DOCSLIB.ORG

THE NATURE of VARIATION in TONE SANDHI PATTERNS of SHANGHAI and WUXI WU by Hanbo Yan Submitted to the Graduate Degree Program In

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE NATURE of VARIATION in TONE SANDHI PATTERNS of SHANGHAI and WUXI WU by Hanbo Yan Submitted to the Graduate Degree Program In THE NATURE OF VARIATION IN TONE SANDHI PATTERNS OF SHANGHAI AND WUXI WU By © 2016 Hanbo Yan Submitted to the graduate degree program in Linguistics and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Jie Zhang ________________________________ Dr. Allard Jongman ________________________________ Dr. Joan Sereno ________________________________ Dr. Annie Tremblay ________________________________ Dr. Yan Li Date Defended: 05/11/2016 ii The Dissertation Committee for Hanbo Yan certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE NATURE OF VARIATION IN TONE SANDHI PATTERNS OF SHANGHAI AND WUXI WU ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Jie Zhang Date approved: 05/26/2016 iii Abstract The primary goal of this dissertation is to understand the variation patterns in suprasegmental processes and what factors influence the patterns. To answer the questions, we investigated the variation patterns of tone sandhi in the Shanghai and Wuxi Wu dialects of Chinese. Shanghai disyllables and trisyllables have been documented to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal extension and tonal reduction. Some items can only undergo tonal extension, some items can only undergo tonal reduction, and some can variably undergo either type of sandhi. Previous works have indicated that the syntactic structure, semantic transparency, and lexical frequency of the items all play a role in the sandhi application. Additionally, the morpheme length of trisyllabic items (1+2, 2+1) is also expected to affect their sandhi application. A variant forms’ goodness rating experiment, together with a lexical frequency rating experiment and a semantic transparency rating experiment, showed that syntactic structure has a primary effect on sandhi application in general. It overrides the effect of semantic transparency, especially in modifier-noun items. The nature of the lexical frequency effect in Shanghai is related to the syntactic structure of the lexical item. Morpheme length effect is not found. Wuxi disyllables and trisyllables also have been observed to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal substitution and no sandhi. Some items can only apply tonal substitution, and some can apply either form variably. Syntactic structure and semantic transparency have been iv reported to affect Wuxi sandhi application, and morpheme length is also expected to have an effect in trisyllabic sandhi application. The three rating experiments conducted in Wuxi found that due to the lexical listedness of the opaque substitution pattern, frequency influences both modifier-noun and verb-noun positively, although modifier-noun prefers tonal substitution form more. Semantic transparency effect is only apparent for verb-noun disyllables. Moreover, morpheme length also distinguishes sandhi application between 1+2 and 2+1 modifier-noun items. In all, by using quantitative rating experiments, the present study shows that tone sandhi variation is regulated by both grammatical factors, such as syntactic structure, morpheme length, phonological opacity, and nongrammatical factors, such as lexical frequency. v Acknowledgements There are so many people I have felt truly grateful to throughout the process of completing my dissertation. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my amazing advisor, Dr. Jie Zhang. Dr. Zhang has broadened my view of linguistics studies, set the best model for combining theoretical analysis and experimental research, and given me invaluable guidance during my academic life at KU. I would not have been able to complete my dissertation without the training that I received from working with Dr. Zhang. To choose to come to KU and to be supervised by Dr. Zhang was the wisest decision that I have made in my life. Many thanks also go to my other committee members. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Allard Jongman and Dr. Joan Sereno. They have been there for me ever since I began my master’s thesis. Their valuable suggestions on my projects and the training I received in their lectures are the solid foundation I needed to become a real linguist. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Annie Tremblay, for her guidance on statistical analysis and training on eye-tracking techniques. Both of these skills are invaluable, and will continue to be beneficial to my future research. Thank you also to Dr. Yan Li for being the department external member on my committee. Dr. Li not only helped me by proposing questions and providing suggestions regarding my dissertation, but has also set the model for me as an exceptional Chinese teacher. It has truly been my privilege to work with all of you. Moreover, I was really lucky to study in the Linguistics Department at KU. The courses offered were all well-constructed and clearly-given by the professors, which broadened my vi knowledge of linguistics. There is not enough space to list everyone who made my graduate study life better, but I would especially like to thank Dr. Robert Fiorentino, Dr. Utako Minai, and Corinna Johnson for their generous help and support. I also would like to express my appreciation for my friends and fellow colleagues, especially Fanghao Chen, Longcan Huang, Yingjie Li, Jie Liu, Juncheng Lu, and Shasha Zhang for their genuine friendship. I also owe much gratitude to my colleagues, especially Kelly Berkson, Yu-Fu Chien, Katrina Connell, Goun Lee, Mingxing Li, Maite Martínez García, Stephen Politzer-Ahles, and Wen-Chi Yeh. They have listened to my presentations with patience, given useful suggestions, and helped me learn about various linguistic methodologies over the past five years. Last but not least, I highly appreciate my family’s support in every decision I made and being there for me whenever I need them. To my mom, Hong Yi, thank you for taking good care of me and always being supportive. Thank you to my dad, Zhenhai Yan, for always trusting me and supporting me without complaints. I could have never been here without your love and support. Xiexie. vii Table of Contents Chapter I: INTRODUCTION TO TONE SANDHI VARIATION ............................... 