V - Tone Features

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role of a feature system in the description of tone, the phonetic scope of the features of tone, phonetic tone levels, phonological tone levels, tonal contours, Gruber's and Wang's systems, Woo's system, and Leben's system. A linguistic phonetic description must be distinguished at the outset from a direct mechanical record of the physical properties of an utterance, in that it selects some of these properties as significant to the exclusion of others. Such a representation must provide a way of characterizing any and all distinctions that may ever be manipulated systematically in a particular language, regardless of whether these ever serve directly as the basis of contrasts within a single language. Any phonetic property, that is, in terms of which utterances in Language X are systematically different from utterances in language Y must find some reflection in the system of phonetic transcription provided by linguistic theory. This requirement insures the possibility of comparing the representation of one utterance with that of another, whether they are a part of the same linguistic system. While linguistic phonetics is concerned with establishing the range of linguistically significant cross-language comparisons between utterances, the theory of phonological representations is concerned with the delimitation of those parameters in terms of which the representations of utterances can be structured, compared, or contrasted from the point of view of a single language.