The effects of focus on tone sandhi in Chinese dialects.
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TextDescription: 149 pISBN: 0599897813Subject(s): Language, Linguistics | 0290Dissertation note: Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Texas at Austin, 2000. Summary: This dissertation presents a systematic study of the effects of focus on tone sandhi in three Chinese dialects. With the observation that focus is closely related to sentential accentuation and that lexical tones in Chinese are closely related to pitch contour, this study examines how tone sandhi in three Chinese dialects is affected by the presence of focus in multi-syllabic phrases and in discourse. Based on a review of the role of focus in phonological processes and configurations in such languages as Chicheŵa, Greek and Korean, this study identifies similar blocking and boundary effects of focus on tone sandhi in Tianjin, Shanghai and Zhenjiang Chinese. Specifically, it is shown that tone sandhi can be blocked on a stressed syllable in Tian in Chinese. Further, the presence of emphatic stress on a particular syllable will induce default tonal changes in the following syllables in Shanghai Chinese. In Zhenjiang Chinese, a stressed syllable (which is associated with focus) as well as other syllables in the minimal phonological phrase will undergo tone sandhi rather than default tonal change. In its formal analysis within the framework of the Optimality Theory, this study proposes a set of specific faithfulness constraints that are based on phonetic correlates of focus in Chinese. It is shown that a proper ranking among those constraints and other relevant constraints can account for both the blocking and boundary effects of focus in the three dialects.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 61-08, Section: A, page: 3143.
Supervisor: Manfred Krifka.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Texas at Austin, 2000.
This dissertation presents a systematic study of the effects of focus on tone sandhi in three Chinese dialects. With the observation that focus is closely related to sentential accentuation and that lexical tones in Chinese are closely related to pitch contour, this study examines how tone sandhi in three Chinese dialects is affected by the presence of focus in multi-syllabic phrases and in discourse. Based on a review of the role of focus in phonological processes and configurations in such languages as Chicheŵa, Greek and Korean, this study identifies similar blocking and boundary effects of focus on tone sandhi in Tianjin, Shanghai and Zhenjiang Chinese. Specifically, it is shown that tone sandhi can be blocked on a stressed syllable in Tian in Chinese. Further, the presence of emphatic stress on a particular syllable will induce default tonal changes in the following syllables in Shanghai Chinese. In Zhenjiang Chinese, a stressed syllable (which is associated with focus) as well as other syllables in the minimal phonological phrase will undergo tone sandhi rather than default tonal change. In its formal analysis within the framework of the Optimality Theory, this study proposes a set of specific faithfulness constraints that are based on phonetic correlates of focus in Chinese. It is shown that a proper ranking among those constraints and other relevant constraints can account for both the blocking and boundary effects of focus in the three dialects.
School code: 0227.
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