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Please contact [email protected] or consult our website: www.benjamins.com Pattern substitution in Wuxi tone sandhi and its implication for phonological learning Hanbo Yan and Jie Zhang University of Kansas Tone sandhi in Wuxi Chinese involves “pattern substitution,” whereby the base tone on the first syllable is first substituted by another tone, then spread to the sandhi domain. We conducted a wug test to investigate native Wuxi speakers’ tacit knowledge of tone sandhi and found that the substituion aspect of the sandhi is not fully productive, but the extension aspect is, and sandhi produc- tivity is influenced by the phonetic similarity between base and sandhi tones. These results are discussed in the context of how phonological opacity, phonetic naturalness, and lexical frequency influence phonological learning, and a gram- matical learning model that can predict Wuxi speakers’ experimental behavior is proposed. Keywords: Tone Sandhi, productivity, Wuxi, opacity, Maximum Entropy grammar 1. Introduction 1.1 Tone sandhi in Chinese dialects The phonetic pitch on a syllable distinguishes lexical meaning in tone languages like Chinese. Like other phonological features, tones may participate in phono- logical alternation triggered by the tonal or prosodic/morphosyntactic context in which they appear. This type of alternation in Chinese dialects is typically referred to as tone sandhi (Chen, 2000; Zhang, 2014a, b). Typologically, tone sandhi patterns in Chinese dialects fall under two dif- ferent varieties: last-syllable dominant (right-dominant) and first-syllable domi- nant (left-dominant) (Yue-Hashimoto, 1987; Zhang, 2007). In right-dominant sandhi, the final syllable in the sandhi domain keeps the citation tone, while the preceding syllables undergo sandhi. Most of Min, Southern Wu, and Mandarin International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 3:1 (2016), 1–44. doi 10.1075/ijchl.3.1.01yan issn 2213–8706 / e-issn 2213–8714 © John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 Hanbo Yan and Jie Zhang dialects show this type of tone sandhi, such as Taiwanese (Cheng, 1968), Wenzhou (Zheng-Zhang, 1964, 1980), and Mandarin. Both Yue-Hashimoto (1987) and Zhang (2007) argued that right-dominant sandhi tends to involve local, paradig- matic tone change, as shown in the examples in (1). The Mandarin tone sandhi in (1a) shows that a nonfinal dipping tone 213 (Tone 3) alternates to a rising tone 35 (Tone 2) before another dipping tone; the Taiwanese tone sandhi in (1b) shows that a tone undergoes a regular change whenever it appears in non-phrase-final positions regardless of the tone in final position, and four of the five tones are involved in a circular chain shift. In left-dominant sandhi, the tone on the first syllable in the sandhi domain is maintained while the following syllables undergo sandhi. It is generally found in Northern Wu dialects such as Shanghai (Zee & Maddieson, 1979) and Changzhou (Wang, 1988). The Shanghai tone sandhi in (2) involves spreading the tone of the first syllable to a disyllabic sandhi domain. For example, when 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 the typologically most common pat- tern in left-dominant tone sandhi. (1) Right-dominant sandhi: a. Mandarin third tone sandhi: 213 → 35 / ___213 b. Taiwanese tone sandhi: 51 → 55 → 33 ← 24 in non-phrase-final positions ↖ ↙ 21 (2) Left-dominant sandhi: pattern extension in Shanghai: 24 + X → 22 + 44 (“X” refers to any tone in the Shanghai tonal inventory.) These complex tone sandhi patterns of Chinese dialects have presented con- siderable challenge to theoretical phonology, for a number of reasons. First, the sandhi patterns in Chinese dialects can be extremely complex, and any tone in the inventory may alternate, as we will see in the Wuxi example later on. Second, the articulatory and perceptual motivation of tone sandhi may have been lost during diachronic change and cannot be found in the current synchronic systems. For example, the shang → yang ping / __ shang sandhi, realized in Mandarin as 213 → 35 / __ 213, has cognates in many Mandarin dialects, indicating a common his- torical origin for the sandhi. But the phonetic realizations of the shang and yang ping tones in these dialects might be quite different (Court, 1985); for instance, in Tianjin, the sandhi is 13 → 45 / __ 13 (Yang, Guo, & Shi, 1999), and in Jinan, it is © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved Pattern substitution in Wuxi tone sandhi and its implication