TONAL DEVELOPMENTS AMONG CHINESE DIALECTS

This paper was revised during the summer of 1974 when I was a visiting professor at National Taiwan University under the sponsorship of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture. During the same period I had the privilege of using the Academia Sinica field notes of the Hunan and Kiangsi dialects which I quote in this paper. I wish here to express my gratitude to both National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica. Chinese is a tonal language; that is, every stressed syllable has a fixed tone. Chinese syllabic structure can be described in terms of tones, initials, medials, nuclei, and endings.