Testing the Role of Phonetic Naturalness in Mandarin Tone Sandhi

33 Yuwen Lai The University of Kansas [email protected] 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

The productivity of tone sandhi patterns in Wuxi Chinese

The complex tone sandhi patterns of Chinese dialects present analytical challenges to theoretical phonology, and productivity tests can help us address the issue from another perspective. Previous studies have shown that sandhi productivity is negatively affected by phonological opacity, positively affected by clear phonetic motivations, and positively correlated with lexical frequency of the sandhi patterns. It is further argued that the phonological grammar of tone sandhi patterns includes both grammatical constraints and lexical listing. We complement this research endeavor with a sandhi pattern whose productivity has not been previously studied: pattern substitution in Wuxi Chinese. Pattern substitution in Wuxi is left-dominant, whereby the base tone of the first syllable is first replaced by another tone before being spread to the sandhi domain. As a first step towards understanding the productivity of the pattern, we focus on disyllabic combinations between the three Yin tones on non-checked syllables T1, T3, and T5. Twenty native Wuxi Chinese speakers produced four sets of stimuli, including one set of Actual-Occurring real words (AO-AO), two sets of novel words made up of Actual-Occurring morphemes (*AO-AO1, *AO-AO2), and one set of novel words composed of an Accidental-Gap syllable and an Actual-Occurring morpheme (AG-AO). The difference between *AO-AO1 and *AO-AO2 was that the first AO morpheme of *AO-AO1 occurs in the initial position of real disyllable words, while that of *AO-AO2 does not. Both acoustic and statistical analyses were conducted. The results show that speakers had no difficulty producing real words with the expected sandhi, but pattern substitution is not fully productive in novel words. AG-AO showed the lowest productivity, while there was no significant difference between *AO-AO1 and *AO-AO2. This indicates that speakers may have tonal allomorph listings for morphemes as well as for syllables of morphemes (*AO-AO2). When they could not find the syllables in real syllable listing (AG-AO), they tend to spread the base tone of the first syllable or do nothing. Moreover, T3 showed the highest substitution productivity, and the similarity between T3, a low rising tone, and its substitution, a high rising tone, is the highest. It suggests that speakers may rely more on phonetic similarity rather than lexical frequency in applying tone sandhi to novel words

The nature of variation in tone sandhi patterns of Shanghai and Wuxi Wu

The primary goal of this dissertation is to understand the variation patterns in suprasegmental processes and what factors influence the patterns. To answer the questions, we investigated the variation patterns of tone sandhi in the Shanghai and Wuxi Wu dialects of Chinese. Shanghai disyllables and trisyllables have been documented to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal extension and tonal reduction. Some items can only undergo tonal extension, some items can only undergo tonal reduction, and some can variably undergo either type of sandhi. Previous works have indicated that the syntactic structure, semantic transparency, and lexical frequency of the items all play a role in the sandhi application. Additionally, the morpheme length of trisyllabic items (1+2, 2+1) is also expected to affect their sandhi application. A variant forms’ goodness rating experiment, together with a lexical frequency rating experiment and a semantic transparency rating experiment, showed that syntactic structure has a primary effect on sandhi application in general. It overrides the effect of semantic transparency, especially in modifier-noun items. The nature of the lexical frequency effect in Shanghai is related to the syntactic structure of the lexical item. Morpheme length effect is not found. Wuxi disyllables and trisyllables also have been observed to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal substitution and no sandhi. Some items can only apply tonal substitution, and some can apply either form variably. Syntactic structure and semantic transparency have been reported to affect Wuxi sandhi application, and morpheme length is also expected to have an effect in trisyllabic sandhi application. The three rating experiments conducted in Wuxi found that due to the lexical listedness of the opaque substitution pattern, frequency influences both modifier-noun and verb-noun positively, although modifier-noun prefers tonal substitution form more. Semantic transparency effect is only apparent for verb-noun disyllables. Moreover, morpheme length also distinguishes sandhi application between 1+2 and 2+1 modifier-noun items. In all, by using quantitative rating experiments, the present study shows that tone sandhi variation is regulated by both grammatical factors, such as syntactic structure, morpheme length, phonological opacity, and nongrammatical factors, such as lexical frequency

Life across life span on tone sandhi domain: A case study on Huai’an Mandarin

Based on the apparent time and real time data of tone sandhi patterns of the Huai’an dialect of Jianghuai Mandarin, this paper argues that as ages grade, speakers apply Tone 1 sandhi more frequently at the post-lexical level. This phenomenon should be categorized as lifespan change (Sankoff 2008) due to the ongoing diachronically change at the community level where Tone 1 sandhi becomes less frequent at the post-lexical level. By assigning Tone 1 Sandhi variation to sociolinguistic factor of age. This study opens up the possibility that tone sandhi domain variation can be modelled outside phonology and under sociolinguistic framework. Therefore, the issue of tone sandhi domain variation should be seen in a panoramic view where sociolinguistic factors, phonological constraints should be taken into consideration.Ope

