Stephan Stiller wrote:
[...]
II.
[Is it correct that:] in pinyin, the neutral tone is typically not
marked, but it may be marked. When that's the case, U+02D9 ˙ DOT
ABOVE is used.
1. No. In pinyin the neutral tone has traditionally never been marked
(read: absence of a tone mark means "neutral tone" unless it's clear
you're dealing with toneless pinyin), except I know that at least 现代
汉语词典 (Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn) has been using an obligatory dot
before the syllable for all neutral tones. The reason seems to be to
draw more visual attention to them and to make possible a notation for
an optional neutral tone, like Charlie Ruland pointed out (but more on
that below).
I remember seeing the neutral tone marked with a dot above in pictures
from the experimental early days of pīnyīn school teaching, in now
exotic styles where the letters /ĉ, ŝ, ẑ, ŋ/ were used as well. The
drawback is that when the main vowel is /i/ (i.e. in the four rimes /-i,
-in, -ing//, -ui/) this practice leads to a situation where the intended
tone mark tends to become invisible /— //i/ vs. /i̇/ — and only works if
the dot used for marking the neutral tone is much larger than the
regular dot above /i/. (An alternative would be to do it “the Turkish
way” and use undotted /ı/ instead of /i/, but this wasn’t the case. And
there is no problem when only capital letters are used, of course.)
[...]
4. Finally, some comments about what Charlie wrote:
Rule 7.3 of GB/T 16159-2012
<http://www.lshk.org/sites/default/files/zhengcifa_0.pdf> stipulates
that a preceding dot (probably U+00B7 or U+2022) be used to indicate
neutral tone in dictionaries, as had been common practice among many
dictionary makers anyway.
4.1. This is not correct. The text states that dictionary-like
materials /may/ (可) mark a neutral tone as such, but the implication
is that they don't have to. The same document contains on all
preceding pages only unmarked neutral tones. This has always been the
default, and I would assume that it will remain so.
Yes, using a preceding dot to indicate neutral tone is now sanctioned
but by no means obligatory. Sorry for my misleading wording.
[...]
Charlie ☘