1 1.1 Background and purpose ............................................................................................ 1 1.2 Overview of the dissertation ...................................................................................... 2 1.3 Significance of the dissertation .................................................................................. 3 1.4 Variation in phonology .............................................................................................. 4 1.5 Variation in tone sandhi ............................................................................................. 7 Chapter II: SHANGHAI AND WUXI TONE SANDHI ................................................. 14 2.1 Shanghai tone sandhi patterns .................................................................................. 14 2.1.1 Disyllables ........................................................................................................ 15 2.1.2 Trisyllables ....................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Wuxi tone sandhi patterns ........................................................................................ 25 2.2.1 Disyllables ........................................................................................................ 26 2.2.2 Trisyllables ....................................................................................................... 29 2.3 Shanghai & Wuxi tone sandhi comparison .............................................................. 34 2.4 Summary .................................................................................................................. 38 Chapter III: FACTORS AFFECTING TONE SANDHI APPLICATION ................ 39 3.1 Lexical frequency ..................................................................................................... 39 3.2 Semantic transparency ............................................................................................. 47 3.3 Syntactic structure .................................................................................................... 53 viii 3.4 Morpheme length ..................................................................................................... 58 Chapter IV: EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE NATURE OF TONE SANDHI VARIATION IN SHANGHAI ............................................................................. 64 4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 64 4.2 Research questions ................................................................................................... 64 4.3 Methodology ............................................................................................................ 66 4.3.1 Materials .......................................................................................................... 66 4.3.2 Participants ....................................................................................................... 69 4.3.3 Experiment 1: Variant forms goodness rating ................................................. 69 4.3.4 Experiment 2: Lexical frequency rating .......................................................... 71 4.3.5 Experiment 3: Semantic
Load more

Recommended publications
  • T3 Sandhi Rules of Different Prosodic Hierarchies
    T3 Sandhi rules of different prosodic hierarchies Abstract This study conducts acoustic analysis on T3 sandhi of two characters across different boundaries of prosodic hierarchies. The experimental data partly support Chen (2000)’s view about sandhi domain that “T3 sandhi takes place obligatorily within MRU”, and “sandhi rule can not apply cross intonation phrase boundary”. Nonetheless, the results do not support his claim that “there are no intermediate sandhi hierarchies between MRU and intonation phrase”. On the contrary, it is found that, although T3 sandhi could occur across all kinds of hierarchical boundaries between MRU and intonation phrase, T3 sandhi rules within a foot (prosodic word), or between foots without pause, or between pauses without intonation (phonology phrase) are very different in terms of acoustic properties. Furthermore, based on the facts that (1) T3 sandhi could occur cross boundary of pauses and (2) phrase-final sandhi could be significantly lengthening, it is argued that T3 sandhi is due to dissimilation of low tones, rather than duration reduction within MRU domain. It is also demonstrated that tone sandhi and prosodic hierarchies may not be equivalently evaluated in Chinese phonology. Prosodic hierarchies are determined by pause and lengthening, not by tone sandhi. Key words: tone sandhi; prosodic hierarchies; boundary; Mandarin Chinese 1 Introduction So-called T3 sandhi in mandarin Chinese has been widely discussed in Chinese Phonology. Mandarin Chinese has four tones: T1 (level 55), T2 (rising 35), T3 (low-rise 214), T4 (falling 51).Generally, when a T3 is followed by another T3, it turns into T2. The rule could be simply stated as: 214->35/ ___214.
