Checked tone

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A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese

怒髮衝冠，憑欄處，瀟瀟雨歇}[xĭɐt]；

抬望眼，仰天長嘯，壯懷激烈[lĭɛt]。
三十功名塵與土，八千里路雲和月[ŋĭwɐt]；
莫等閒，白了少年頭，空悲切[ʦʰiet]。

靖康恥，猶未雪[sĭuɛt]；
臣子恨，何時滅[mĭɛt]。
駕長車，踏破賀蘭山缺[kʰĭuɛt]；
壯志飢餐胡虜肉，笑談渴飲匈奴血[xiwet]。

待從頭，收拾舊山河，朝天闕[kʰĭwɐt]！

— Yue Fei, 滿江紅 (Full River of Red)]]

Entering tone in Chinese

Mandarin

The entering tone is extant in

• A character with a nasal final /-n/, /-ŋ/ in Modern Standard Mandarin will not have the checked tone in Middle Chinese. (The only exception is 廿; niàn.)
• A character with the sibilant final /-ɿ/ in Standard Chinese, i.e. those with initials z-, c-, s- and final -i, will not have the checked tone in Middle Chinese.
• A character with the final -uai or -uei in Modern Standard Mandarin will typically not have the checked tone in Middle Chinese. (Exceptions: 率; shuài, and others)
• A character with a tenuis obstruent initial (pinyin: b, d, g, j, z, zh, z）in Standard Mandarin and the third tone will typically not have the checked tone in Middle Chinese. (Exceptions: 百; bǎi, 葛; gě when used as a surname, 骨; gǔ, 角; jiǎo, 窄; zhǎi, among others)
• Characters that begin with an unaspirated obstruent and end in a nasal final (n or ng) in Mandarin almost never have light level tone (or second tone in Modern Standard Mandarin, marked in pinyin with an
  Standard Mandarin
  ) almost always derive from an entering tone (e.g. 德; dé, 革; gé, 絕绝; jué,雜/杂; zá and 宅; zhái all come from entering tones). As such, *gáng and *zún are not recognised syllables in Standard Chinese.
• If a character has a phonetic component that is known to have an entering tone, other characters that have that phonetic component probably have an entering tone. For example, if one already knows that 白; 'white' has entering tone, one can conjecture (correctly) that 拍; 'to beat', 柏; 'fir', 帛; 'white cloth', 迫; 'urgent' also have entering tone. However, there are plenty of exceptions, such as 怕; 'afraid' and 扒; 'to cling to'', 'to gather up', which lack the entering tone.[note 1]

Wu

Most varieties of Wu Chinese preserve the entering tone. However, no contemporary Wu varieties preserve the /p/, /t/ or /k/ distinction, but instead merges them all into a glottal stop /ʔ/. For example, in Shanghainese, the three lexemes 濕／湿; 'wet', 失; 'lose', 塞; 'block', historically ending in /p/, /t/ and /k/, all end in a glottal stop, and are pronounced seq /səʔ⁵⁵/.

In some modern Wu varieties such as Wenzhounese, even the glottal stop has disappeared, and the entering tone is preserved as separate tone, with a falling-rising contour, making it unequivocally a phonemic tone in modern linguistics.^[7]

The pitch of the entering tones are divided into two registers, depending on the initials:

• "dark entering" (陰入), a high-pitched checked tone, with a voiceless initial.
• "light entering" (陽入), a low-pitched checked tone, with a voiced initial.

Many terms with grammatical functions also undergo sporadic evolution and gain a checked tone. This process can be considered a form of lenition, and is sometimes considered a form of glottalization.^[8][9]

Romanization used is Wugniu. This phenomenon can also be seen in many pronouns, such as Shanghainese aq-la (阿拉, "we") and Yuyaonese ⁸geq-laq₈ (搿辣, "they").

