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Tone patterns in Chinese poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

G. B. Downer
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Extract

The tone patterns of the Recent Style (chin-t‘i ) have always given trouble to Western readers of Chinese poetry. Chinese authorities offer us a confusing variety of patterns, each with a different tone sequence for every line of the quatrain, no apparent principle of organization, and seemingly unaccountable licences for certain syllables. Yet if we choose to ignore these patterns, we are left only with such clumsy rules of thumb as that syllables of the same tone tend to fall into pairs and that corresponding syllables within the couplet generally contrast in tone.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 1963 , pp. 145 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1963

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References

page 145 note 1 Han-yü shih-lü-hsües , Shanghai, 1958.

page 145 note 2 Wang Li, op. cit., 50, 51.

page 146 note 3 Wang Li analyses only the level tone patterns (op. cit., 72, 73), although he gives examples which illustrate the oblique tone patterns (op. cit., 50, 51). Yü Shou-chên includes the oblique tone patterns for the five-word and seven-word quatrains in his T‘ang shih san-pai-Shou hsiang-hsi (Chung-hua , Hong Kong, 1957), 265, 289.He does not admit alternatives for the firstline.

page 146 note 1 Wang Li, op. cit., 83–91.

page 146 note 2 Wang Li, op. cit., 90. Wang Li notes one qualification: atPosition 3 the level tone is inviolable in the sequence , because there must always be more than one level tone syllable in addition to the rhyme syllable (op. cit., 85).