    [Show full text]
  • A Corpus Study of the 3 Tone Sandhi in Standard Chinese
    A Corpus Study of the 3 rd Tone Sandhi in Standard Chinese Yiya Chen 1, Jiahong Yuan 2 1 Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen 2 Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania [email protected], [email protected] (Zhang 1988, Shih 1997, M. Chen 2000, Chen 2003, Chen Abstract 2004). Speer et al. (1989) show that listeners are indeed In Standard Chinese, a Low tone (Tone3) is often realized sensitive to a constituent’s phrasal structure in judging the application of the 3 rd tone Sandhi to constituents which could with a rising F0 contour before another Low tone, known as the 3rd tone Sandhi. This study investigates the acoustic be ambiguous between an underlying Rising tone and a characteristics of the 3rd tone Sandhi in Standard Chinese Sandhi Rising tone. Their results suggest the possibility that the higher linguistic boundary it is between two Low tones, using a large telephone conversation speech corpus. Sandhi rd Rising was found to be different from the underlying Rising the less likely the 3 tone sandhi rule is applied. With regard tone (Tone2) in bi-syllabic words in two measures: the to the difference between the underlying Rising tone and the Sandhi Rising tone, Peng (2000) show that the F0 maximum magnitude of the F 0 rising and the time span of the F 0 rising. We also found different effects of word frequency on Sandhi of SR is lower than R. Furthermore, in fast speech, a Sandhi Rising and the underlying Rising tones. Finally, for tri- Rising tone may flatten and show no apparent F0 rise (Kuo, syllabic constituents with Low tone only, constituent Xu, and Yip, to appear).
    [Show full text]
  • The Phonetics-Phonology Interface in Romance Languages José Ignacio Hualde, Ioana Chitoran
    Surface sound and underlying structure : The phonetics-phonology interface in Romance languages José Ignacio Hualde, Ioana Chitoran To cite this version: José Ignacio Hualde, Ioana Chitoran. Surface sound and underlying structure : The phonetics- phonology interface in Romance languages. S. Fischer and C. Gabriel. Manual of grammatical interfaces in Romance, 10, Mouton de Gruyter, pp.23-40, 2016, Manuals of Romance Linguistics, 978-3-11-031186-0. hal-01226122 HAL Id: hal-01226122 https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01226122 Submitted on 24 Dec 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance MRL 10 Brought to you by | Université de Paris Mathematiques-Recherche Authenticated | [email protected] Download Date | 11/1/16 3:56 PM Manuals of Romance Linguistics Manuels de linguistique romane Manuali di linguistica romanza Manuales de lingüística románica Edited by Günter Holtus and Fernando Sánchez Miret Volume 10 Brought to you by | Université de Paris Mathematiques-Recherche Authenticated | [email protected] Download Date | 11/1/16 3:56 PM Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance Edited by Susann Fischer and Christoph Gabriel Brought to you by | Université de Paris Mathematiques-Recherche Authenticated | [email protected] Download Date | 11/1/16 3:56 PM ISBN 978-3-11-031178-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-031186-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-039483-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
    [Show full text]
  • The Domain of Liaison: Theories and Data*
    The domain of liaison: theories and data* GEERT BOOIJ and DAAN DE JONG Abstract In this paper it is argued that current theories of the domain of liaison are inadequate. It is shown thai 'domain' is a variable intralinguistic constraint on the (variable) rule of liaison. The variable nature of liaison is also apparent from the fact that its rate of application covaries with extralinguis- tic factors such as style and social class. These results also show that rules of sentence phonology should be based on reliable corpora of spoken language. 1. Introduction Liaison can be seen as the phenomenon of latent word-final consonants surfacing phonetically before a vowel-initial word. For instance, in petit ami [p(9)titami] 'little friend' the final / of petit is realized phonetically, whereas it does not surface in petit garςon [p(3)tigars5] 4small boy', because the following word begins with a consonant. These latent consonants also surface in inflectional and derivational morphology, as petite [p(s)tit] 'small', fern, sg., and petitesse [ptites] 'smallness' illustrate. A survey of alternative views of liaison is presented in Klausenburger (1984). The liaison consonant is usually (but not always, see Encreve 1983) tautosyllabic with the next word, the first fragment of the second word, as is illustrated by the syllabification of petit ami: (ρίί)σ(ΐ3)σ(ηιί)á where σ = syllable. That is, liaison usually implies enchamement.1 In this paper, we will focus on one particular problem in the analysis of liaison, its domain of application. It is well known that liaison only applies within certain environments.
