1. Quick Overview on Tones
Helen Meng
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

2. Mandarin Tone System 4 tones + 1 ‘light’ tone
level of F0
time
4 tones + 1 ‘light’ tone
(2). 陽平 /yang ping/, low level e.g., 麻
(3). 上 /shang/, rising e.g., 馬
(4). 去 /qu/, going e.g., 罵
(1). 陰平 /yin ping/, high level e.g., 媽
Chinese tone systems are diverse in dialects
Page 6 shows the tone systems of Mandarin and Cantonese in Figure 1 and 2
Mandarin has four tones, all in different shapes, high level, high rising, low falling rising and high falling
You can click the sound icon to listen to the four tones in sequence
[click sound]
Compare to the Mandarin, Cantonese has a more complex tone system
Figure 2 shows the nine tones in Cantonese,
the first six are categorized as non-entering tones and the remaining three are entering tones, which are shorter in duration
but since they have tone heights and shapes basically identical to some of the non-entering tones
some Cantonese transcription schemes, such as Jyutping, only considers tone 1 to 6 for simplicity
The Cantonese tones only have two shapes, either level or rising
Tones in same shapes are further distinguished with their relative tone heights
You can click the sound icon to listen to the nine tones
Having introduced the features of the Chinese language, in the next page, I will move on to discuss how our suggested SSML extensions can cope with these features

3. Cantonese Tone System
6 non-entering and 3 entering tones

4. Phonetic Transcription Schemes
Chinese character sets (“scripts”): simplified, traditional
Pronunciation of a character = tonal syllable
= syllable + tone
Different syllable inventory for different dialects, e.g. Mandarin (official), Cantonese (major dialect)…
syllable in Roman alphabets
tone as a one-digit Arabic number
Popular schemes are
pinyin (for Mandarin) 銀行 (bank): /yin2 hang2/
jyutping (for Cantonese) 銀行 (bank): /ngan4 hong4/
Now I will briefly talk about the phonetic transcription schemes that represent the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Page 5
The pronunciation representation of a Chinese character is a syllable followed by a tone
Various transcription schemes are developed to describe the tonal syllables specifically for different dialects
For example, pinyin is adopted for standard mandarin by the China Government
and jyutping is developed for Cantonese by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong
These transcription schemes are Romanization systems
That use Roman alphabets to represent syllables
followed by a one-digit Arabic number to represent tones
For example, E.g. 3 shows the pinyin of the word bank in Mandarin
And E.g. 4 shows the Cantonese jyutping of the same word
The parts in red are syllables and the numbers in blue are tones

5. <tone> element

6. Proposed <tone> Element
Vary with meaning, context and speaking style 相
in tone 2 means photo
in tone 3 means facial appearance / minister
Current SSML 1.0: phoneme
Requires pronunciation transcription
Example
<phoneme alphabet="x-lshk-jyutping" ph="soeng2">相</phoneme>
<phoneme alphabet="x-lshk-jyutping" ph="soeng3">相</phoneme>
Proposed <tone> element
with the required “value” attribute
<tone value="2">相</tone> (photo)
<tone value="3">相</tone> (face appearance)
inherit the alphabet attribute, or explicitly specify
Now I will move on to the element we proposed for pronunciation in page 13
As introduced before, tone plays an important role in the pronunciation of Chinese
Although each character carries a tone, the tone is not fixed,
as a matter of fact
the change of tone often happens depending on the character’s meaning, context and the mode of speaking
therefore here we propose the tone element to provide the flexibility of tone change
In current SSML 1.0 specification, we have the phoneme element which can be used to specify pronunciation
However, this element requires users to input the pronunciation transcription of the contained contents
And often times, users may not be familiar with phonetic transcriptions
Example 10 shows a Chinese character
which mean photo when it is in tone 2 and mean face when it is in tone 3
You can click the sound icons to listen to the two tones
S1 shows how a tone is specified using the existing phoneme element
As you can see, in order to specify tone, users must also know the ipa or the jyutping of this character
For the sake of convenience and flexibility
we propose the tone element to support tone changes without needing to input other information
As shown in S2, users are only required to input the numeric representation of tone in its value attribute
I will give more examples in the next page

7. Examples of Using “tone” Element
Tone changes with meaning
糖 (candy / sugar)
<tone value="2">糖</tone> (tone 2 /tong2/: means candy)
<tone value="4">糖</tone> (tone 4 /tong4/: means sugar)
Tone changes with context
爺 (grandfather)
阿<tone value="4">爺</tone> (tone 4 /je4/: preceded by 阿)
爺<tone value="2">爺</tone> (tone 2 /je2/: preceded by 爺)
Tone changes with speaking style:
英文 (English)
英<tone value=“4">文</tone> (tone 4 /man4/: formal, read)
英<tone value="2">文</tone> (tone 2 /man2/: colloquial)
Example 11 shows tone changes depending on meaning
The character means candy when it is in tone 2
And it means sugar when it is in tone 4
Please click the sound icons to hear the difference
Tone also changes depending on the context even the meaning remains the same
In example 12, the character meaning grandpa should be pronounced with tone 4 when it is preceded by character C1
and with tone 2 when it is preceded by another occurrence of itself, indicated as C2
Please click the sound icons to listen to the two words and pay attention to the second tonal syllables
it is also possible for a character to have different tones without any changes in meaning or context
Example 13 shows the tone of the character in red color changes in different modes of speaking
in formal mode it is pronounced with tone 6
and in colloquial mode with tone 2
Please click the sound icons to listen to the difference

8. Tone Sandhi (Rules) For Mandarin: For Cantonese:
Tone3 Tone3  Tone2 Tone3
Etc.
For Cantonese:
Tone4 Tone4  Tone4 Tone2 OR
Tone4 Tone4  Tone4 Tone1
Tone4 Tone4 (no change)

9. END