A directional asymmetry in Chinese tone sandhi systems

Abstract

Chinese tone sandhi systems are often classified as left-dominant or right-dominant depending on the position of the syllable retaining the citation tone. An asymmetry exists between the two types of systems: left-dominant sandhi often involves rightward extension of the initial tone to the entire sandhi domain; right-dominant sandhi, however, often involves default insertion and paradigmatic neutralization of nonfinal tones. I argue that the extension of a tone to a larger domain may serve two markedness purposes: the reduction of tonal contours on a syllable and the reduction of pitch differences across syllable boundaries, both of which have a rightward directionality preference. The former is due to the durational advantage afforded by final lengthening; the latter is due to the universal preference for progressive tonal coarticulation. I show that a theory that formally encodes these preferences via intrinsic constraint rankings can predict the directional asymmetry noted above.

The Nature of Variation in Tone Sandhi Patterns of Shanghai and Wuxi Wu

“…Most of Min, Southern Wu, and Mandarin dialects show this type of tone sandhi, including Taiwanese (Cheng, 1968), Wenzhou (Zheng-Zhang, 1964, and Mandarin. Both Yue-Hashimoto (1987) and Zhang (2007) argued that right-dominant sandhi tended to involve local, paradigmatic tone change, as shown in the examples in (1). The Mandarin tone sandhi in (1a)…”

“…last-syllable dominant (right-dominant) and first-syllable dominant (left-dominant) (Yue-Hashimoto, 1987;Zhang, 2007). In right-dominant sandhi, the final syllable in the sandhi domain keeps the base tone, while the preceding syllables undergo sandhi.…”

“…For example, when the tone 24 is combined with any other tone, the tones of the disyllable become 22 + 44, a result of spreading the initial base tone 24. According to Yue-Hashimoto (1987) and Zhang (2007), the rightward spreading pattern, also known as "pattern extension" (Chan & Ren 1989), is typologically the most common pattern in left-dominant tone sandhi. A different pattern that is also attested in left-dominant system is the so-called "pattern substitution" (Chan & Ren, 1989).…”

Tone Sandhi and Tonal Coarticulation in Tianjin Chinese

“…Moreover, from typological studies of tone and tone sandhi such as Hyman and Schuh [1974], Maddieson [1977], Yue-Hashimoto [1987], Bao [1992], Chen [1991Chen [ , 1992Chen [ , 1996Chen [ , 2000, Hyman [2007] and Zhang [2007], we Phonetica 2011;68:161-191 Tone Sandhi and Tonal Coarticulation in Tianjin Chinese have learned that tone sandhi has much in common with tonal coarticulation in its typological characteristics. For example, tone spreading, whereby a tone is realized on a neighboring syllable, is the 'most basic tonal process' [Hyman, 2007, p. 6], and it has the following cross-linguistic properties: it is predominantly progressive [Hyman and Schuh, 1974;Hyman, 2007;Zhang, 2007], and it is more likely to be triggered by a High tone than a Low tone [Maddieson, 1977;Hyman, 2007]. Regressive polarization/ dissimilation that turns a High tone in an H-L sequence into a contrastive Superhigh is also cross-linguistically common [Hyman, 2007].…”

“…Regressive polarization/ dissimilation that turns a High tone in an H-L sequence into a contrastive Superhigh is also cross-linguistically common [Hyman, 2007]. For Chinese languages, their tone sandhi systems can be generally classified as either 'left-dominant' or 'right-dominant,' where 'left' or 'right' refers to the edge syllable in the tone sandhi domain that must maintain the original base tone [Yue-Hashimoto, 1987;Chen, 2000;Zhang, 2007]. Zhang [2007] argued that there is an asymmetry between the two types of sandhis, in that left-dominant sandhi usually involves the extension of the initial tone rightward, while right-dominant sandhi tends to involve local tone changes of the nonfinal syllables that result in contour simplification and neutralization.…”