[[alternative]]The Development of Qu Category in Chinese before the Qieyun Period -- An Acoustic Study on Posrvocalic -s in rGyarong

[[abstract]]ABSTRACT Pulleyblank (1962, 1973) and Li (1980) claim that in Old Chinese the four tone categories correspond to four different postvocalic consonants. The postvocalic -s which corresponds to the Qu category becomes -h in Middle Chinese. In other words, Medieval Shang category comes from -? and Medieval Qu category from -h. Hombert (1977) finds that in Arabic, -? produces a rise in F0 and -h produces a drop in F0 on the preceding vowel. This might support that a raising tone and a falling tone develop from the respective loss of -? and -h. This study examines the intrinsic effects of -s on the F0 in rGyarong, a Sino-Tibetan language, and finds that same as -h, -s also produces a drop in F0 on the preceding vowel. A cross-linguistic study shows that -s in rGyarong has weaker mean power of spectrum than that of other languages and only -s accompanying the level tone produces a drop in F0. Key words: Old Chinese, tone category, Qu sheng, -s final coda, acoustics, rGyarong[[fileno]]JA01_2002_p29