4. The phonetic characteristic of the Chinese language results in its obvious musicality-pleasant in sound, gentle in tone, clear in temps and harmonious in rhythm.
The Indo-European language family uses stressed and unstressed and long and short sounds as the phonetic
formulas to distinguish words. The Chinese language is different. The phonetic formulas of it differ from the phonetic formulas of the Western language. They do not have multi-consonants and they form less syllables. All their syllables consist of sound, rhyme and tone. The syllables of the Chinese language are characterized by the combination of a vowel and consonant. Consonants are also called the male sounds and vowels are also called the female sounds. A syllable of the Chinese language is combination of a male sound and a female sound and the tone is a special characteristic of the Chinese syllable.
As is stated in the “Compendium of Linguistics” written by Ye Cishen and Xu Tongqian, “The tones serve to distinguish one phonic way from another phonic way of word in the Chinese language. The tones may be rising or falling and the same syllable with different tones will generate varied phonic ways and different meanings. For instance , “妈” (mother) , “麻” (linen) , “马” (horse) and “骂” (curse) are all composed of similar consonants and vowels and all have the sound of “ma” , but their different tones , change significantly their pronunciation and their meanings . The variation of tones 
not only affects their meaning, but also their grammatical functions. The same word can function differently in grammar with different tones .Take a verb to illustrate this point.
Ms. Wang Li stated: “Any verbs derived from nouns and adjectives should be pronounced in the fourth tone; any nouns derived from verbs should be pronounced in the fourth tone. In fine, all derivatives are pronounced in the fourth tone”. At the same time, variations of tones contribute to the modulatory musicality of the Chinese language.
What is more, since the greatest characteristic of the phonics of the Chinese language is to make the syllables the basic units, with no sound element in the syllable dominating, the borders between the syllables are very clear, which is favorable for yielding a pleasant rhythm. The classical Chinese poems exploit this characteristic to arrange the regular yet varied rhythmic unit’s .Take Fine at Evening, a poem by Li Shangyin as an example:
