arises when we make empirical claims dialects is quite different. In Peking tone 1
about what distinctions are actually used in alternates with 6; in Chaozhou 6 alternates
lexical representations at the systematic with 8; and in Canton 8 alternates with 1.
phonemic level. For instance, while we allow It can be seen that if the three tones are
five pitch levels to be distinctive for -CON- coded as in Figure 1, making use of all three
TOUR tones we are only allowing two pitch features, then each alternation can be de-
levels to be distinctive for +CONTOUR tones, scribed by changing the specification of one
as can be seen from convention 5. Such re- feature. In particular, the type of alterna-
strictions can always be removed when tion exemplified by the Chaozhsu tones pro-
counter-evidence becomes available. vides the crucial evidence for the feature
A third type of redundancy comes from CONTOUR.

the fact that an identical set of tones may

alternate differently in different phonologi- 6. Though subject to small variations fro
cal systems, a possibility that was high-
language to language that have no cogniti
lighted in the writings of Edward Sapir.
import, the range of voice pitch remains re
This means that a phonological theory must markably uniform across languages. This
be able to provide alternative feature repre-
true regardless of how many tones a lan
sentations for the same sounds as those guage has, or whether it has any at all. I
sounds 'configurate' differently fromgeneral lan- I find it extremely difficult to d
guage to language. Thus if [n] alternates with
tinguish utterances in certain types of to
liquids in one language and with stop conso-
25 Yuen-Ren Chao, Mandarin Primer, Harvard
nants in another, then it should have dif-
University Press (1948), 26.
ferent underlying representations in the two
26 See reference in Footnote 4.
languages. These considerations lead us27toY6ng-Ming LI, The Chsozh6u Dialect (in
posit the three features CONTOUR, FALLING,
Chinese), Shanghai (1959), 15.

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100 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXXIII

languages (e.g. Mandarin) from straightforward

those in a phonetic basis for inter-
non-tone language (e.g. English) bythe
preting just
features of tone.
examining the pitch measurements of these
A phonetic interpretation of the level fea-
utterances. In languages with numerous tures is given schematically in Figure 2. The
syllable-sized tones one would expect that pitch median is designated 0 and the range
the utterances would have more complex is taken to be from -5 to +5. The effect of
pitch contours, i.e. directional changes in the feature HIGH, viewed this way, is simply
pitch occurring over shorter time spaces, but to provide a sign, '+' or '-'. The feature
so far this problem has not been studied in a CENTRAL restricts the range to ?t3. In
systematic way.27a actual speech, of course, the phonetic
No matter how many tones a language boundaries are by no means as clearcut as
has, the voice pitch traverses approximately suggested in this illustration.
the same overall range. The difference re- There are advantages for considering the
sides in how each pitch value is interpreted tone features to be binarily valued, as pro-
vis-A-vis the particular tone paradigm. The posed here.29 The tone features can be re-
greater the number of distinct tones in the garded as having theoretical status com-
paradigm, the narrower the phonetic range parable to that of the segmental features
of each tone would be. Furthermore, the (e.g. VOICE, NASAL, STRIDENT, etc.) and can
phonetic differences among tones, in termsbe manipulated by the same machinery of
of pitch level, slope of contour, duration, rule application that has been developed on
etc., are characteristically more pronouncedthe basis of segmental features, including the
in deliberate speech and are reduced with use of the 2-valued variables. An example
increased tempo.2 In these respects the pho-will be provided in Section 8 that makes
netic variation of tone is essentially similarspecial use of phonological variables in solv-
to that of vowel articulation, since both ing a problem of tone sandhi, though these
voice pitch and vowels vary along physicalvariables were first conceived in connection
dimensions which are continuous, as against with assimilation and dissimilation of seg-
certain dimensions of consonant articula- mental features.30
tions which are discrete. An alternative would have been to propose
It will be noted from Table I that a maxi-an n-ary system where a feature of LEVEL
mum of five level tones are posited. As ob-would have five possible specifications, i.e.
served earlier in this paper, systems which1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The specifications for this
have five level tones are extremely rare, sofeature would not be commensurate with the
the feature MID is rarely used. The featurespecifications of the other tone features and
HIGH specifies whether the pitch level of athe segmental features, many of which are
tone is above or below some idealized pitchobviously binarily valued. The theoretical
median. The feature CENTRAL specifies 29 Peter Ladefoged has expressed the view that
whether the pitch level of a tone is close tothe features should not be binarily-valued in a
the median. These remarks, taken in con- paper entitled An attack on the number two,
junction with the observations made in thepresented to the Acoustical Society of America,
preceding paragraphs, should provide a June 1966; see UCLA Work Papers in Phonetics
No. 4 (July 1966), 7-9. I believe his arguments
27a In some languages with only noncontour against binary tone features are met in the present
tones, especially those of the terrace-level type, paper.
the pitch contours assume a remarkable step- 30 To my knowledge, variables were first intro-
function appearance. duced by Morris Halle in his A descriptive
28For a more detailed discussion of these convention for treating assimilation and dissimila-
matters, see K. L. Pike, Operational phonemics tion, Quarterly
in Progress Report No. 66 of the
relation to linguistic relativity, Journal of the M.I.T. Research Laboratory of Electronics (1962),
Acoustical Society of America 24.618-24 (1952). 295-6.

