Talk:Tone (linguistics)

message: This is an excellent article on a complex subject.  Yet the editor(s) avoid the overuse of highly technical terms (disclosure: I've been studying linguistics since high school, that is more than 20 yrs).  Impressive.
The one problem is:
Where are the footnotes?
I see a bibliography but no footnotes.  An article like this should probably have a couple of dozen, if not more.  Especially since it's probably the work of many hands.
So I'm going to drop a refimprove tag on it, but here on the discussion page so that it doesn't mar the otherwise informative and well-written piece.
PainMan (talk) 13:22, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Great article, where are the footnotes?

message: I pulled out the paragraph below. I think it has too much weasel words to be of any help to the article. The last part might be usable, but not under the heading 'tonal languages and music'.
:It has been suggested that speakers of tonal languages are more likely to have absolute pitch than speakers of non-tonal languages.  Speakers of Sino-Tibetan languages have been reported to speak a word in the same absolute pitch (within a quarter-tone) on various days.  However, tone languages almost invariably use pitches relative to the speaker: in Doayo, for instance, the low tones of a female speaker can be the same absolute pitch as the high tones of a male speaker.
I also pulled out the link to The Hmong Language. It is already at Hmong and I don't see why it is particularly fit for this article. — mark ✎ 18:49, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Things pulled out of the article 

message: This keeps being added to the category CSB by an anon editor. Is there a reason for this? I've removed it again in the meantime.  — KayEss | talk 05:36, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's because it's listed in the Linguistics section of the Open Tasks list of Wikiproject Countering Systemic Bias as needing attention. I don't think the categorization is a good idea, though. — mark ✎ 11:20, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree the tag should be removed.  Slapping such a tag on an article without a writing an explanation for it is tantamount to vandalism.  Never have liked anonymous editors.  How hard is it to make up a handle?  I'm glad that bot that tags anon contribs is active. PainMan (talk) 13:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Systemic bias

message: Hi Ish,
You say "most" Athabaskan languages have tone, but it's only about 60/40 per Mithun. People are usually most comfortably with "most" when it's about 85/15. How about "more than half"? kwami 08:02, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ok. you're right, 24 out of 38 (or 37). shouldve counted. – ishwar  (speak) 08:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  tone in Athabaskan 

message: The article states in a section that Mandarin has five tones, as exemplified by "ma". I another section, it says that Mandarin has four tones. How many tones does Mandarin have?
:It depends on your terminology.  There are four 'main' tones, but some syllables are toneless (also called the 'neutral tone'), which makes five. Markyour words 20:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mandarin, four or five tones? 

message: I've pulled out a lengthy section on tonal languages and music (see below) because it is unverified and looks a lot like original research. I think it can only be put back if all statements are referenced using reliable sources. Wikipedia's verifiability is precious. Additionally, the text would benefit from some cleanup and a good copyedit (the tone is too colloquial). — mark ✎ 14:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tonal languages and music 

message: It is the opinion of others that tonal languages do certainly suffer an incompatability with modern, Western, popular melodies far removed from Traditional styles of their respective languages (ie Beijing Opera, Vietnamese Folk). Even native Chinese speakers can attest that the tones in most Mandarin or Cantonese music are completely distorted to fit the melody so that any congruence between music and language pitch is completely accidental or simply subconciously invented by the listener who can still make out the toneless words. 
Designing the melody of the song around the tones of the language, although possible, is often cumbersome and the melody alone can be considered more important than the lyrics due to its potential for "catchiness" and easy memory recall (leading to overly metaphorical or simply nonsensical lyrics). Furthermore, it is popular to re-make English songs with Chinese vocals, in which case any argument for tone-matching is lost. 
In the case of Chinese, online lyric sources such as Baidu are very popular, providing listeners with the unambigious Chinese characters for the song. Furthermore, any Chinese music video (or the music in opening/closing credits) is nearly guaranteed to have the corresponding Chinese character subtitles to read.
----
(end of pulled out section — mark ✎ 14:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Incompatibility

message: I don't understand the example in Chinese, while I'm a native chinese speaker.
妈妈骂马的麻吗? (in traditional characters 媽媽罵馬的麻嗎?)
I suggest we should change it to an example which sounds in Chinese, not something with the all 5 tones but broken in Chinese.
--Natasha2006 03:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The chinese example in the section "Tone as a distinguishing feature" is very confusing 

message: Is the creaky rising tone, ngã (creaky rising), unique to Vietnamese? I noticed other tonal languages might have "dipping" or low-rising" tones, but I've never heard any other language with the creaky rising feature. Le Anh-Huy (talk) 07:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Look at the section on Origin of Tone. Both creaky voice and rising tone frequently develop from a lost final glottal stop. kwami (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creaky rising tone?

