The Falling of the Rising Tone in Mandarin Chinese (original) (raw)

This paper mainly examines four issues within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993): the nature of the changed Tone 2, Tone 2 Sandhi (T2S), Tone 3 Sandhi (T3S), the interaction with T2S and T3S. T2S refers to the phenomenon in which the contour of final Tone 2s produced by Southern Min (SM) speakers in Taiwan becomes falling. In this paper, T2S is treated as a weakening/neutralization process in final positions. Phonetic evidence shows that the changed Tone 2 does fall. Evidence from perception and its interaction with T3S imply that changed Tone 2 is phonologically Tone 3. For T2S, the constraint *Rising ]#, which disallow rising contour in final positions, is proposed to be the triggering constraints. To avoid violating *Rising ]#, a final Tone 2 is forced to change. This paper shows that this T2S, as well as its interaction with T3S, can be well captured in OT.