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No. 2 PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TONE 101

Number low Pitch Values high

of
Pitch levels -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5

2 levels -HIGH +HIGH

-HIGH +HIGH
3 levels -CENTRAL +CENTRAL -CENTRAL

-HIGH -HIGH +-HIGH +HIGH

4 levels -CENTRAL +CENTRAL +CENTRAL -CENTRAL

-HIGH -HIGH +HIGH +HIGH

5 levels -CENTRAL +CENTRAL +MID +CENTRAL -CENTRAL
-MID -MID -MID -MID

FIG. 2. Illustration

machinery high tone becomes the of mid tone, the midrul

easily extendedtone becomes the low tone, and the lowto tone
We face becomes a themore seri
falling tone in a given syntactic
try to environment. Let us consider
relate thethis Gaoxiong s
their phonetic
case together with a hypothetical 4-tone case ra
illustrated in
which has similar pitch lowering. Figu
illustrated Using thethere,
5-valued feature to represent th
whereby the three Gaoxiong tones as 5phon
the LEVEL, 3
tional tone LEVEL, and 1 LEVEL, is the sandhi would have
mark
compressing to be described by a sort of therule of phono- ra
ties. To achieve
logical arithmetic that subtracts 2 from each the
would be of the first two tones. It is not clear what
required
that if should be
a done with the 4-tone case since
language
tones, thenthe tones are not 'equidistant'
they from each a
(or, perhaps, other. In both cases, we 2 need some LEVad hoc
three NONCONTOU
convention for what happens when the re-
LEVEL, mainder of
3 the subtraction is less than one.
LEVEL, a
four NONCONTOU These difficulties do not present them-
1 LEVEL, 2
selves within LEVEL,
the binary framework proposed
This difficulty here. To describe a 3-tone paradigm of that p
phonetic undergoes pitch lowering, the mid toneis
detail
connected with overdifferentiation discussed should be specified as -HIGH and +CEN-
in 4. TRAL. (If the paradigm undergoes pitch rais-
The merit that has been argued for such aing, the mid tone should be +HIGH and
feature as LEVEL has to do with the descrip- +CENTRAL; cf. the discussion on alternative
tion of a certain type of sandhi which system- phonological representations in Section 5
atically lowers or raises the pitch range of above.) The appropriate sandhi rule would
each of the NONCONTOUR tones. I cannot say be:
at present how typical such sandhi is vis-h-
vis other observed types. We have such a [aHIGH] --
aCENTRAL

case, for instance, in Gaoxiong,31 where the

spoken in the Kaohsiung area, Journal of T
31 Chao-Hui Tung, Phonology of Taiwanese as Provincial Normal University 9.1-10 (June

