Testing the applicability of third tone sandhi at the intonation boundary
The case of the monosyllabic topic
The purpose of this study is to test the applicability of Tone Three Sandhi (T3S) when the critical syllable is a monosyllabic topic preceding a topic boundary. A recitation task from 37 native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin was employed. The results from human judgements indicated that the participants predominantly produced the critical syllables with Tone 3 (T3). Additionally, the fundamental frequency of the critical syllables demonstrated a falling contour, showing that T3S was not applied. Intonation break-ups and the prolongation of the critical syllables lent strong support to the view that the topic syllable was at an intonation/phonological phrase-final position. The findings can be elegantly accommodated by constraint-based analyses, which propose that T3S must be avoided when two T3 syllables are separated by an intonation/phonological phrase boundary. Issues relating to pauses, speech rates and word frequency effects are also discussed.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Methods
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2Design
- 2.3Procedure for data collection
- 2.4Equipment and software
- 2.5Human tone judgements
- 2.6Acoustic analyses
- 3.Results
- 3.1Inter-coder reliability
- 3.2Tone preferences for critical syllables
- 3.3F0 contour
- 3.4Duration measurements
- 4.Discussion
- 4.1Theoretical consequences of T3S analyses
- 4.2Pauses, speech rates and T3S application
- 4.3Word frequency effects on T3SA
- 5.Concluding remarks
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
-
References
References
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David
2018 Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (
computer program, version 6.0.42). (
[URL]) (Accessed 2018-08-15.)
Chao, Yuen Ren
1968 A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chen, Matthew Y.
2000 Tone sandhi: Patterns across Chinese dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chen, Yiya
2011 How does phonology guide phonetics in segment–f0 interaction? Journal of Phonetics 39(4). 612–625.
Cheng, Chierh & Xu, Yi
2015 Mechanism of disyllabic tonal reduction in Taiwan Mandarin.
Language and Speech 58(3). 281–314.
Duanmu, San
1990 A formal study of syllable, tone, stress and domain in Chinese languages. Cambridge: MIT. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Duanmu, San
2000 The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Duanmu, San
2007 The phonology of standard Chinese. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hsiao, Yuchau E.
1991 Syntax, rhythm and tone: A triangular relationship. San Diego: University of California at San Diego. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Jeon, Hae-Sung & Nolan, Francis
2017 Prosodic marking of narrow focus in Seoul Korean.
Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 8(1). 1–30. (
Article 2.)
Kentner, Gerrit
2017 Rhythmic parsing.
The Linguistic Review 34(1). 123–155.
Li, Qian & Chen, Yiya
2016 An acoustic study of contextual tonal variation in Tianjin Mandarin.
Journal of Phonetics 541. 123–150.
Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A.
1976 Subject and topic: A new typology of language. In
Li, Charles N. (ed.),
Subject and topic, 457–489. New York: Academic Press.
Liang, Yuan & Wee, Lian-Hee
2006 Beijinghua de lianshang biandiao [Third tone sandhi in Beijing Mandarin].
Zhongguo Yuwen [
Studies of the Chinese Language] 2006(2). 151–163.
Lin, Yen-Hwei
2007 The sounds of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Liu, Chin-Ting Jimbo
2017 Empirical evidence of tone three sandhi acquisition in Mandarin Chinese. Tainan: National Cheng Kung University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Liu, Chin-Ting Jimbo & Chen, Li-mei
2017 Processing conjunctive entailment of disjunction.
Language and Linguistics 18(2). 269–295.
McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan
1993 Prosodic morphology I: Constraint interaction and satisfaction (
Linguistics Department Faculty Publication Series 14). Amherst: University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Prince, Alan & Smolensky, Paul
2004[1993] Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. (
Originally circulated in 1993 as a technical report by the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science.)
Rizzi, Luigi
1997 The fine structure of the left periphery. In
Haegeman, Liliane (ed.),
Elements of grammar: Handbook in generative syntax (
Kluwer International Handbooks of Linguistics 11), 281–337. Dordrecht: Springer.
Shih, Chilin
1986 The prosodic domain of tone sandhi in Chinese. San Diego: University of California at San Diego. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Shih, Chilin
1997 Mandarin third tone sandhi and prosodic structure. In
Wang, Jialing &
Smith, Norval (eds.),
Studies in Chinese phonology (
Linguistic Models 20), 81–124. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Sun, Chaofen
2006 Chinese: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tsao, Feng-Fu
1979 A functional study of topic in Chinese: The first step towards discourse analysis. Taipei: Student Book.
Tseng, Chiu-yu
2010 Yupian de jipingouzu yu yuliuyunlu tixian [An F0 analysis of discourse construction and global information in realized narrative prosody].
Language and Linguistics 11(2). 183–218.
Wang, Chiung-Yao
2011 Children’s acquisition of tone 3 sandhi in Mandarin. East Lansing: Michigan State University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Wang, Chiung-Yao & Lin, Yen-Hwei
2011 Variation in tone 3 sandhi in Mandarin: The case of prepositions and pronouns. In
Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo (ed.),
Proceedings of the 23rd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (23rd NACCL), vol. 11, 138–155. Eugene: University of Oregon.
Wang, Yue & Jongman, Allard & Sereno, Joan A.
2003 Acoustic and perceptual evaluation of Mandarin tone productions before and after perceptual training.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113(2). 1033–1043.
Wee, Lian-Hee
2004 Inter-tier Correspondence Theory. Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Wee, Lian-Hee
2008 Opacity from constituency.
Language and Linguistics 9(1). 127–160.
Wong, Puisan
2012 Acoustic characteristics of three-year-olds’ correct and incorrect monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tone productions.
Journal of Phonetics 40(1). 141–151.
Xu, Yi
1993 Contextual tonal variation in Mandarin Chinese. Storrs: The University of Connecticut. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Xu, Yi
1997 Contextual tonal variations in Mandarin.
Journal of Phonetics 25(1). 61–83.
Xu, Yi
1998 Consistency of tone-syllable alignment across different syllable structures and speaking rates.
Phonetica 55(4). 179–203.
Xu, Yi & Wang, Maolin
2009 Organizing syllables into groups—Evidence from F0 and duration patterns in Mandarin.
Journal of Phonetics 37(4). 502–520.
Yin, Hui
2003 The blocking of tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese. In
Burelle, Sophie &
Somesfalean, Stanca (eds.),
Proceedings of the 2003 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, 296–307. Quebec: University of Quebec.
Yip, Moira
2002 Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yuan, Jiahong & Chen, Yiya
2014 3rd tone sandhi in standard Chinese: A corpus approach.
Journal of Chinese Linguistics 42(1). 218–236.
Zhang, Jie & Lai, Yuwen
2010 Testing the role of phonetic knowledge in Mandarin tone sandhi.
Phonology 27(1). 153–201.
Zhang, Ning
1997 The avoidance of the third tone sandhi in Mandarin Chinese.
Journal of East Asian Linguistics 6(4). 293–338.
Zhang, Zheng-sheng
1988 Tone and tone sandhi in Chinese. Columbus: The Ohio State University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Wang, Yuyun
2024.
Right node raising in Mandarin Chinese: are we moving right?.
Linguistics 0:0
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.