    [Show full text]
  • Zhushan Mandarin
    ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE IPA Zhushan Mandarin Yiya Chen Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC) [email protected] Li Guo Shanghai International Studies University [email protected] Zhushan Mandarin (ㄩኡ䈍) is a dialect of Mandarin Chinese (ISO 639-3; code: cmn) spoken in the Zhushan county (ㄩኡ৯), which belongs to the city of Shiyan (ॱ๠ᐲ) in Hubei Province (⒆ेⴱ), the People’s Republic of China. As shown in Figure 1, the county borders the city of Chongqing (䟽ᒶᐲ) to the south and Shaanxi Province (䲅㾯ⴱ) to the north. It has an area of 3,586 km2 and a population of about 4.7 million residents (Hubei Province Annals Committee 2017). The general consensus is that it is a Mandarin dialect (LAC 2012). However, there have been debates on the proper classification of this dialect as belonging to the Jianghuai Mandarin group (⊏␞ᇈ䈍) (e.g. Coblin 2005,X.B.Liu2007)ortothe Southwestern Mandarin group (㾯ইᇈ䈍) (e.g. Ting 1996,X.C.Liu2005,L.Li2009). Figure 1 Map of Zhushan County and its surrounding areas. The debated status of Zhushan Mandarin is believed to result not only from the influ- ence of the dialects from surrounding regions but also from the “combined effects of inheritance and convergence” in its linguistic system (Coblin 2005: 111). Many speakers Journal of the International Phonetic Association, page 1 of 19 © International Phonetic Association This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), whichpermitsunrestrictedre-use,distribution,andreproductioninanymedium,providedtheoriginalworkisproperlycited.
    [Show full text]
  • Glottal Stop Initials and Nasalization in Sino-Vietnamese and Southern Chinese
    Glottal Stop Initials and Nasalization in Sino-Vietnamese and Southern Chinese Grainger Lanneau A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Washington 2020 Committee: Zev Handel William Boltz Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Asian Languages and Literature ©Copyright 2020 Grainger Lanneau University of Washington Abstract Glottal Stop Initials and Nasalization in Sino-Vietnamese and Southern Chinese Grainger Lanneau Chair of Supervisory Committee: Professor Zev Handel Asian Languages and Literature Middle Chinese glottal stop Ying [ʔ-] initials usually develop into zero initials with rare occasions of nasalization in modern day Sinitic1 languages and Sino-Vietnamese. Scholars such as Edwin Pullyblank (1984) and Jiang Jialu (2011) have briefly mentioned this development but have not yet thoroughly investigated it. There are approximately 26 Sino-Vietnamese words2 with Ying- initials that nasalize. Scholars such as John Phan (2013: 2016) and Hilario deSousa (2016) argue that Sino-Vietnamese in part comes from a spoken interaction between Việt-Mường and Chinese speakers in Annam speaking a variety of Chinese called Annamese Middle Chinese AMC, part of a larger dialect continuum called Southwestern Middle Chinese SMC. Phan and deSousa also claim that SMC developed into dialects spoken 1 I will use the terms “Sinitic” and “Chinese” interchangeably to refer to languages and speakers of the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. 2 For the sake of simplicity, I shall refer to free and bound morphemes alike as “words.” 1 in Southwestern China today (Phan, Desousa: 2016). Using data of dialects mentioned by Phan and deSousa in their hypothesis, this study investigates initial nasalization in Ying-initial words in Southwestern Chinese Languages and in the 26 Sino-Vietnamese words.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Production of Sandhi Phenomena in French: Psycholinguistic and Acoustic Data
    On the production of sandhi phenomena in French: psycholinguistic and acoustic data Odile Bagou1, Violaine Michel1, Marina Laganaro1 1 Groupe NeuroPsychoLinguistique, FLSH, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland [email protected], [email protected] Abstract detect than word-initial consonants (see also, [3]). Therefore, one might consider that liaison consonants have This preliminary study addresses two complementary a perceptual status that facilitates lexical access on W2. questions about the production of sandhi phenomena in French. First, we investigated whether the encoding of At least two hypotheses can be proposed to integrate enchaînement and liaison enchaînée involves a processing these two main results. First, liaison and enchaînement cost compared to non-resyllabified sequences. This consonants might be acoustically less salient than word- question was analyzed with a psycholinguistic production initial consonants. Indeed, liaison consonants [7, 8, 4, 5] time paradigm. The elicited sequences were then used to and enchaînement consonants [9, 10] have been reported to be shorter than word-initial consonants. Hence, the address our second question, namely how critical V1CV2 sequences are phonetically realized across different processing of the misalignement might be facilitated by boundary conditions. We compared the durational the presence of subtle acoustic cues that allow the listeners properties of critical sequences containing a word-final to discriminate resyllabified consonants from word-initial consonants. However, phoneme detection studies coda consonant (enchaînement: V1.C#V2), an additional consonant (liaison enchaînée: V +C#V ) and a similar established that only liaison consonants perceptually differ 1 2 from word-initial consonants [6]. Therefore, the effects onset consonant (V1#CV2). Results on production latencies suggested that the encoding of liaison enchaînée involves found in phoneme detection tasks cannot be explained by an additional processing cost compared to the two other acoustic differences only.
