explanation 略述
Hoklo has a very pristine tonal-phrase structure (連調片語) not shared by other major Chinese dialects such as Mandarin or Cantonese. Hoklo belongs to the stereotonic dialectal group of Chinese (雙調漢語方言系統), as opposed to Cantonese or Mandarin, which belong to the monotonic dialectal group (單調漢語方言系統). Hoklo's tonal-phrase structure is almost done at mathematical precision, and the essence of Tadpolenese is to provide a script that captures this crucial aspect of the language. Spelling choices for individual words are a secondary issue.
The following discussion is a bit technical and is not meant for casual readers. I apologize for the briefness of this page.
Running tone and standing tone 動調及靜調
Because Hoklo is a stereotonic language, generally speaking, each Hoklo syllable (單字) can be pronounced with one of two tones: its running tone (動調), or its standing tone (靜調). Standing tone is used in phrase-final position, running tone is used in non-phrase-final position.
Tonal-phrase marker (.) 片語斷號
A period (.) is used to mark the end of a tonal phrase. This means that, in general, the syllable immediate preceeding the period is pronounced with its standing tone. If the phrase is sentence-final (e.g: ending with semi-colon, question mark, or exclamation mark), then those sentence-final marks also automatically indicate the end of the phrase, so no additional period sign is needed.
Semicolon (;) 分號
Since Tadpolenese uses period sign as phrase-final marker, we have to use a different symbol for the normal sentence ending. Semicolon is chosen because of its user-friendliness on English keyboard.
Apostrophe (') 撇號
Apostrophe is used whenever clarity in syllable separation is needed.
Hyphen (-) 連字號
Hyphen is used to mark major separation in syllables, that is, syllable separations that need a clarity beyond what an apostrophe can indicate. Hyphen is also used syllabic-finally to indicate continuation of phrase, or equivalently, usage of running tone instead of standing tone.
Neutralized suffixes and neutralization marker (`) 輕聲尾語及輕聲記號
In common Hoklo language usage, additional information (suffixes) is often inserted after the phrase-final syllable. This additional information serves to qualify the last element of the original tonal phrase. This seems contradictory: if addtional syllables were inserted after the final syllable, then the original final syllable would not be the final syllable anymore, right? Hoklo resolves this dilemma by keeping the standing tone of the original phrase-final, and "neutralizes" the added syllables. The exact pitch value of the neutralized syllables follows some complicated rules, but in most common cases the pitch tends to be low.
Example 1:
Daan; beuh; = a person's lastname (陳), number eight (八).
Daan`sinsne; beuh`qoeq; = Mr. Daan (陳先生), August (八月). (Here one observes low neutralized tones.)
Example 2:
agong. = grandfather (阿公)
agong`a. = grandpa, expressing endearment (阿公阿). (Here one observes a non-low neutralized tone.)
Example 3:
aic, hyrn, su; = to love, to hate, to lose (愛,恨,輸)
aic`lyl, hyrn`lyl, su`lyl; = loving you, hating you, losing to you (愛你,恨你,輸你) (One low and two non-low neutralized tones.)
Example 4:
golng. = to say (講)
golng`killaai`ouq. = now mentioning about it... (講起來喔) (multiple syllables)
Example 5:
agong`aq. duic`aq- quln`aq. ur`aq- ur gaudaic`ouq; = 阿公矣對矣阮矣 有矣有交代喔
(Some neutralized tones after running tones, notice usage of hyphen to indicate phrase continuation.)
The 'al diminutive, the `a affective, and the `aq emotive 「仔」跟「啊」跟「矣」
There are some subtle differences between the un-neutralized 'al suffix, the neutralized `a suffix, and the neutralized suffix `aq. When used on persons or professions, the 'al suffix is a dimunitive particle used to show disrespect or disdain, whereas the `a suffix is an affective particle used to show endearment. The `aq suffix is used in general to express grief, helplessness, or completedness. E.g: hit e hoursur'al. deh yaubal cal; = that little nurse is ranting non-stop; jit e hoursur`a. laang jin hol; = this nurse is a very nice person, and lyl e hoursur`aq, laang voo hol; = sigh... your nurse is not very nice. Notice that in these examples, the three suffixes are each pronounced with a different tone.
