Using Nonce-probe Tests and Auditory Priming to Investigate Speakers' Phonological Knowledge of Tone Sandhi

Zhang, Jie

doi:10.21437/tal.2016-3

Cited by 16 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…First, as previously mentioned, tone deletion is not attested in Mandarin or in Cantonese, which can minimize native language influence. Second, previous studies reported that tone sandhi patterns were not easily learnable in experimental settings (Zhang and Lai, 2010;Zhang, 2016;Zhang and Liu, 2016), which makes tone sandhi not an ideal testing site. For example, the nonce-probe tests conducted by Zhang (2016) showed that opaque Chinese tone sandhi patterns lacked full productivity and often failed to be applied to novel words.…”

Section: Tone Alternations In Mandarin 4 and In Cantonesementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, previous studies reported that tone sandhi patterns were not easily learnable in experimental settings (Zhang and Lai, 2010;Zhang, 2016;Zhang and Liu, 2016), which makes tone sandhi not an ideal testing site. For example, the nonce-probe tests conducted by Zhang (2016) showed that opaque Chinese tone sandhi patterns lacked full productivity and often failed to be applied to novel words. And even a number of fully productive sandhi patterns in the lexicon in Tianjin were not easily learnable by Tianjin speakers (Zhang and Liu, 2016).…”

Section: Tone Alternations In Mandarin 4 and In Cantonesementioning

confidence: 99%

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Phonetically Grounded Structural Bias in Learning Tonal Alternations

Huang

2021

Front. Psychol.

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This study investigates the hypothesis that tone alternation directionality becomes a basis of structural bias for tone alternation learning, where “structural bias” refers to a tendency to prefer uni-directional tone deletions to bi-directional ones. Two experiments were conducted. In the first, Mandarin speakers learned three artificial languages, with bi-directional tone deletions, uni-directional, left-dominant deletions, and uni-directional, right-dominant deletions, respectively. The results showed a learning bias toward uni-directional, right-dominant patterns. As Mandarin tone sandhi is right-dominant while Cantonese tone change is lexically restricted and does not have directionality asymmetry, a follow-up experiment trained Cantonese speakers either on left- or right-dominant deletions to see whether the right-dominant preference was due to L1 transfer from Mandarin. The results of the experiment also showed a learning bias toward right-dominant patterns. We argue that structural simplicity affects tone deletion learning but the simplicity should be grounded on phonetics factors, such as syllables’ contour-tone bearing ability. The experimental results are consistent with the findings of a survey on other types of tone alternation’s directionality, i.e., tone sandhi across 17 Chinese varieties. This suggests that the directionality asymmetry found across different tone alternations reflects a phonetically grounded structural learning bias.

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Section: Tone Alternations In Mandarin 4 and In Cantonesementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tone Alternations In Mandarin 4 and In Cantonesementioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetically Grounded Structural Bias in Learning Tonal Alternations

Huang

2021

Front. Psychol.

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“…Recent studies of Chinese sandhi systems have been exploring the productivity of sandhi through nonce word (wug) testing (see e.g. Hsieh 1970;1975;1976;Zhang and Lai 2008;Zhang, Lai and Sailor 2009;Chuang, Chang, and Hsieh 2011;Zhang 2016;Zhang and Meng 2016, etc. ), with varying results.…”

Section: Productivity: Evidence From Alienable Nounsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seenku argument-head tone sandhi: Allomorph selection in a cyclic grammar

McPherson

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Seenku (Mande, Burkina Faso) displays a complex tone sandhi system, sensitive to phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure. In this paper, I argue that the opaque, phonetically unnatural alternations are best accounted for in an allomorph selection approach, following work by Tsay and Myers (1996), Zhang and Lai (2008), and others on Taiwanese Southern Min sandhi. In this model, lexical entries contain multiple surface allomorphs along with subcategorization frames, and forms that follow the same pattern are abstracted into increasingly general lexical templates or schemas. Morphology is post-syntactic, with syntactic structure matched with lexical entries, along the lines of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Embick and Noyer 2007), but with a richer generative lexicon, as in Construction Morphology (Booij 2010b) or analogical approaches to word formation (e.g. Bybee 1995). The domains of application and the interaction of tone sandhi with both itself and other morphotonological processes point to the need for cyclic application, which I implement using phase-based spell out (Uriagereka 1999; Chomsky 2000). This approach allows for productive extension of the patterns without recourse to an overly complicated phonological component.

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Phonological Tone

Wee¹

2019

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Using Nonce-probe Tests and Auditory Priming to Investigate Speakers' Phonological Knowledge of Tone Sandhi

Cited by 16 publications

References 23 publications

Phonetically Grounded Structural Bias in Learning Tonal Alternations

Phonetically Grounded Structural Bias in Learning Tonal Alternations

Seenku argument-head tone sandhi: Allomorph selection in a cyclic grammar

Phonological Tone

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