Why does Mandarin only have 4 tones? How did tones develop in Mandarin?
Over the course of the development of Mandarin into its own language, the stop endings characteristic of the Ru tones, disappeared from the phonology of Mandarin. This caused these syllables to be lengthened, and with time they adopted one of the other tones. There is no general rule that applies to which tones these Ru tones adopted, and they differ from dialect to dialect throughout the Mandarin speaking area. Both Shang and Qu tones did not split, leaving only a split in Ping (but also not splitting in some dialects such as Urumqi). This left only four tones: Yin Ping (1st), Yang Ping (2nd), Shang (3rd), and Qu (4th).
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