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The four tones of Chinese poetry and dialectology () are four traditional tone classes〔A "tone class" is a lexical division of words based on tone. It may not have a direct correspondence with phonemic tone. The three tones of open syllables in Middle Chinese contrast with undifferentiated tone in checked syllables, and words are classified according to these four possibilities.〕 of Chinese words. They play an important role in Chinese poetry and in comparative studies of tonal development in the modern varieties of Chinese, both in traditional Chinese and in Western linguistics. They correspond to the phonology of Middle Chinese, and are named ''even'' or ''level'' (平 ''píng''), ''rising'' (上 ''shǎng''), ''departing'' (or ''going''; 去 ''qù''), and ''entering'' or ''checked'' (入 ''rù''). (The last three are collectively referred to as ''oblique'' 仄 (''zè''), an important concept in poetic tone patterns.) Due to historic splits and mergers, none of the modern varieties of Chinese have the exact four tones of Middle Chinese, but they are noted in rhyming dictionaries. According to the usual modern analysis, Early Middle Chinese had three phonemic tones in most syllables, but no tonal distinctions in checked syllables ending in the stop consonants /p/, /t/, /k/. In most circumstances, every syllable had its own tone; hence a multisyllabic word typically had a tone assigned to each syllable. (In modern varieties, the situation is sometimes more complicated. Although each syllable typically still has its own ''underlying'' tone in most dialects, some syllables in the speech of some varieties may have their tone modified into other tones or neutralized entirely, by a process known as tone sandhi.) Traditional Chinese dialectology reckons syllables ending in a stop consonant as possessing a fourth tone, known technically as a ''checked tone''. This tone is known in traditional Chinese linguistics as the ''entering'' (入 ''rù'') tone, a term commonly used in English as well. The other three tones were termed the ''level'' (or ''even'') tone (平 ''píng''), the ''rising'' (上 ''shǎng'') tone, and the ''departing'' (or ''going'') tone (去 ''qù''). The practice of setting up the entering tone as a separate class reflects the fact that the actual pitch contour of checked syllables was quite distinct from the pitch contour of any of the sonorant-final syllables. Indeed, implicit in the organisation of the classical rime tables is a different, but structurally equally valid, phonemic analysis, which takes all four tones as phonemic and demotes the difference between stop finals and nasal finals to allophonic, with stops occurring in entering syllables and nasals elsewhere. From the perspective of modern historical linguistics, there is often value in treating the "entering tone" as a tone regardless of its phonemic status, because syllables possessing this "tone" typically develop differently from syllables possessing any of the other three "tones". For clarity, these four "tones" are often referred to as ''tone classes'', with each word belonging to one of the four tone classes. This reflects the fact that the lexical division of words into tone classes is based on tone, but not all tone classes necessarily have a distinct phonemic tone associated with them. The four Early Middle Chinese (EMC) tones are nearly always presented in the order ''level'' (平 ''píng''), ''rising'' (上 ''shǎng''), ''departing'' (去 ''qù''), ''entering'' (入 ''rù''), and correspondingly numbered 1 2 3 4 in modern discussions. In Late Middle Chinese (LMC), each of the EMC tone classes split in two, depending on the nature of the initial consonant of the syllable in question. Discussions of LMC and the various modern varieties will often number these split tone classes from 1 through 8, keeping the same ordering as before. For example, LMC/modern tone classes 1 and 2 derive from EMC tone class 1; LMC/modern tone classes 3 and 4 derive from EMC tone class 2; etc. The odd-numbered tone classes 1 3 5 7 are termed ''dark'' (陰 ''yīn''), whereas the even-numbered tone classes 2 4 6 8 are termed ''light'' (陽 ''yáng''). Hence, for example, LMC/modern tone class 5 is known in Chinese as the ''yīn qù'' ("dark departing") tone, indicating that it is the ''yīn'' variant of the EMC ''qù'' tone (EMC tone 3). In order to clarify the relationship between the EMC and LMC tone classes, some authors notate the LMC tone classes as 1a 1b 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 4b in place of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8, where ''a'' and ''b'' correspond directly to Chinese ''yīn'' and ''yáng'', respectively. ==Names== In Middle Chinese, each of the tone names carries the tone it identifies: 平 level ', 上 rising ', 去 departing ', and 入 entering '.〔Pulleyblank's reconstructions〕 However, in some modern Chinese varieties, this is no longer true. This loss of correspondence is most notable in the case of the entering tone—that is, syllables checked in a stop consonant , , or in Middle Chinese—which has been lost from most dialects of Mandarin and redistributed among the other tones. In modern Chinese varieties, tones that derive from the four Middle Chinese tone classes may be split into two registers, ''dark'' (陰 ''yīn'') and ''light'' (陽 ''yáng'') depending on the voicing of the onset. When all four tone-classes split, eight tones result: ''dark level'' (陰平), ''light level'' (陽平), ''dark rising'' (陰上), ''light rising'' (陽上), ''dark departing'' (陰去), ''light departing'' (陽去), ''dark entering'' (陰入), and ''light entering'' (陽入). Sometimes these have been termed ''upper'' and ''lower'' registers respectively, although this may be a misnomer, as in some dialects the dark registers may have the lower tone, and the light register the higher tone. Chinese dictionaries mark the tones with diacritical marks at the four corners of a character: ꜀平 level, ꜂上 rising, 去꜄ departing, and 入꜆ entering. When ''yin'' and ''yang'' tones are distinguished, these are the diacritics for the ''yin'' (dark) tones; the ''yang'' (light) tones are indicated by underscoring the diacritic: ꜁平 light level, ꜃上 light rising, 去꜅ light departing, 入꜇ light entering. These diacritics are also sometimes used when the phonetic tone is unknown, as in the reconstructions of Middle Chinese at the beginning of this section. However, in this article the circled numbers (unicode:①②③④⑤⑥⑦⑧) will be used, as in the table below, with the odd numbers (unicode:①③⑤⑦) indicating either 'dark' tones or tones that have not split, and even numbers (unicode:②④⑥⑧) indicating 'light' tones. Thus level tones are numbered (unicode:①②), the rising tones (unicode:③④), the departing tones (unicode:⑤⑥), and the entering (checked) tones (unicode:⑦⑧). In Yue (incl. Cantonese) the dark entering tone further splits into ''high'' (高陰入) and ''low'' (低陰入) registers, depending on the length of the nucleus, for a total of nine tone-classes. Some dialects have a complex tone splittings, where the terms ''dark'' and ''light'' are insufficient to cover the possibilities. The number of tone-classes is based on Chinese tradition, and is as much register as it is actual tone. The entering 'tones', for example, are only distinct because they are checked by a final stop consonant, not because they have a tone contour that contrasts with non-entering tones. In dialects such as Shanghainese, tone-classes are numbered even though they are not phonemically distinct. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Four tones (Chinese)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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