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Tone in languages with a lot of homonyms | ||
Tags: Tonal languages | Asian Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4131 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 9 30 August 2014 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As I understand it, tone emerged in Chinese as a consequence of the language having a relatively limited number of sounds available and therefore needed another means of distinguishing between those sounds to create new words.
The obvious consequence is Chinese has a huge amount of words that are pronounced identically other than the tone the word is said in. Yet I recently read that Japanese is considered to have more homonyms than Chinese, due to its also rather limited sound system and the huge number of Chinese loan words that it has taken. Yet despite having more homonyms than Chinese, Japanese manages to make do without tone other than a pitch accent system and words are largely understood based on the context within which they are said. This raises one question. Is tone really necessary for distinguishing between large numbers of homonyms, or is context enough to understand the meaning of the words? I find it rather odd how tone is such a central concept of Chinese and yet the Japanese language has completely discarded it and yet is still able to be understood with no issues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4238 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 9 31 August 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Languages develop into separate directions. Most Chinese morphemes are monosyllabic (but most words are not, as pointed out below) so maybe tone was necessary for them, whereas in Japanese most words and morphemes are polysyllabic (to my knowledge) so distinctions were big enough to not 'necessitate' a tonal system or such. Languages permit and try to avoid ambiguity with many mechanisms; eroding syllables caused a stress-system to develop in Scandinavian languages.
Maybe it isn't even explainable, you should read about language change, there are so many different paths any language can take that two languages not going into the same direction is nothing out of the ordinary.
Edited by Henkkles on 31 August 2014 at 8:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| holly heels Groupie United States Joined 3871 days ago 47 posts - 107 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 9 31 August 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The Turkic-speaking Uighur minority of China is said to speak Mandarin in a monotone which I guess is understood to some degree by Han Chinese.
I was listening to some Chinese music today and I could basically understand the lyrics even though the tones were less pronounced. The clarity of the tones may vary from artist to artist. In Mandarin it is a bit more complicated than homonyms with identical pronounciations, but different tones. Mandarin has a ton of homonyms which have the same tone, like, for example "shi"(T4), which has no fewer than 15 meanings, if you count affixes. I have heard the word "shi"(T4) used to mean--- a city an affair to try to pass yes It can even mean "persimmon", among other things. So far I have been able to infer the meaning of the homonym through context, at least with that word. Measure words can also help with context. As for Japanese, a native speaker said to me that it could be spoken without an accent by foreigners because it is the only language where every syllable is stressed identically. Don't know if that's true, but that's certainly not the case with Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4653 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 4 of 9 31 August 2014 at 1:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, they're not. Most Chinese words are disyllabic (read more on this in ''Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar'', by Li and Thomson). It is Chinese morphemes that are almost always monosyllabic (except for some which are disyllabic like: 蝴蝶 )
Japanese has a ''primitive''/simple two-tone ''tonal'' system called pitch accent. Other languages with pitch accent include: Norwegian, Swedish, Serbian, Croatian and Punjabi. For example, in Croatian words Luka (Lucas) and luka (port, harbor) are both pronounced ['lu:ka], but the pitch (rising or falling of the voice) on the 1st vowel is different. You can pronounce Norwegian, Japanese or Croatian ignoring the differences in pitch, but by doing so, you'll never be able to sound native. You could argue that you might be understood in Mandarin even if you neglect the tones, provided that you avoid monosyllabic words, for example, even if you pronounce words like '' putonghua'' with all incorrect tones, as if it were a Spanish word putongjuá, you will be understood. In dyssilabic and polyssilabic Mandarin words, just make sure you get the the most prominent tone right (the one on the main stressed vowel in the word), others are not as essential for comprehension. It's what native speakers of Mandarin do, I only hear chopped pronunciation (where words like putonghua are pronounced as 3 isolated words with overdone tones as: pǔ tōng huà ) in L2 users/learners of Mandarin. Edited by Medulin on 31 August 2014 at 2:01am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4429 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 5 of 9 31 August 2014 at 3:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The pronunciation of words & phrases needs to be very precise. In English & other European languages
