This introductory chapter is intended to provide the necessary background for our investigation of tone sandhi. After a brief description of the genetic grouping of the languages of China, from which we draw the bulk of our primary data (section 1), I give a thumbnail sketch of the tone system of Middle Chinese (circa AD 600) and its evolution into the diverse patterns we see in modern dialects (sections 2–3). Historical tonal categories furnish us with a common frame of reference as we move from one dialect to another. I then set tone sandhi in the context of various types of tonal perturbations in connected speech, including tonal coarticulation, intonational effects, and morphologically conditioned tone changes (section 4). Tone sandhi processes often strike the analyst as arbitrary and totally lacking in phonetic or functional motivation. Section 5 shows that we can make sense of, if not explain, certain puzzling synchronic facts if we look at them from a diachronic perspective. This chapter closes with some terminological clarification (section 6).

Languages and dialects of China

According to Major Statistics of the 1982 Census, published by the People's Republic of China State Statistics Bureau (Beijing, October 1982), China (including Taiwan) has a population of 1,026 million. Of these, 977.2 million or 95.2% speak one form or another of Chinese. The remaining 46.2 million are distributed over a wide variety of language families/stocks, spoken mostly on the periphery of China, with a high concentration of speakers of “minority” languages across the southwestern provinces.