Tonal Spelling 聲調拼音
Tones are indicated by usage of specific tonal letters or letter combinations, placed after the vowel cluster. Here is the mapping table in the traditional 8-tone format. The -rl- combination for the Yang-Shang (陽上) category is reserved for those Hoklo dialects that carry that category. In the case of Taiwanese Hoklo, this category is absent.
It is not hard to see that the tonal-letter choices are motivated by their running tone values, instead of standing tone values. The reason to place emphasis on running tones is because in written text for colloquial Hoklo, more than 70% of the syllables are pronounced with their running tones, while only 30% or less of the syllables are pronounced with their standing tones. The choices for (-l-) and (-r-) provide an excellent visual-to-phonetical mapping for the Yin and Yang nature of these tone categories, being -l- a tall letter, and -r- a lower letter. The choice of -rl- also reflects the historical phonology correlation between the Yang-Shang category with today's Yin-Shang (-l-) category and the Yang-Qu (-r-) category.
[见附图]
Two often-used words in Tadpolenese do not carry tonal letters: the possessive e and the negative m. This is for sake of simplicity, otherwise they would become ee and mr. Many neutralized suffixes expressing emotions are chosen to be spelt with the -q ending, like `ouq, `aq.
Nasalization (oral-nasal vowels) 鼻聲 (口鼻母音)
If a syllable starts with a consonant (or can start with a fictitious constant like w- or y-), a medial -n- is placed after the initial consonant. E.g: znii = money (錢), snua = mountain (山), wnual = bowl (碗), ynii = round (圓). For glottal-stop initiated syllable (no initial consonant symbol) containing no initial u or i vowel, we use the ngh- initial. E.g: nghar = pie filling (餡).
Velar-nasal vowel ng 軟顎鼻母音
Besides its consonantal role, the phonetic ng actually also serves as a vowel in many Hoklo words. This awkward vowelless-looking spelling can be made friendlier by introducing a fictitious vowel y. Hence we have yyng = yellow (黃), synk = to calculate (算), byrng = steamed rice (飯).
Fictitious initial consonant w- y- 假聲母
If a syllable initiates with phonetic u- or i-, a fictitious consonants w- or y- is prepended or used as replacement.
Interdialectal romanization 跨方言拼音
This feature is used sparingly, to accomodate words that are pronounced differently in different dialects/sub-dialects, or to bust homonym problems.
E.g:
qyl = language (語): unifies qil/qul
geu = chicken (雞): unifies ge/gue/goi
boe = to fly (飛): unifies be/bue
gimn = now, today (今): unifies gin/gim
fhongfuap = method (方法): interdialectal with Mandarin and Middle Chinese
Homonym buster 同音拼異字
This features is used sparingly, to resolve those most common homonym cases.
E.g:
gim = gold (金)
gimn = now, today (今)
gail = to change (改)
gyail = to explain, to dissolve (解)
hong = wind (風)
fhong = direction (方)
Comment:
Hoklo is a stereotonic language and has a very unique and pristene tonal-phrase structure. Tadpolenese aims at writing out this tonal-phrase structure explicitly, and also tries to increase the readability by using interdialectal spelling and homonym buster features. Some reasons why Tadpolenese is more readable are: (1) usage of tonal letters instead of diacritics, because in a tonal language, tones actually do carry important information/correlations. For instance, in Hoklo, the Qu tone category (-c/-mp/-nt/-nk/-r) is correlated with the presence of action verbs, and the Yang-Shang tones (-rl) correlated with emotional/auxiliary verbs, so larger-size tone symbols allows better visual-to-grammatical correlation, (3) presence of phrase-final mark (.) is correlated with nouns or noun-like phrases, (4) homonym busters reduce interpretation confusion, (5) interdialectal romanization helps to build in mental correlations for people already familiar with Hanyu Pinyin. Finally, because Tadpolenese uses only 26 letters, it can be typed whereever English can be typed. |
发表于 2008-11-24 11:11
发表于 2008-11-24 16:34
