Several problems in the development of Chinese tones (in Chinese) (
关于汉语声调发展的几个问题 -- 读王士元先生的 “声调发展笔记”
Wuyun Pan 潘悟云

Abstract 摘要
1) The tone shape-merge hypothesis proposed by Prof. William S-Y Wang can be demonstrated in two ways. One is from philological sources beginning from the Tang and Song era, while the other is historical comparison of literary and colloquial tones along with sandhi and citation tones. We do this because literary tones and some synchronic phenomena are a record of diachronic processes of tone merging. 2) The paper proposes that Chinese tone sandhi is of two types. The first type is contextual change, in which if there is difficulty in pronouncing the tones on two contiguous syllables, the tone in one of the syllables is changed. The second type is that found in Xiamen dialects, where so-called changed tones in syllables are not determined by the tones of contiguous syllables. In fact, it is the second syllable in a pair that reflects more recent historical change than in the citation tone; the tone in the preceding syllable conserves older values. Only by recognizing the difference between these two kinds of sandhi is it possible to systematically and scientifically study the complications of sandhi phenomena. 3) Inference from the tone merging hypothesis: Chinese tones should be understood to include both suprasegmental and segmental features, and the historical development of Chinese tones has moved from the segmental to the suprasegmental. 4) The paper uses the concepts of tone stem, tone head, and tone tail. Some changes in tone shapes are generated by tone head and tone tail.

王士元先生从发音生理的角度考虑，认为中古本来就存在八个调形。随着汉语全浊声母的清化，调形比较接近的阴类调和阳类调就合并为一个调形了。所以汉语的调形不是朝着“分化”，而是朝着“合并”的方向发展的。这个“合并”的理论的提出，对传统的声调发展观念无疑是一个很大的冲击，它迫使我们对一系列问题作重新考虑，因而向汉语声调的历时研究在方法和内容上都提出了新的要求。

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