message: Voiced nasals, fricatives, approximants and trills may have tone, though no existing language possesses tonal consonants.
What about for example Cantonese ng?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.101.76.122 (talk) 16:10, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  voiced consonants? 

message: I'm concerned that the title is arbitrarily defined in terms of lexical distinction, whereas far more languages use tone grammatically. Unsure how to fix this: has anyone an idea? I want to start an article on tone in English; I presume that one doesn't already exist. Tony (talk) 03:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What you're talking about is intonation.  There are a few examples of intonation in English on the intonation article already.  In linguistic terminology, tone is used to refer to the use of pitch for lexical distinction; this is an accepted rather than an arbitrary definition.  —Umofomia (talk) 04:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The disjuncture arises in the opening statement, which highlights this category problem. On a related issue, I see that there has been a proposal to merge this with the "Tone (language)" article. I can't see why not ... Tony (talk) 07:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope of title 

message: Shouldn't this article be merged with Intonation (linguistics)? The concepts are virtually the same. Rsazevedo  msg 16:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No. They are completely different concepts. This would be like merging vowel and formant. kwami (talk) 17:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the articles certainly don't convey that difference in the concepts. They definitely need reworking then. Rsazevedo  msg 17:41, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, I'll take a look. kwami (talk) 18:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would vote no, because tonal languages and register languages can use intonation, which is a different linguistic concept that isn't necessarily bound to words (i.e. intonation doesn't distinguish different words), but can be bound to an entire phrase. Although tonal languages may not use intonation to the same extent as intonation languages, such as French or Japanese, intonation has been reported in tonal languages such as Kinande and Chinese. The current article, Intonation (linguistics), could be expanded much more if it provided information on its uses in other languages than English. - Io Katai (talk) 23:01, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: I editted a section of this page yesterday and made it much cleaner.  I fixed a bunch of run-on sentences and took out the "(e.g. sarcastic)" which was very unclear. Today it's all gone -- what gives?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.186.28.188 (talk) 13:12, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  copyediting 

message: I tried following the link "F0" in this part, towards the bottom of the section on "Origin of tone":
"[...]with either (a) accompaning tense voice (with high F0) or (b) creaky voice (with low F0) on the preceding vowel. " The link took me to a video game, which I'm pretty sure was not intended. Could somebody who knows the intent repair it? --128.208.46.38 (talk) 23:56, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  F0 

message: This question may be a bit pedestrian among the preceeding academic text, but might the slang term "iono" (from "I don't know") be an example of tone in the English language? 220.76.15.206 (talk) 18:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It has a characteristic intonation, but the only time I'm aware of lexical tone in English is when an acronym is distinguished from a synonymous word, like the high tone on  (Participate in the Lives of America's Youth) vs. 'play'. kwami (talk) 21:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  iono 

message: The section entitled "Origin of tone" says that it is "well-established" that Old Chinese did not have tone, but provides no references.  William Baxter 1992 "A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology" (which is in Google books) seems to be more equivocal about this.  I can't get to all the relevant pages, but it sounds like it's not the open-and-shut case that this article seems to make it.  In any case, a reference is needed to support this contention. Mcswell (talk) 03:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Chinese 

message: I agree that we don't want citations in the lead, but that doesn't mean that text in the lead should be backed up by sources - simply that it should summarize things that are mentioned, and sourced, later - and I don't see any further mention of 1) there being a debate about pitch vs tone 2) a coherent definition "not even being possible".
Especially the latter seems like an extremely bold claim that definitely needs strong sourcing. If sources aren't available, then it needs to be removed. --LjL (talk) 12:42, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I guess I haven't gotten around to that yet. It's on my to-do list. (Has been for a while, actually.) Some of the refs are at pitch accent. There's another editor here who's similarly convinced by the sources, and I've been rather hoping he'd take over. kwami (talk) 00:17, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Debate over pitch accent 

message: This oversight seems exceedingly strange in an electronic multimedia encyclopedia. One of its chief advantages over a traditional print encyclopedia is the option to demonstrate concepts such as tone. Could someone add a couple of files showing minimal-pair distinctions in, say, an Asian tonal language and a sub-Saharan tonal language for the benefit of those of us with no exposure to these sounds? Lawikitejana (talk) 01:03, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  No sound files!? 

