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About the statement in “The universal language–baby talk” (WomaNews, March 8) to the effect that “Chinese is a tonal language, using intonation to transform meaning”:
The tones of Chinese are not intonation, and they don’t “transform meaning” any more than the consonants and vowels do. Chinese has both tones, which are part of the pronunciations of words, and intonation, which is super-imposed on sentences in pretty much the same way as in English–e.g., a rise in pitch at the ends of questions.