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102 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXXIII

For the 4-tone paradigm thatare undergoes

higher pitched than those derived from
forms
pitch lowering, the following rule with be
must unvoiced initials." From the
supplemented by a later rule that correctsconsiderations alluded to in 2,
physiological
the derivation of the lowest tone: we know that these dialects must have

aHIGH 1 - IGH 1 undergone a flip-flop historical change of the

sort exemplified in the above rule. Further-
fLCENTRALJ L aCENTRALJ
more, this change has left a synchronic
The strongest evidence ininsupport
imprint of the
many Min dialects where words
binary features comes which
from had voiced initial consonantsthat
alternations have
may be called 'flip-flops.'
sandhi formsThese are
that are lower cases
pitched than the
where, in certain linguistic corresponding environments,
words which had unvoiced
the high tones become initiallow
consonants.
tones and the
low tones become highSuch tones. Such
alternations alterna-
pose a striking prob-
tions have been reported lem for forour understanding
many of phonological
Chinese
dialects, as well as for other
change.34 languages.
Assuming that there are no In
other
some cases these alternations relevant factors,
areitsynchronic;
is difficult to see how a
in others, they are deducible historical flip-flop
only such as one between high
historically
by comparing cognates. We have a syn- tone and low tone can be brought about
chronic example in the dialect of Chaozhou,32 without the two tones merging with each
where it is reported that before a high falling other at some stage of change, if one views
tone, (i) high tone becomes low tone, (ii) this type of change as occurring in small.
low tone becomes high tone, and (iii) mid cumulative phonetic increments. The pos-
tone remains unchanged. These flip-flop al- sibility is always open, of course, for one of
ternations which involve just the two ex- the tones to become something else during
tremities of the pitch range cannot be easily an intermediate stage to avoid the collision
stated with an n-ary framework. Using the course. However, the force of this explana-
features of the present theory, however, theytion is diminished when we see that in many
have a natural expression as follows: cases (i) the tones involved are phonetically
short at both the initial and terminal stages
[a HIGH] -) [-a HIGH]/ [-CENTRAL [HIGH of the change, making the distinctive use of
+LFALLING

CONTOUR features unlikely, and (ii) the pres-

According to Egerod,33 such a situation
ent as
morphophonemic alternation is between
that of Chaozhou is quite wide-spread in the and -HIGH NONCONTOUR tones,
+HIGH
southern Chinese dialects. He remarks that
making the hypothesis of an intermediate
in Middle Chinese tone 3 in the Min dialects,
stage unlikely. One could interpret the
and in Middle Chinese tone 4 in the Min and
flip-flop as occurring in an all-or-none fashion
Hakka dialects, "the words which have
developed from forms with voiced initials 34 A comprehensive discussion of the theoretical
issues involved in phonological change is given by
32 Reference given in Footnote 27. William Paul M. Postal in his Aspects of Phonological
Merrifield recently called my attention to the ex- Theory, in press with Harper and Row. The prob-
istence of a synchronic flip-flop in Palantla lem of flip-flop changes has been discussed in
Chinantec. On p. 9 of his Korean Morphopho- detail by Robert P. Stockwell in a paper read to
nemics, Baltimore, 1954, Samuel Martin describesthe Linguistic Society of America called Realism
a situation that seems to be a diachronic flip-flop,in historical English phonology (December 1964)
which is not unlike what happened to the lexicaland in some later unpublished papers. For an early
accent in Japanese dialects, as he pointed out. Ofstatement to the effect that phonetic changes are
related interest is the observation that some Brit- always by abrupt leaps rather than successive
ish dialects of English reversed pitch contour. slides, see Alf Sommerfelt, Note Sur les change-
33 See S0ren Egerod, The Lungtu Dialect, ments phon6tique; Bullentin de Socifte de Lin-
Copenhagen (1956). The quote is from p. 272. guistique 24.138-41, 1923.

