{"id":1329,"date":"2020-03-24T13:10:03","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T13:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/corpus.eduhk.hk\/english_pronunciation\/?page_id=1329"},"modified":"2020-03-31T08:59:12","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T08:59:12","slug":"4-4-measuring-tone","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/corpus.eduhk.hk\/english_pronunciation\/index.php\/4-4-measuring-tone\/","title":{"rendered":"4.4. Measuring Tone"},"content":{"rendered":"
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4.4.1. What is tone?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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As mentioned in 4.3, tone is the pitch of our voice. In Chinese, a syllable or morpheme may have its own pitch, and the tone of each character contributes to lexical meaning while in English, a series of pitches sung over a whole utterance (intonation) is the major prosodic features to indicate the meaning (Teschner & Whitley, 2004, p. 64). Therefore, 'pitch' is mainly used to analyze the tone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.4.2. Tones in Putonghua<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Tone is a contrastive lexical property of Standard Chinese. As a tone language, there are five tones in mandarin Chinese - the first tone, the second tone, the third tone, the fourth tone and the neutral tone. We can use the \u201cpitch\u201d in Praat to analyze the tones in Chinese.<\/p>\n

The diagram below shows four tones in Putonghua.<\/p>\n

Figure 4.28<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Excerpt from http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/jinzhang\/www\/pinyin\/tones\/)<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take \"ma\" in Putonghua for example, five tones represents five different characters which have different meanings.<\/p>\n

Figure 4. 29<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Excerpt from http:\/\/www.misspandachinese.com\/resources\/tones-in-chinese\/)<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 4.30 Four Chinese tones<\/em><\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.4.3. Tones in Cantonese<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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As we know that Cantonese is another tone language which has 9 tones (the last three tones share the same pitch with first, third and sixth tone respectively).<\/p>\n

you can listen to the sounds via the following website\u00a0http:\/\/www.fyan8.com\/yuepin.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

We can also use Praat to show the six tones in Cantonese.<\/p>\n

Figure 4.31 Six Cantonese tones<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Excerpt from <\/span>http:\/\/bbs.cantonese.asia\/thread-15985-1-1.html<\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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4.4.4. Analyzing tones<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Now let's discuss how we analyze tone using Praat. We will use a recording of the four Standard Chinese words as an example.<\/p>\n

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  1. Created a wav file with four Chinese words m\u0101 \"mother\", m\u00e1 \"hemp\", m\u01ce \"horse\", and m\u00e0 \"scold\"<\/li>\n
  2. Selected the file and click \"View& Edit\"<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. \"Pitch\" \u2192 tick \"Show pitch\"<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The window is like this:<\/p>\n

    Figure 4.32<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    This window provides us with a graphic presentation of the variation in fundamental frequency (pitch contours) of the four Chinese tones.<\/p>\n

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    1. Adjust the pitch settings to make the display clearer.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I just briefed two important points here:<\/p>\n