Re: Has it been tried to represent tones with punctuation ...

On Jun 20, 5:11 pm, Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.s...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
ranjit_math...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
... in a romanization standard for a tonal language?

For example, using puntuation for Mandarin tones:
kao1=kao
kao2=kao?
kao3=kao!?
kao4=kao!

I have a rather dumb question: Why do tones develop in a language
in the first place?

Language change is not teleological; there are no "because"s.

But what is perceived as the sound of a consonant is not a sound in
itself; it's a deformation of the vowel formants, up or down in pitch,
so it is possible for the closure of a final consonant to be lost with
only the pitch change remaining.
.