    [Show full text]
  • Variable and Invariable Liaison in a Corpus of Spoken French
    Erschienen in: Journal of French Language Studies ; 25 (2015), 3. - S. 367-396 https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959269515000186 Journal of French Language Studies 25 (2015), 367–396, © Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0959269515000186 Variable and invariable liaison in a corpus of spoken French JUDITH MEINSCHAEFERa,SVENBONIFERb AND CHRISTINE FRISCHc aFreie Universitat¨ Berlin bFormerly Universitat¨ Konstanz cFormerly Universitat¨ Wurzburg¨ (Received June 2013; revised October 2014) abstract Using texts selected from the C-Oral-Rom corpus, this study considers how linguistic and sociolinguistic variables affect liaison. In the majority of cases, liaison appears on monosyllabic function words. Individual lexemes differ greatly in rate of liaison. With regard to sociolinguistic variation, female speakers realize liaison consonants more often than male speakers, younger speakers realize it more often than older speakers, and liaison rates for speakers without university degree are higher than for speakers with university degree. Results are discussed in the light of models of prosodic structure and with respect to their implications for models of socio-linguistic variation. 1 introduction French liaison is a phrasal phonological phenomenon that consists in the pronunciation of a word-final consonant that is followed by a vowel-initial word, see (1a), where this consonant is otherwise not pronounced when the word is realised in isolation or before a pause,1 (1b). Here and in all following examples, realization of a liaison consonant is indicated in the orthographic representation by an underscore (‘_’), and word boundaries are indicated in the phonetic transcription by a hash (‘#’). (1) Liaison vs. absence of liaison for petit, Adj Masc ‘little’ a.
    [Show full text]
  • Phonological Evidence for Exemplar Storage of Mul Tiword Sequences
    SSLA. 24. 215-221 DOl 111.1111; S02722ti:llll21111211til PHONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR EXEMPLAR STORAGE OF MULTIWORD SEQUENCES Joan Bybee University of New Mexico Phonological evidence supports the frequency-based model pro­ posed in the article by Nick Ellis. Phonological reduct1on occurs ear­ lier and to a greater extent in high-frequency words and phrases than in low-frequency ones. A model that accounts for this effect needs both an exemplar representation to show phonet1c variation and the ability to represent multiword combinations. The maintenance of alternations conditioned by word boundaries. such as French liai­ son, also provides evidence that multiword sequences are stored and can accrue representational strength. The reorganization of pho­ netic exemplars in favor of the more frequent types prov1des evidence for some abstraction in categories beyond the simple registration of tokens of experience. Ellis's review article paints a very different landscape for linguistic knowledge from that provided by structural theories of language. In this landscape, fre­ quency of use is not a constraint added to an otherwise structural or genera­ tive architecture (as in Hammond, 1999), nor is it just invoked when the facts do not yield entirely to structural analysis (see, e.g., Kaisse, 1985, p. 59). Rather, the picture that emerges from the array of studies that Ellis cites is one in which linguistic knowledge is based firmly on experience with language, and frequency of use is a foundational determinate of grammatical properties of language. The article demonstrates that there is a major convergence of re­ search from many different perspectives-corpus-based analysis, computational linguistics, discourse, cognitive and functional linguistics, and psycholinguis­ tics-that all point to a new theory of grammar with its attendant theory of language acquisition.
