Tone

Author: Alan Cruttenden
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Features: The status of tone in Chinese studies is so subtle: every Chinese scholar knows it has extraordinary importance, but few scholars have truly delved into this issue. This is partly because tone itself belongs to the suprasegmental category, making it difficult to grasp, and partly because we lack a theoretical methodology. Alan Cruttenden's book is the first comprehensive monograph in the West that explores the issue of tone, not limited to English, but rather examines the universal characteristics of tone. It demonstrates to us how to study abstract and elusive linguistic components under the guidance of linguistic theory, as well as how to extract theoretical principles from those abstract and elusive linguistic phenomena. This is the second edition, though more than ten years have passed since the first edition, it remains the most fundamental reference in this field. It is believed that every reader will gain theoretical and methodological insights from it.