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NO. 2 PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TONE 103

TABLE II
RELATIVE COMPLEXITY OF TONES AS DEFINED BY MARKING CONVENTIONS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
I q-HI 1
CONTOUR u u U 1 1 U m m m m m m m m

HIGH U + - - + + - + +
CENTRAL U u m D n m u u u u u u u u

MID Uu U u U I m u u __
u __
u ut
u u u u

RISING U u U 1 u + + + + +
FALLING UU U u 12 u + + +
CONVEX U U U
u
U iU 1 u U u u
U u
U uU u m m

COMPLEXITY 1 1 2 2 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5

over a gradually increasing sector of the TABLE III

vocabulary and thereby avoid the concep- TONES OF AMOY HOKKIEN
tual difficulties of the dilemma of inevitable Ia Ib II IIIa IIIb IVa IVb

collision. Even in this view, however, inter-

7-1 'I -
HIGH ++ + - _ 4-
esting questions arise in connection with the FALLING _ _- + + - -

effect this change has on intelligibility. RISING

7. Although the redundancy conventions LONG ++ + + +

allow us to deduce which feature combina-
tions are permitted by the theory, they doA preliminary attempt at formalizing
not indicate which ones are favored. Lan- these preferences for combinations of feature
specifications is made in Table II. It will be
guages with three tones would characteristi-
cally have tones 1, 2, and 5 of Table I,seen
orthat the 'u' specification (unmarked)
always happens to colrespond to the '-'
perhaps 6, 8, and 5; we would hardly expect
specification of Table I, and that the 'm'
them to have, say, tones 1, 3, and 6 or 1, 10,
and 11. Languages with four tones may havespecification (marked) always happens to
correspond to the '+' specification. The
tones 1, 2, 6, and 8 or 1, 2, 8, and 13; but
hardly ever 1, 2, 3, and 4, or 6, 7, 8, and'u'9.specification, which is the favored
specification, does not add to the complexity
The situation is not unlike that of segmental
of a sound system, whereas the specifications
features where we find that (a) certain
features are exploited more than others, '+',
i.e.'-', and 'm' each add one unit to the
HIGH more than CONTOUR which in turn is complexity.
more exploited than CONVEX (cf. VOCALIC To convert the 'u' and 'm' to '+' and '-'
more than STRIDENT, while STRIDENT is moreall that is needed is the following general
exploited than GLOTTALIZED); and (b) moremarking convention which turns 'u' to '-'
dimensions are utilized rather than more while its implied inverse convention turns
'm' to '+'.
distinctions within a single dimension. This
latter point explains why a four-tone para-
[U TONE FEATURE] -> [-TONE FEATURE]
digm always has some CONTOUR tones, even The assignment of '+' and '-' in Table
through many languages do distinguish
II is straightforward, since there is no
among four NONCONTOUR tones. CONVEX
empirical ground for favoring either +HIGH
tones are only found in rather complex or -HIGH, or RISING or FALLING. The pref-
paradigms containing at least five or six
erence for --CONTOUR is justified by the
tones. As mentioned above, only very rarely
preponderance of languages with only
is the feature MID exploited to distinguish
-CONTOUR tones. Among the bidirectional
five CONTOUR tones, though paradigms con-tones there seems to be a majority of
taining more than five tones are not un- -CONVEX tones in the literature I surveyed.
common.
The bidirectional tones almost always be-