Cantonese

In general, Cantonese

There are a few isolated cases where the final consonant has changed as a result of final dissimilation, but they remain in the checked tone.^[10]

Like most other Chinese variants, Cantonese has changed initial voiced stops,

Some variants of Yue Chinese, notably including that of Bobai County (Chinese: 博白; pinyin: Bóbái) in Guangxi and Yangjiang (simplified Chinese: 阳江; traditional Chinese: 陽江; pinyin: Yángjiāng; Cantonese Yale: Yèuhnggōng) in Guangdong,^[12] have four entering tones: the lower light tone is also differentiated according to vowel length, short vowels for upper light and long vowels for lower light. Thus in such varieties:

• Upper dark entering / short dark entering (上陰入/短陰入)
• Lower dark entering / long middle entering (下陰入/長中入)
• Upper light entering / short light entering (上陽入/中入/短陽入)
• Lower light entering / long light entering (下陽入/長陽入)

Hakka

Hakka preserves all Middle Chinese entering tones and is split into two registers. Meixian Hakka dialect often taken as the paradigm gives the following:

• "dark entering" (陰入) [ ˩ ], a low-pitched checked tone
• "light entering" (陽入) [ ˥ ], a high-pitched checked tone

Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [ɛ] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in some of the modern Hakka,^[14] as seen in the following table.

Min

Southern Min (Minnan, including Taiwanese) has two entering tones:

• Upper (dark, 陰入), also numbered tone 4
• Lower (light, 陽入), tone 8

A word may switch from one tone to the other by tone sandhi. Words with entering tones end with a glottal stop ([-ʔ]), [-p], [-t] or [-k] (all unaspirated). There are many words that have different finals in their literary and colloquial forms.

Eastern Min, as exemplified by Fuzhounese, also has two entering tones:

• Upper/dark entering, 陰入, which in Fuzhounese has the tonal value /˨˦/ and ends in the glottal stop /ʔ/. This tone contour is not shared with any other tone category.
• Lower/light entering, 陽入, which in Fuzhounese has the tonal value /˥/ and also ends in the glottal stop /ʔ/.

Within its complex tone sandhi laws, Fuzhounese has a split in sandhi behavior between two separate upper/dark entering 陰入 tones. This is believed to be a reflex of an earlier stage in its development, where final /k/ was distinguished from final /ʔ/.^[15]

In the related Fuqing dialect, a proportion of entering tone lexemes have lost their glottal stop and have merged into the phonetically equivalent tones:^[16]

• Upper/dark entering, 陰入, with value /˨˩/, is merging into upper/dark departing, 陰去, with value /˨˩/.
• Lower/light entering, 陽入, with value /˥/, is merging into upper/dark level, 陰平, with value /˥˧/.

This merger can also affect sandhi environments, but there is the option to use the sandhi pattern of the former checked tone while still eliminating the final glottal stop.^[16]: 40

Additionally in Fuqingnese, sandhi environments where the light entering 陽入 tone is non-final cause the glottal stop to weaken and in some tones lost, and where the tone changes to a low sandhi tone /˨˩/, the glottal stop is completely lost.^{[16]: 39-40} The dark entering 陰入 tone on the other hand retains its glottal stop in sandhi environments.^[16]: 39

Entering tone in Sino-Xenic

Many Chinese words were borrowed into Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese during the Middle Chinese period so they preserve the entering tone to varying degrees.

Japanese

Because Japanese does not allow a syllable to end with a consonant except ん n, the endings -k, -p, -t were rendered as separate syllables -ku or -ki, -pu, and -ti (-chi) or -tu (-tsu) respectively. Later phonological changes further altered some of the endings:

• In some cases in which the ending is immediately followed by an unvoiced consonant in a compound, the ending is lost, and the consonant becomes
  geminate
  .
  • Examples: 学, gaku + 校, kau (> Modern Japanese kō) becomes 学校, gakkō, 'school', and 失, shitsu + 敗, pai (> Modern Japanese hai when standing alone) becomes 失敗 shippai (failure)
• The -pu ending changes into -u. (pu > fu > hu > u). That process can be followed by -au > - ō and -iu > -yū.
  • Example: 十, jipu, 'ten' becomes jū

Recovering the original ending is possible by examining the

Korean

Vietnamese preserves all endings /p/, /t/ and /k/ (spelt -c). Additionally, after the vowels ê or i, the ending -c changes to -ch, giving rise to -ich and -êch, and ach (pronounced /ajk/) also occurs for some words ending with -k.

Only the sắc and nặng tones are allowed on checked tones. In Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, those tones were split from the Middle Chinese "entering" tone in a similar fashion to Cantonese. Whether the syllable tone should be sắc or nặng depends on the original Middle Chinese syllable's initial consonant voicing.

See also

• Historical Chinese phonology
• Sino-Japanese vocabulary
• Sino-Korean vocabulary
• Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
• Tone name

Notes

References