you can vary your pronunciation to reflect the context of your speech. For example, you use the word "really" to indicate surprise. When someone said something out of the ordinary you'd reply: "Oh, really..." or "Really?" as a question. The word "really" would be pronounce differently (you'd raise the last syllable "ly" to indicate a question) but for the listener it's still the same word. Instead of varying the tone of your speech when you pose a question, you simply add the char. “吗” ma after a sentence so that "You are going to see a movie?" or "Vous allez au cinéma?" becomes "你去看电影吗?“ In Chinese, most characters have only 1 pronunciation but occasionally there are those with 2 or sometimes 3 different pronunciations such as... 行 which is pronounced as háng when used for 银行 yínháng (a bank), xíng as in 行动 xíngdòng (action). 乐 which is pronounced as yuè when used for 音乐 yīnyuè (music), lè as in 快乐 kuàilè (happy). If you try to interchange "háng" with the "xíng" sound in the wrong words, a Chinese listener would get confused such that "xíngdòng" becomes "hángdòng" although both use the same character. There are words with 2 or more characters that need to be pronounced according to the proper tones or the meaning would be unclear: 时间 shíjiān (time) & 事件 shìjiàn (event) 背景 bèijǐng (background) & 北京 běijīng (the capital of China) 睡觉 shuìjiào (to go to bed) & 水饺 shuǐjiǎo (dumplings cooked in water) 松树 sōngshù (pine tree) & 松鼠 sōngshǔ (squarrel) These pairs of words have the same Pinyin letters but vary by the intonation. Again if you mispronounce the intonation, a Chinese listener would not understand your sentence. For example: "I don't have time" should not be: wǒ méiyǒu "shìjiàn" instead of "shíjiān". Otherwise the sentence would become: "I don't have event" which doesn't make sense in Chinese or English. In the beginning, people who are unfamiliar with Chinese often mispronounce tones. This included the Steve Kaufmann, Moses McCormick & Tim Donner who studied 20+ languages. If you mispronounce 1 or 2 characters, a Chinese listener may still be able to pick up the context by following your other sounds. If you miss too many, the sentence can become unclear such that: wǒ xuéxí éwén (I'm studying Russian) becomes wǒ xuéxí èwén with the intonation on the "e" changed from "é" to "è". Another example: wǒ kàn bàozhǐ (I'm reading a newspaper) becomes wǒ kàn báozhì with the intonation off on "bàozhǐ", a Chinese listener may be able to pick out the beginning of the sentence that you're reading something but unclear what it is. ----------------- The way the Chinese would indicate a specific character is by saying another word that uses the same character. This is common for names of people, places and businesses. The name of a restaurant such as 松鹤楼 the Chinese would say something like "松树的松“ to indicate 松 in the name is the same as the character in pine tree. The name of the movie actor 柯震東 the Chinese would say something like "地震 的震, 東方的東" to indicate the same 震 in earthquake and the same 東 in eastern. The other way is by radical such as "木字边的松" to indicate the character 松 uses the radical 木 for wood. Edited by shk00design on 03 September 2014 at 7:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4131 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 9 02 September 2014 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That still doesn't explain why Japanese can have many words which are homonyms and still be able to distinguish between them without the use of tones.
For instance, the Japanese word "iken" can mean: opinion, unconstitutionality, authority The Japanese word "ishi" means: stone, doctor, will, intention It seems that Japanese manages to use homonyms in a similar way to Chinese, but without the tonal aspect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4757 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 7 of 9 03 September 2014 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 4131 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 9 04 September 2014 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I can see how pitch accent helps distinguish between homonyms to some extent, but that still doesn't explain why Japanese has at least as many homonyms as Chinese yet does not share the same complex tonal system. People often claim that the tonal system is absolutely vital to the comprehension of Chinese and without it no one would be able to understand anything, yet the Japanese language appears to be proof that this is simply not the case. If a pitch accent system is enough to distinguish between homonyms in Japanese then sure that means that hypothetically Chinese could also function with a pitch accent system rather than the four tone system that is present in Standard Chinese? Edited by LanguagePhysics on 04 September 2014 at 1:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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