This chapter introduces the Chinese sound system, with a focus on syllable structure. An overview of the nature and distribution of Chinese initial consonants, finals, and tones is introduced, and the rules of tone sandhi are also explained.

This chapter reviews the descriptive patterns of tone sandhi in Chinese dialects along with the experimental investigations of what generalizations native speakers make regarding these patterns, how they process them in production and perception, and how children acquire these patterns. Theoretical issues that tone sandhi sheds light on, including the role of typology in synchronic theories, feature representation, productivity and learnability, and the interface between phonology and other domains such as phonetics, processing, and morphosyntax, are also discussed briefly. The chapter focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of tone sandhi research and calls on researchers to take an open and synergistic approach among different methods to gain an comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon.

This chapter surveys issues related to the production of tone in the world’s languages. Here the term ‘tone’ refers to the localised (within-syllable) use of fundamental frequency that contrasts lexical meanings (thus excluding pitch accent and stress languages). A comprehensive review of tonal phonetics is presented covering the acoustic correlates of tone, contextual tonal variation, methods used in tone production research, as well as recent research topics in tonal phonetics. We offer suggestions for teaching and learning of tone as a phonetics topic and the chapter concludes with suggestions for future directions for tone production research.

This chapter provides an introductory overview of the phonological systems used in the languages of mainland Southeast Asia. The chapter begins with an overview of the various systems of consonants and vowels that are found, and the phonotactic principles by which those segments are combined to form syllables. The closely-related phenomena of register and tone are then introduced and defined, followed by an outline of the processes of tonogenesis, by which a language can develop a tone system. The chapter closes with a discussion of further aspects of the area’s sound systems, including tone sandhi, intonation, the prosodic hierarchy and criteria for different notions of ‘word’.

In 1368 the Ming dynasty began its rule. The location of the capital changed from Dadu (modern Beijing) to Nanjing (1368–1421), and later back to Beijing (1421–1644). Because of the different locations of the capital and other issues related to the standard pronunciation, the question of which dialect served as a foundation for the standard pronunciation has been a point of strong interest to researchers. In 1375 the rhyme dictionary Hóngwǔ Zhèngyùn 洪武正韻 was compiled at the order of the first Ming emperor. In the fifteenth century Korean scholars made a great effort to transcribe this prestigious phonological work into the newly invented Hangul spellings. The result was the Hóngwǔ Zhèngyùn Yìxùn 洪武正韻譯訓, finished in 1451 with a revision in 1455. The Hóngwǔ Zhèngyùn Yìxùn provides phonetic values for the phonology of the Hóngwǔ Zhèngyùn. The Xīrú Ěrmù Zī 西儒耳目資 ‘An Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati’ of 1626 by Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) represents one of the earliest efforts to transcribe an entire Chinese phonology into an alphabetical system without referring to Chinese rhyme works.