Re: tonal languages

John writes:

>Doug, Ramsey says it's tone 4, not tone 6, that's missing in
>Minnan/Hokkien.  Is this a discrepancy in numbering, or an error
>somewhere?  To be clear, by 1, 3, 5, 7 I mean yin ping, shang, qu, and
>ru sheng respectively, and by 2, 4, 6, 8 I mean yang ping, shang, qu,
>and ru sheng respectively.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. You're gonna get all technical on my ass,
are you.  For me, and I believe it's the conventional tone numbering
for Taiwanese, tone 4 is mid-clipped, in contrast to tone 8 which is
high-clipped. For all the yin/yangs, pings, shangs, rus, etc., I'll
need to consult a font-of-all-wisdom dictionary, which of course,
would be at home, and report back in tomorrow.

Kou

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