    [Show full text]
  • The Survey on the Distribution of MC Fei and Xiao Initial Groups in Chinese Dialects
    IALP 2020, Kuala Lumpur, Dec 4-6, 2020 The Survey on the Distribution of MC Fei and Xiao Initial Groups in Chinese Dialects Yan Li Xiaochuan Song School of Foreign Languages, School of Foreign Languages, Shaanxi Normal University, Shaanxi Normal University Xi’an, China /Henan Agricultural University e-mail: [email protected] Xi’an/Zhengzhou, China e-mail:[email protected] Abstract — MC Fei 非 and Xiao 晓 initial group discussed in this paper includes Fei 非, Fu groups are always mixed together in the southern 敷 and Feng 奉 initials, but does not include Wei part of China. It can be divided into four sections 微, while MC Xiao 晓 initial group includes according to the distribution: the northern area, the Xiao 晓 and Xia 匣 initials. The third and fourth southwestern area, the southern area, the class of Xiao 晓 initial group have almost southeastern area. The mixing is very simple in the palatalized as [ɕ] which doesn’t mix with Fei northern area, while in Sichuan it is the most initial group. This paper mainly discusses the first extensive and complex. The southern area only and the second class of Xiao and Xia initials. The includes Hunan and Guangxi where ethnic mixing of Fei and Xiao initials is a relatively minorities gather, and the mixing is very recent phonetic change, which has no direct complicated. Ancient languages are preserved in the inheritance with the phonological system of southeastern area where there are still bilabial Qieyun. The mixing mainly occurs in the southern sounds and initial consonant [h], but the mixing is part of the mainland of China.
    [Show full text]
  • From Tone to Accent
    This page intentionally left blank Matthew Chen’s landmark study offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of the rich and complex patterns of tone used in Chinese languages. Chinese has a wide repertoire of tones which undergo often surprising changes when they are connected in speech flow. The term tone sandhi refers to this tonal alternation. Chen examines tone sandhi phenomena in detail across a variety of Chinese dialects. He explores a range of important theoretical issues such as the nature of tonal representation, the relation of tone to accent, the prosodic domain of sandhi rules, and the interface between syntax and phonology. His book is the culmination of a ten-year research project and offers a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists. Extensive references and a bibliography on tone sandhi complete this invaluable resource which will be welcomed as a standard reference on Chinese tone. Having taught for many years at the University of California, San Diego, is Professor and chair of Linguistics and Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences faculty at the City University of Hong Kong. He has written numerous articles on linguistics and is Associate Editor of the Journal of Chinese Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. In this series 52 . and . : English focus constructions and the theory of grammar 53 : Linguistic realities: an autonomist metatheory for the generative enterprise 54 : From etymology to pragmatics: metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure 55 : Relevance relations in discourse: a study with special reference to Sissala 56 : On definiteness: a study with special reference to English and Finnish 57 and : The syntax of Noun Phrases: configuration, parameters and empty categories 58 : Conditions on phonological government 59 .
    [Show full text]
  • Global Chinese 2018; 4(2): 217–246
    Global Chinese 2018; 4(2): 217–246 Don Snow*, Shen Senyao and Zhou Xiayun A short history of written Wu, Part II: Written Shanghainese https://doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2018-0011 Abstract: The recent publication of the novel Magnificent Flowers (Fan Hua 繁花) has attracted attention not only because of critical acclaim and market success, but also because of its use of Shanghainese. While Magnificent Flowers is the most notable recent book to make substantial use of Shanghainese, it is not alone, and the recent increase in the number of books that are written partially or even entirely in Shanghainese raises the question of whether written Shanghainese may develop a role in Chinese print culture, especially that of Shanghai and the surrounding region, similar to that attained by written Cantonese in and around Hong Kong. This study examines the history of written Shanghainese in print culture. Growing out of the older written Suzhounese tradition, during the early decades of the twentieth century a distinctly Shanghainese form of written Wu emerged in the print culture of Shanghai, and Shanghainese continued to play a role in Shanghai’s print culture through the twentieth century, albeit quite a modest one. In the first decade of the twenty-first century Shanghainese began to receive increased public attention and to play a greater role in Shanghai media, and since 2009 there has been an increase in the number of books and other kinds of texts that use Shanghainese and also the degree to which they use it. This study argues that in important ways this phenomenon does parallel the growing role played by written Cantonese in Hong Kong, but that it also differs in several critical regards.
    [Show full text]