Cantonese Tones

["Dylan W.H. Sung" <mabr12@dial.pipex.com>]

Seasonal Greetings to you all!

I have a copy of Kwan Choi Wah's 'The Right Word in Cantonese' or 
" ¼s¦{¸Ü«ü«n " published by the Commercial Press ISBN 962-07-1106-8. 
The author says there are 7 tones. 

In the dictionary also by Commercial Press ISBN 962-07-0140-2 Shang Wu Yin
Zi Dian, the index refers to C. having 9 tones. Likewise, there are 9 tones
in Roy T. Cowle's Cantonese Dictionary, Hong Kong University Press 1992,
ISBN 692-209-122-9

However, in Teach Yourself Cantonese by R. Bruce, ISBN 0-340-26438-1
published by Hodder and Stoughton, the author says there are just 6 tones. 


We can assume that 6, 7, or 9 must be right.

My good friend Thomas Chan studying Linguistics, writes the following of
the Cantonese tone system when I queried about the number of tones it had. 

==========================================================================
The number of Cantonese tones depends on two things, the first being how
you treat the rusheng (entering) tones.  The traditional view is to count
them as separate tones.  However, the modern view (not adopted by all
scholars--perhaps I should say, a "modern western" view) treats them
as variants of the pingsheng (level) tones.  i.e., the pingsheng tones
are long and occur when the syllable does not end in a final stop; the
rusheng tones are short and level, and occur when the syllable does end in
a final stop--since they both are in complementary distribution, then they
form one "toneme".  (Note that this is not an issue when counting Mandarin
tones, since the ru class doesn't exist anymore.)

A second thing that affects the count is that for many contemporary
speakers (I believe this might only be confined to the HK variety), the
yinpingsheng (high level) and yinqusheng (high falling) have merged into
one tone--I believe in the direction of the yinqusheng (high falling).

So, the most conservative count is 9 tones:

      level      rising     falling  entering
---------------------------------------------
high  yinping    yinshang   yinqu    yinru
mid   zhongping                      zhongru
low   yangping   yangshang  yangqu   yangru

(The "zhong" series are the result of the non-yang register splitting
into two.)

If you treat the entering tones and level tones as variants, then the
figure drops down by 3.

If you count the yinping (high level) and yinqu (high falling) as one
tone, then the figure drops down by 1.

That's how one arrives at 6 tones, which is the most frequent count I've
encountered, and dictionaries seem to reflect this system.

Of course, different scholars have different opinions and answers, but
if you want a figure to answer the layman's question "How many tones
are there in Cantonese?", then "Six" is a good answer, since that would
be the reality of the number of meaningful contrastive distinctions a
student would have to learn.

(There's also the issue of "bin yam"--changed tones--which I won't go into
now.)

===========================================================================

As you see, 6 is ok, but 9 takes account of all the tonal nuances.

Dylan.