Exploring pitch and duration reflexes in Taiwanese Southern Min tones and variations across generations

Extensive research has explored tonal contrasts, dialectal differences, and sandhi patterns of Taiwanese Southern Min tones. However, the duration reflexes of these tones, which hold theoretical significance, and their potential variations between the older generation, who use Taiwanese Southern Min as a first language, and the younger generation, who use it as a “heritage” or second language, have received comparatively less attention. In a sizable corpus study, we demonstrated that Taiwanese Southern Min syllables are best described as bimoraic, akin to other Chinese dialects, where syllables with fewer segments have comparable durations to those with more segments, and vowel durations in simpler syllable structures are longer than those in more complex structures. Furthermore, lexical tone durations partially follow patterns observed cross-linguistically, with rising tones produced longer than falling tones, and tones with higher F0 produced shorter than those with lower F0. Finally, we observed a much narrower tonal space in young speakers compared to old speakers, with less separation in their F0 trajectories in both level and contour tone productions. Our comprehensive study delves into underexplored Taiwanese Southern Min tonal duration reflexes, shedding light on potential generational variations and contributing to a better understanding of sound change trajectories.