for phonological learning 3 55 → 42 / __ 55 (Qian & Zhu, 1998). This indicates that the synchronic pattern in Mandarin does not necessarily reflect any articulatory or perceptual motivations that may have existed historically.1 Third, some tone sandhi patterns are phono- logically opaque (Kiparsky, 1973),2 such as the Taiwanese pattern in (1b). This poses problems for surface oriented phonological theories. Moreton (2004), for example, showed that a circular chain shift, as found in Taiwanese tone sandhi, is incomputable by standard Optimality Theory that only assumes IO-faithfulness and markedness constraints. For these reasons, many researchers found it difficult to account for complex tone sandhi patterns in synchronic phonology (e.g., Chen, 2000; Lin, 2008; Zhang, 1999; Wang, 2002; Yip, 1999, 2004), particularly using constraint-based Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993, 2004). However, we can address this issue from another perspective, i.e., whether native speakers’ tacit knowledge of the tone sandhi patterns is accurately reflected in the synchronic sandhi patterns; in other words, whether the observed sandhi patterns are truly productive, as evidenced by nonce probe tests. If the sandhi pat- terns are truly productive, then the theoretic issues mentioned above indeed need to be addressed head-on. If not, however, then it is likely that the sandhi patterns are more due to lexical listing rather than input-output derivations. Recent productivity studies have shown that the Chinese sandhi patterns are not entirely productive in novel words. Most of them have been conducted in right-dominant sandhi systems, such as Taiwanese (Hsieh, 1970; Wang, 1993; Zhang, Lai, & Sailor, 2009, 2011), Mandarin (Zhang & Lai, 2010), and Tianjin (Zhang & Liu, 2011). The only dialect with left-dominant sandhi that has been tested is Shanghai (Zhang & Meng, 2012). These studies investigated the different factors that could potentially influence the productivity of tone sandhi, such as phonological opacity, phonetic naturalness, and lexical tone frequency. In the next section, a brief review of the relevant productivity studies is provided. 1.2 Experimental studies addressing the productivity of tone sandhi Hsieh (1970) investigated native speakers’ phonological knowledge of Taiwanese tone sandhi using a wug test. The result showed that speakers had no difficulty pronouncing actual noun compounds. But they had difficulty with the circular 1. We do not mean to imply that the historical origin of tone sandhi is necessarily articulatorily or perceptually based. We are simply stating that even if a sandhi did have such a motivation at an earlier stage, it may not appear so in the current synchronic systems. 2. A phonological rule P, A → B / C__D, is opaque if the surface structures are any of the fol- lowing: (a) instance of A in the C__D environment, or (b) instance of B derived by P in environ- ments other than C__D (Kiparsky, 1973). © 2016. John Benjamins Publishing Company All rights reserved 4 Hanbo Yan and Jie Zhang chain shift in novel compounds. During the wug test, if they could identify the monosyllabic morphemes in the novel compounds, they applied the expected san- dhi; if not, they repeated the syllables without sandhi. Wang (1993) used a similar method to investigate Taiwanese tone sandhi, but also included a longitudinal component. He discovered an overall higher sandhi productivity and also observed that the subjects produced more sandhi patterns in the later period of the experiment, indicating a practice and learning effect. Wang also pointed out that there was a large variation between the sandhi productivity of different base tones. He assumed that both the citation tone and the sandhi tone existed in the speakers’ lexicon. The words and phrases are connected by phonemes, lexical entries, and semantics in substructures, which form an analogi- cal chain. According to him, language is not rule-governed, but a connection of analogical chains, and speakers use this knowledge in production. Zhang et. al. (2009, 2011) investigated the productivity of the sandhi pattern in reduplication in Taiwanese. They discovered that when the syllables did not exist, speakers produced significantly less sandhi. Moreover, both duration of the sandhi tones and the lexical frequency of the base tones influenced the productiv- ity among the opaque mappings. For example, the two falling tones 51 and 21 have considerably shorter durations than 55, 33, and 24 according to acoustic studies (Lin, 1988; Peng, 1997).