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104 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS VOL. XXXIII

come unidirectional tones in sandhi; of thevery

values they have when pronounced
rarely does any tone become a bidirectional as citation monosyllables. The numbers we
tone in sandhi.35 When a bidirectional tone assign to the tones correspond etymologi-
like tone 10 changes, it may become either cally to the four tones of Middle Chinese,
tone 6 or tone 8; i.e. tone 10 loses either believed
its to have been spoken some 1,500
first half or its second half. In such cases years ago. The letters 'a' and 'b' indicate a
one of the following two symmetric con- historical split that corresponds respectively
ventions will apply. to unvoiced and voiced initial consonants.
1. [+RISING] -- [U RISING] /[+FALLING] In most of the Min dialects, of which Amoy
Hokkien is one, Middle Chinese tone 2 did
2. [+FALLING] -- [U FALLING]/[+RISING]
not participate in the split.
The content of Table II and the associated In a large class of syntactic environ-
marking conventions must be regarded as ments,37 the tones undergo sandhi in a way
highly tentative at this time. To provide anthat is illustrated by Bodman's examples
adequate empirical basis for such state-below. In the discussion here we will be
ments, much more extensive results on concerned with the five long tones only.

(i) Ia - -IIIb sa: three but sa:kh6 three dollars

(ii) Ib -* IIIb E-mfng Amoy but E-miug li-tlam Amoy Hotel
(iii) IIIb -> IIIa go five but g6 kak fifty cents
(iv) IIIa - II st four but si kak forty cents
(v) II - Ia h6u good but h6u ciAq good eating

diverse forms of tone alternations are re- A closer inspection of these alternations
quired than are now available. Furthermorewill show that there is some underlying
there are great gaps in our present under-regularity that may be extracted. Indeed
Bodman presents these alternations in the
standing of the theoretical basis of marking
form of a tone circle which can be linearized
conventions that need to be filled. However,
the exercise in this section does indicate that in the formula:
'n this area of phonological research tone la\
features can be treated in essentially the l) -- IIIb -* IIIa -- II -+ Ia
same way as the segmental features. \lb

The neutralization of tones la and lb in the

8. The use of the tone features presentedsandhi position enables us to restate the
here may be exemplified by a particularlyabove formula in terms of only two phono-
interesting phenomenon of sandhi in Amoy logical features. It is understood, of course,
Hokkien.36 In Table III we present the seven
that these features are in the environment
lexical tones of this Chinese dialect in terms LONG, as discussed above.

+HIGH -HIGH -HIGH +HIGH +HIGH

-FALLING _ -FALLING _+FALLING_ _+FALLING _ -FALLING_

36 One case that has come to my attention "7 A detailed study of the syntactic environ-
recently is Zheng, Tone sandhi in the Wenzhou ments in which similar sandhi takes place in a
dialect (in Chinese), Zhongguo Yuwen 129.106-52 Taiwanese variety of Min is available in a forth-
(1964). coming paper by Robert L-W. Cheng. Roughly
36 Nicholas C. Bodman, Spoken Amoy Hokkien, speaking, the s
Vol. 1, Kuala Lumpur (1955), especially 38-41. do not end major syntactic phrases. It seems to

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NO. 2 PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF TONE 105

The regularity in these alternations canspecification, then FALLING

have the same
be clearly seen from the above will
formulation.
change its specification. Otherwise, HIGH
In each alternation only one feature changes
will change. These observations lead us to
its specification. Furthermore discover
we can thatpre-
the HIGH feature of the derived
dict which feature will change its
tonespecifica-
takes on the same specification as the
tion. If the two features of the basic tone FALLING feature of the basic tone, while the
FALLING feature of the derived tone takes
be general with Chinese dialects that sandhi is on the opposite specification of the HIGH
conditioned by syntactic boundaries on the one
feature of the basic tone. In sum, all four
hand and speech tempo on the other. For examples
and discussion on this point see Cheng, Mandarin pair-wise alternations can be captured by
phonological structure, Journal of linguistics the single phonological rule:
2.135-58 (1966), especially pp. 150-1; and my Tone
a HIGH HIGH
3 in Pekinese, to appear in Journal of Speech and
Hearing Research (1967). L: FALLING -a FALLING

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