Bilingual Frequency in a Favorable Context (BFFC) in the Italian dialectal area. Theoretical preliminaries to the analysis of geminate lateral retroflexion and voiceless plosives aspiration in Antona (MS)

The paper builds a theoretical framework for the application of the Bilingual Frequency in Favorable Context (BFFC) formula to the peculiar Italian linguistic setting. BFFC was first devised as a usage-based tool to weight the frequency effect of non-varying cognate words against the probability of variation phenomena in bilingual settings. Since Italian dialects are sister languages of the standard variety, speakers can be considered bilingual. However, no dialectal frequency corpora for the extraction of essential BFFC components are available. The paper suggests overcoming this hurdle using subjective frequency estimates and testing BFFC effectiveness through a picture-naming task and acceptability ratings. A critical overview of the phonetic features of interest is also presented, advancing proposals for future analyses

Observing the contribution of both underlying and surface representations: Evidence from priming and event-related potentials

This dissertation aims to uncover the role of the acoustic input (the surface representation) and the abstract linguistic representation (the underlying representation) as listeners map the signal during spoken word recognition. To examine these issues, tone sandhi, a tonal alternation phenomenon in which a tone changes to a different tone in certain phonological environments, is investigated. This dissertation first examined how productive Mandarin tone 3 sandhi words (T3 → T2/___T3) are processed and represented. An auditory priming lexical decision experiment was conducted in which each disyllabic tone 3 sandhi target was preceded by a tone 2 monosyllable (surface-tone overlap), a tone 3 monosyllable (underlying-tone overlap), or an unrelated monosyllable (unrelated control). Lexical decision RTs showed a tone 3 (underlying-tone overlap) facilitation effect for both high and low frequency words. A second priming study investigated the processing and representation of the more complex and less productive Taiwanese tone sandhi. Lexical decision RTs, examining sandhi 24 → 33 and 51 → 55, showed that while both sandhi types exhibited facilitatory priming effects, underlying tone primes showed significantly more facilitation than surface primes for sandhi 24 → 33, while surface tone primes showed significantly more facilitation than underlying primes for sandhi 51 → 55, with both effects modulated by frequency. A third study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine Mandarin tone 3 sandhi. Using an oddball paradigm, participants passively listened to either Tone 2 standards ([tʂu2 je4] /tʂu2 je4/), Tone 3 standards ([tʂu3 je4] /tʂu3 je4/), Tone Sandhi standards ([tʂu2 jen3] /tʂu3 jen3/), or Mix standards (i.e., both tone 3 sandhi and tone 3 words), occasionally interspersed with a tone 2 word [tʂu2] (i.e., the deviant). Results showed a mismatch negativity (MMN) in the Tone 2 condition but not in the Sandhi condition, suggesting different neural processing mechanisms for Tone 2 and Sandhi words. Together, the current data suggest that the underlying tone contributes more to the processing of productive tone sandhi and the surface tone contributes more to the processing of less productive tone sandhi. In general, this dissertation provides evidence for the representation and processing of words that involve phonological alternation, both within the same language and across different languages

Cross-Dialectal Novel Word Learning and Borrowing

The objective of this paper was to study the cognitive processes underlying cross-dialectal novel word borrowing and loanword establishment in a Standard-Chinese-to-Shanghainese (SC-SH) auditory lexical learning and borrowing experiment. To investigate these underlying cognitive processes, SC-SH bi-dialectals were compared with SC monolectals as well as bi-dialectals of SC and other Chinese dialects (OD) to investigate the influence of short-term and long-term linguistic experience. Both comprehension and production borrowings were tested. This study found that early and proficient bi-dialectism, even if it is not directly related to the recipient dialect of lexical borrowing, has a protective effect on the ability of cross-dialectal lexical borrowing in early adulthood. Bi-dialectals tend to add separate lexical representations for incidentally encountered dialectal variants, while monolectals tend to assimilate dialectal variants to standard forms. Bi-dialectals, but not monolectals, use etymologically related morphemes between the source and recipient dialects to create nonce-borrowing compounds. Dialectal variability facilitates lexical borrowing via enriching instead of increasing the short-term lexical experience of learners. The long-term bi-dialectal experience of individuals, as well as their short-term exposure to each specific loanword, may collectively shape the route of lexical evolution of co-evolving linguistic varieties.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Tonal split and laryngeal contrast of onset consonant in Lili Wu Chinese

Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic

Sinophone Southeast Asia

This volume explores the diverse linguistic landscape of Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities. Based on archival research and previously unpublished linguistic fieldwork, it unearths a wide variety of language histories, linguistic practices, and trajectories of words. The localized and often marginalized voices we bring to the spotlight are quickly disappearing in the wake of standardization and homogenization, yet they tell a story that is uniquely Southeast Asian in its rich hybridity. Our comparative scope and focus on language, analysed in tandem with history and culture, adds a refreshing dimension to the broader field of Sino-Southeast Asian Studies. . Readership: Students, scholars, (academic) libraries, community organizations, heritage organizations; linguistics, Southeast Asia Studies, East Asia Studies, Overseas Chines