Prosodic correspondence in tone sandhi (original) (raw)
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Relational Correspondence In Tone Sandhi
2007
This dissertation proposes that the constraint component of OT grammars should be expanded to include a family of faithfulness constraints that evaluate input-output/output-output mappings for the preservation of gross Fo contours (rising, falling, level) across two or more segments. Following Steriade (2006), I refer to constraints in this family as Relational Correspondence constraints. The central tenet of Relational Correspondence is that phonological processes are shaped by pressure to maintain perceptual similarity between correspondent relations between successive elements, or syntagmatic contrast preservation in the auditory domain Fo, as opposed to paradigmatic contrast preservation according to which the well-formedness of an entity is evaluated with reference to the set of entities it contrasts with. Two types of Relational Correspondence are distinguished in this work: Contour and Slope Correspondence. Contour Correspondence, formulated as RELCORR constraints, assesses correspondence of the phonological height (Fo scaling) relation between successive tones. Four height relations are proposed for the tonal contour: "greater than" (x>y), "less than" (x<y), "equal to" (x=y), and "non-equal to" (xey). Preservation of the four scaling relations is contextualized with respect to different degrees of cohesiveness: nucleus-internal, word-internal and across words. Slope Correspondence, formulated as MATCH-SLOPE constraints, requires preservation of the steepness of the Fo contour across successive tones. Relational correspondence provides a unifying account for a number of seemingly unrelated tone sandhi phenomena in genetically diverse languages, while explaining empirical facts that cannot be adequately expressed within the standard Correspondence Theory of faithfulness plus markedness constraints.
Chinese Tone Sandhi and Prosody
roa.rutgers.edu
Tone sandhi is a common occurrence in different varieties, the most famous being Mandarin Chinese, in which a third tone (high-low-high, or falling-rising) followed by another third tone becomes a low-high or rising tone. Traditional accounts of tonal assimilation are argued against, in that they fail to account for the specific outcome of the changed tone, and especially fail when applied to other Chinese dialects with much more complex tone sandhi phenomena.
Testing the Role of Phonetic Naturalness in Mandarin Tone Sandhi
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 2006
It has long been noted that phonological patterning is influenced by phonetic factors. But phonologists diverge on whether phonetic motivations take effect in synchronic or diachronic phonology. This article aims to tease apart the two theories by investigating native Mandarin speakers' applications of two tone sandhi processes to novel words: the phonetically motivated contour reduction 213 21/__T (T 213) and the neutralizing 213 35/__213 whose phonetic motivations are less clear. Twenty Mandarin subjects were asked to produce two monosyllables they heard as disyllabic words. Five groups of disyllabic words were tested: AO-AO (AO=actual occurring morpheme) where the disyllable is also a real word, AO-AO' where the disyllable is nonoccurring, AO-AG (AG=accidental gap in Mandarin lexicon -legal syllable and tone but non-existent combination), AG-AO, and AG-AG. The first syllable is always 213, and the second syllable has one of the four tones in Mandarin. Results show that speakers apply the phonetically more natural 213 21 sandhi more quickly and with greater accuracy than the 213 35 sandhi. Theoretically, the study supports the direct relevance of phonetics to synchronic phonology by showing that there is a psychological advantage to phonetically natural patterns. Methodologically, it complements existing research paradigms that test the nature of the phonology-phonetics relationship, e.g., the study of phonological acquisition and the artificial language paradigm; when extended to other Chinese dialects, it can also provide insights into the long-standing mystery of how Chinese speakers internalise complicated tone sandhi patterns that sometimes involve opacity, near-neutralization, and syntactic dependency.
On the Left-/Right-Branching Asymmetry in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi
Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology
In Mandarin, a left-/right-branching asymmetry is observed when the Tone 3 Sandhi (T3S) process interacts with the syntactic structure of an expression: while expressions that have a left-branching syntactic structure only have a non-alternating sandhi pattern in which all but the rightmost T3 is changed to the sandhi tone, for expressions that have a right-branching syntactic structure various sandhi patterns are possible. This paper proposes that T3S applies cyclically bottom-up on a prosodic structure matched from the syntactic structure of an expression, along the lines of the Match Theory of syntactic-prosodic constituency correspondence (Selkirk 2011). The interaction of Match Phrase constraints and Strong Strong Start, which is a more restricted version of Selkirk’s (2011) Strong Start constraint, predicts that different prosodic structures are possible outputs for a right-branching expression, while for a left-branching expression the only possible output is a left-branching...
