Tone Sandhi Systems & Processing

Tone alternations: Sandhi sytems in contact

• Field work: Huangyan, an understudied Sinitic Wu dialect, shows mixed patterns for tone alternations/sandhi. The final tone remains intact and the initial tone changes for most disyllabic words (50%), but there are exceptions. [abstract]

• Praat & Tone distribution: (1) [±smooth] feature is proposed to capture four falling tones in the tonal inventory. (2) Contour slope (smooth vs. sharp) and movement (fall vs. non-fall) predict tonal behaviors. Smoothness is targeted by sandhi rules and also conditions sandhi rules. [manuscript] [poster]

Figure 1. Tonal inventory: Slope feature [±smooth] for tonal distinction

Figure 2. Contours are lost for smooth tones (A/C), not sharp tones (B/D); Falling tones (A/B) are sensitive to adjacent tones, non-falling tones (C/D) are not

Tone Processing