message: I've noticed that in some fonts, such as Arial, "ligatures" are formed for combinations of tone symbols, where-as with others (Helvetica) they are not. Helvetica is the default sans-serif font on Mac, and so becomes the default for rendering Wikipedia pages too.  As such, Mac users miss out on the "ligature" versions of the symbols, meaning all the symbols from "Falling tone" onwards on this page all look very different when Tone (linguistics) is viewed on a Mac compared to PC.
Can we make sure we show both versions of the symbols somewhere, such as in the IPA infoboxes along the side of this article. I don't know if it's possible to change the font, but we could include SVGs? —Pengo 11:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There are not two versions of the symbols.  There are just fonts which support them and fonts which do not.  If Mac browsers do not display them correctly, then we evidently need to modify the  template to support Macs.  (I didn't realize Macintosh was as incompetent as IE.  I'd always heard it was better.)  The place to discuss this would be on the template talk page.  — kwami (talk) 19:24, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

text: This isn't only an issue with Helvetica; it's also an issue with WebKit (maybe). They're displayed correctly in Firefox if I change the font to Arial, but not in Chrome or Safari. Anyway, maybe we should set the CSS font-family attribute to Arial for IPA. — Lfdder (talk) 19:38, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

text: You can force ligatures in WebKit with text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;. It works then. This is what I use now. — Lfdder (talk) 19:44, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: There really ought to be an image of the tone-letter sequences and the expected resulting ligatures. -- Evertype·✆ 22:32, 18 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's not "just" a matter of fonts. These ligatures also appear in printed texts. If we don't display the ligatures and the corresponding combinations of rectilinear symbols, the article is seriously lacking: pity the novice who comes looking for a guide to the diagonal tone letters! --Thnidu (talk) 20:36, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I gather you expect "novice[s]" to "come[s] looking for a guide to the diagonal tone letters". Are you serious? — In another vein: I believe OS font support for tone-letter sequences improved since this discussion was started over seven years ago, though I still agree with Evertype we had better use images, at least additionally. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ligatures? 

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thread_title:  Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page 

message: Middle Korean was tonal but Modern Korean dropped the tones.
Hangul#Unicode
http://books.google.com/books?id=Sx6gdJIOcoQC&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=nVgr2BkwAdkC&pg=PA315#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=2AmspKX3beoC&pg=PA168#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=2AmspKX3beoC&pg=PA168&dq=korean+tone&hl=en&ei=nyF1Tvr7I6vK0AGviYXkDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=korean%20tone&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=nVgr2BkwAdkC&pg=PA315&dq=korean+tone&hl=en&ei=iiJ1TvSXEoLX0QHy2c3bDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=korean%20tone&f=false
http://books.google.com/books?id=Sx6gdJIOcoQC&pg=PA48&dq=korean+tone&hl=en&ei=nCJ1TtKNN4TV0QH-5e2mDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=korean%20tone&f=false
Rajmaan (talk) 15:05, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Middle Korean used to be a tonal language 

message: I understand that the linguistic concept of tone is essential to understanding what a tonal language is, but I feel like these are different topics that deserve separate pages. It can hardly be said that what is common of tone in every language is common of tonal languages. Furthermore, I see a marked distinction between the use of tone in a language and a language that is (primarily) tonal.218.44.105.63 (talk) 16:42, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate "Tone (Linguistics)" and "Tonal Language" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have to bring up that this page lists tonal languages first, before describing tone itself. Would it not make more sense to move this section somewhere else? CodeTriangle (talk) 21:58, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page Organization 

message: I'm encountering the term "contrastive tone" in various places, including Wikipedia articles. (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Contrastive+tone&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=1&ns0=1)
I see this term used here in Tone (linguistics), but I can't find a clear basic definition of it in this article or  anywhere else on Wikipedia. 
Therefore, could we please add a clear basic definition of the term "contrastive tone" to the article Tone (linguistics)? (Or wherever on Wikipedia might be appropriate.) 
(Or if this exists already, can somebody point me to it?)
Thanks - 189.122.238.134 (talk) 03:04, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it just means "phonemic", but only to linguists. Contrastive, which is a DAB page though not marked as such, lists Contrast (linguistics), which is very sketchy and mostly discusses semantic contrast. That page needs expansion, but I'm not up to it now. --Thnidu (talk) 20:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Could we please add a clear basic definition of the term "contrastive tone"? 