Tone Assignment in Second Language Prosodic Learning
In this study we observe the tone assignment patterns in Hong Kong Cantonese speakers' second languages. Based on an examination of new data and a review of previous studies, we verify some tone assignment regularities found in Cantonese speakers' second language pronunciations. We suggest that in the interlanguage phonological system of Cantonese speaker, the assignment of tones within a multi-syllabic word tend to follow the patterns /22-55/, /22-55-11/, /55-11/ or their variant forms, depending on the position of syllables with /55/ assigned. The generalization is also applicable to phrases, clauses and sentences.
Prosodic licensing and Mandarin tone 2 sandhi - Interaction between tone and stress
Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, 2009
This work explores the interaction between tone and stress in contour tone languages. Mandarin tone 2 (hence after T 2) sandhi is focused as this sandhi process is uniformly agreed as being induced by stress. In order to disambiguate the basic facts of this process, an experiment was designed and conducted. Based on the analysis of the results, a prosodic licensing account of T 2 sandhi is provided and two types of relations between tone and stress in Mandarin are attested. Statically, there is a relation between high register and prominence, between low register and non-prominence; between rising contour and prominence and between level tone and non-prominence. Dynamically, stress governs the realization of tone. * This paper is a summary of my PhD evaluation paper from McGill University. My deepest gratitude goes to Heather Goad, who guided me through every stage in conducting this research. Many of the ideas presented here are hers or inspired by the numerous discussions we had in her office. I also would like to thank Glyne Piggott for his thoughtful questions and comments on each draft of my evaluation paper. Thanks also go to the three participants of my experiment for their time and patience.
Lexical and non-lexical tone and prosodic typology
International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of …, 2004
Prosodic typology has generally concentrated on those aspects of prosodic representation which are assumed to be represented in the lexicon. It is argued here that non-lexical representation at various levels, underlying phonological, surface phonological and phonetic, can also constitute a basis for prosodic typology. An example is given of a low-level comparison of English and French pitch patterns. A prosodic model integrating these different levels is presented which, it argued can provide a useful tool for the investigation of prosodic typology and for a more robust basis for establishing the more abstract levels including those of lexical representations.
Prosodic faithfulness and correspondence: Evidence from a Japanese argot
Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 1996
This paper develops a comprehensive optimality-theoretic analysis of a Japanese reversing argot. Similar to other types of prosodic-morphological word formation, the argot shows the activation of constraints defining phonological unmarkedness. This manifests itself in the emergence of optimal prosodic form, within the limits imposed by a game-specific reversal requirement. The latter is formally characterized as Cross-Anchoring, a playful variation of the normal correspondence-theoretic anchoring constraints that are part of the phonological grammar. Under the combined pressure of Cross-Anchoring and high-ranking prosodic form constraints, the argot distorts each ordinary-language base word in the minimal way, otherwise echoing it as faithfully as possible. As an important theoretical result, the analysis presents empirical evidence that prosodic faithfulness needs to be gauged in terms of foot-structural roles, and not (or, not exclusively) in terms of whole foot-sized constituents. Overall, the study demonstrates that the notion of "minimal distortion" operative in argot formation is none else but the principle of minimal violation of a set of ranked constraints, the fundamental tenet of Optimality Theory.
2016
An acoustically-based description is given of the isolation tones and right-dominant tone sandhi in disyllabic words of a male speaker of the Chinese Oūjiāng 甌江 Wu吳 dialect of Wencheng 文成. His seven isolation tones show typical Wu complexity, comprising two mid-level, two rising, two falling-rising and one depressed level pitch shapes. Typical too is his three-way voicing contrast in syllable-Onset stops. However, the typical Wu relationship between tonal register and phonemic Onset voicing is shown to be disrupted, Onset voicing no longer correlating with tonal pitch height. The word-final tones in sandhi are shown to be straightforwardly related, phonologically and phonetically, to the isolation tones, with biuniqueness preserved. The realization of the word-initial tones in sandhi, on the other hand, involves complex mergers conditioned by largely non-phonetic factors related to historical tone categories, resulting in five extra sandhi tones that do not occur in isolation. It is...