Tone Languages
All
languages use pitch to convey emphasis, contrast, and even semantic information
such as whether an utterance is a statement or a question. These patterns of pitch
change are referred to as intonation. But tone languages use pitch in another
way as well. To begin to look at the particular way in which tone languages use
pitch, we’ll use a Chinese lesson onYou Tube.
To work on tone in Chinese, go to a You
Tube page called
China-8.com Lesson: Pinyin
tones
Listen to the whole lesson, but concentrate
on the tones for the sequence ‘ma’ and its respective
meanings with the
different tones.
Now listen
to the words below, and for each word, identify its meaning.