message: The article states that the Scots language has a simple tone system, similar to the ones of Swedish, Norwegian and Limburgish. I believe it is not true. There is, however, a language spoken in Scotland which does use tones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_phonology#Tones Yeowe (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scots? 

message: The last table of section Stages of tonogenesis compares the tones of four words with parallel morphology in three Sinitic lects. For Standard Chinese  a pronunciation as laoLF renMR jiaHL is indicated, which corresponds to Pinyin lǎorénjiā. Though it is true that the characters , , and  are pronounced lǎo, rén, and jiā in isolation, I doubt that a pronunciation of the word  with unreduced tones can be considered Standard Chinese. The Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, which is often considered the reference work for Standard Chinese of Mainland China, gives the pronunciation as lǎo·ren·jia (meaning that only lǎorenjia is permissible; cf. their lǎo·rén for , meaning that both lǎoren and lǎorén are standard pronunciations). And the dictionary that I use for Standard Chinese pronunciations of Taiwan indicates Bopomofo  (=Pinyin lǎorénjia). That is, unreduced lǎorénjiā is neither the Mainland Chinese (Pǔtōnghuà) nor the Taiwanese (Guóyǔ) standard pronunciation of . Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:18, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone of Standard Chinese 老人家 

message: Should this article be classified as a c-class article? If not, what should be improved?--Megaman en m (talk) 20:54, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  C-class 

message: Does anyone have any sources of Scots having a Pitch accent or being a tonal language? 
I have searched on other websites but this is the only one that I can find with this claim, "Swedish, Norwegian and Scots have simple word tone systems, often called pitch accent (although they are actually contour tones)".
I thought this article was confusing Scottish Gaelic with Scots but at the bottom it says "In Europe, Indo-European languages such as Swedish, Norwegian, Limburgish and Scots (Germanic languages)… have tonal characteristics.". So the author is talking about Scots and not Gaelic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blackbvll (talk • contribs) 13:44, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scots Language 

message: Regarding tonogenesis, it seems contradictory that Thai would use identical words for "near" and "far" with the exception of the tone.
: https://blogs.transparent.com/thai/near-and-far-glai-and-glai/
::Kortoso  (talk) 05:09, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: & yet it's true. Pathawi (talk) 18:16, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Glai and glai 

message: — Assignment last updated by Nurbekyuldashov (talk) 01:52, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Linguistics in the Digital Age

message: I think it should be "You've been telling Bay to pee at the wrong places all along!"
"Bấy nay": all along (I think the sentence sounds more natural in English when you put the time indication at the end)
"bay": to fly or you (plural)
"bày": to tell someone to do something/about something (usually something bad, indicated by "bậy")
"bảy": a common name or nickname for the seventh child of a family or children in general
"bẫy": trap (either noun or verb) or to pee
"bậy": wrongly/incorrectly/inappropriately (adverb for "bẫy")
I hope this helps DSream (talk) 12:24, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Vietnamese tongue twister is translated wrongly 

message: Is it me or are some of the three-character tone contours rendering a bit odd, such as "˨˩˦" and "˨˩˨", on Windows 11 23H2? Note that the Consolas font does not exhibit said issue, and appears as intended ("˨˩˦" and "˨˩˨"). -GeniusWorkbench4622 13:02, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone contours 

message: It's been suggested we merge the article about Chinese tone names with this article? Any thoughts? Shibolet Nehrd (talk) 06:18, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge Chinese tone names with this page? 

message: It's been suggested we merge the article about tone numbers with this article. Any thoughts?
Personally, I oppose this. I think it'd be better to merge it with the tone letters page, since we already have a page about writing tone. Some of the info on the tone numbers page could be grandfathered onto our page, thoough. Shibolet Nehrd (talk) 06:21, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the tags since no discussion was actually taking place. Nardog (talk) 08:33, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge Tone Numbers with this page? 

message: This article has a lot of in-depth content and is reasonably well-written with reliable sources. I think this article should be re-rated to at least a C-class or B-class. Not sure how to do it but if anyone else can check in as well, that would be great. Justanotherinternetguyt@lk 13:07, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does this article still belong to a start-class rating?