Checked Tone - History

History

The voiceless stops that typify the entering tone date back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the parent language of Chinese as well as the Tibeto-Burman languages. In addition, it is commonly thought that Old Chinese had syllables ending in clusters /ps/, /ts/, and /ks/ (sometimes called the "long entering tone", while syllables ending in /p/, /t/ and /k/ are the "short entering tone"). These clusters later reduced to /s/; in turn this became /h/ and ultimately tone 3 in Middle Chinese (the "departing tone").

The first Chinese philologists began to describe the phonology of Chinese during the Early Middle Chinese period (specifically, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, between 400 to 600), under the influence of Buddhism and the Sanskrit language that arrived along with it. There were several unsuccessful attempts to classify the tones of Chinese, before the establishment of the traditional four-tone description between 483 and 493. It is based on the Vedic theory of three intonations (聲明論). The middle intonation, Udātta, maps to the level tone (平聲); the upwards intonation, Svarita, to the rising tone (上聲); the downward intonation, Anudātta, to the departing tone (去聲). The distinctive sound of syllables ending with a stop did not fit the three intonations and was categorised as the entering tone (入聲). The use of four-tone system flourished in the Sui and Tang dynasties. An important rime dictionary, Qieyun was written in this period.

Note that modern linguistic descriptions of Middle Chinese often refer to the level, rising and departing tones as tones 1, 2 and 3, respectively.

By the time of the Mongol invasion (the Yuan dynasty, 1279–1368), former final stops had been reduced to a glottal stop /ʔ/. It is sometimes thought that the influence of these invading nomads caused this final glottal stop to be lost, leading to the loss of "entering tone" syllables. The Zhongyuan Yinyun, a rime book of 1324, already shows signs of the disappearance of the glottal stop and the emergence of the modern Mandarin tone system in its place. The precise time at which the loss occurred is unknown, though it was likely gone by the time of the Qing Dynasty.