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Article published In:
International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 10:1 (2023) ► pp.76–97

Timing specification of Chinese tones

ORCID logo | Zhejiang Ocean University,
Previous research has long been divided on the issues of Chinese tone bearing unit and lexical stress. To help address these issues, the present study proposes a tonal timing framework based on two types of timing units, specified μ and unspecified X. It uses Mandarin third tone sandhi and Shanghai Wu tone split and spread processes to illustrate that the proposed framework can provide a unified account of different tone sandhi processes from the temporal dimension. It also discusses the implications of the framework for the TBU size, default tone type, tonal prominence, tonal foot, word-level prominence, and tone-syllable association.
Keywords: timing units, mora, tone bearing unit, default tone type, tonal foot
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research background
  • 3.The timing-based prominence framework
  • 4.Application of the μX-based framework to different tone sandhi processes in Chinese
    • 4.1The T3-T3 and T3-T0 sandhi processes in Mandarin
    • 4.2The tone split and spread process in Shanghai Wu
  • 5.Theoretical implications
    • 5.1The TBU size
    • 5.2The default tone type
    • 5.3Tonal prominence and tonal foot
    • 5.4Word-level prominence
    • 5.5The tone-syllable association
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.21016.li
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