Wu, Min and a little hakka lexical tone sandhi : right and left

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ballard
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi

China and Siberia

2020 ◽  
pp. 331-343
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
San Duanmu ◽  
Yiya Chen
Keyword(s):  
Mainland China ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Tone Languages ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Complex Patterns ◽  
Experimental Findings

This chapter provides a summary of the prosodic systems of varieties of Chinese spoken in mainland China and Taiwan as well as languages in Siberia, in particular Ket. What the Chinese languages and Ket share is their tonal nature. This chapter highlights three unique aspects of the prosody of these languages. First, it surveys the typologically complex patterns of tonal alternation known as ‘tone sandhi’ and provides a summary of current experimental findings on the productivity of these patterns. Second, it discusses the patterns of lexical and phrasal stress and their interaction with tone, with a focus on the similar metrical principles that underlie tone languages and other languages. Third, it surveys the different types of interaction between lexical tone and the intonational use of pitch, in particular focus and interrogativity. These issues are first discussed in the context of Chinese languages, then echoed in a brief summary of Ket prosody.

WU, MIN AND A LITTLE HAKKA LEXICAL TONE SANDHI: RIGHT AND LEFT

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-34
Author(s):  
William L. Ballard
Keyword(s):  
Pitch Accent ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
The Third ◽  
Separate Type ◽  
Southern Min ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

An initial assay of Wu and Min lexical tone sandhi opens inquiry into a possible source : Austronesian pitch accent, and into a sandhi origin for the "third" tone ( qu/departing ). One important element in such an assay is the feature Right/Left : focus = preservation, stress, retention, etc, towards the Right or towards the Left. Northern Wu appears to be focus Left, and destressing seems to be spreading in the area. Southern Wu and Min are focus Right. Southern Wu focus does not prevent some Right mergers, and often it is the last two syllables acting together that is the focus. Northern Min shows similarities to Southern Wu, but Southern Min can be said to have no tone sandhi at all : The Amoy et al tone circles appear to be artifacts of changes in isolation values, since they are virtual reconstructions of the probable prototone values. The one Hakka dialect examined appears to be like Northern Min/Southern Wu. On the basis of this assay, I would hazard the guess that in the study of the origin of lexical tone sandhi, Southern Min should be classified with the Cantonese/Thai type, Northern Wu as a separate type heavily influenced by Mandarin, and Southern Wu/Northern Min as the preservation of the oldest, most Austronesianoid type of sandhi. Further speculation would be foolhardly until more information is available and more detailed comparisons and histories are drawn up.

The acquisition of tone in Mandarin-speaking children

1977 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles N. Li ◽  
Sandra A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Study ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Relative Difficulty ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Short Period ◽  
High Level ◽  
Relative Salience

ABSTRACTUntil now, although there has been research on the acquisition of intonation and stress, there has been no systematic study of the acquisition of lexical tone. Based on data collected during eight months of field work with 17 children of Mandarin-speaking families in Taipei, we have found that (1) tone acquisition is accomplished within a relatively short period of time; (2) mastery of tones occurs well in advance of mastery of seg-mentals; (3) the Mandarin high-level and falling tones are acquired before the rising and dipping tones; (4) the rising and dipping tones are substituted for each other throughout the tone acquisition process; (5) unstressed syllables are treated as if they were stressed, the tone assigned to them being an approximation of the phonetically conditioned pitch which they carry; (6) the tone sandhi phenomena associated with the dipping tone in Mandarin are acquired with very little error as soon as propositional utterances begin to be created. Explanations for these facts can be given in terms of the relative ease of learning to control glottal pitch as opposed to articulatory mechanisms, the relative difficulty of rising pitch, and the relative salience of tone in Mandarin.

The Acquisition of Mandarin Tonal Processes by Children With Cochlear Implants

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1309-1325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping Tang ◽  
Ivan Yuen ◽  
Nan Xu Rattanasone ◽  
Liqun Gao ◽  
Katherine Demuth
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Pitch Information ◽  
Neutral Tone ◽  
Mandarin Tones ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Naming Tasks

Purpose Children with cochlear implants (CIs) face challenges in acquiring tonal languages, as CIs do not efficiently code pitch information. Mandarin is a tonal language with lexical tones and tonal processes such as neutral tone and tone sandhi, exhibiting contextually conditioned tonal realizations. Previous studies suggest that early implantation and long CI experience facilitate the acquisition of lexical tones by children with CIs. However, there is lack of acoustic evidence on children's tonal productions demonstrating that this is the case, and it is unclear whether and how children with CIs are able to acquire contextual tones. This study therefore examined the acoustic realization of both lexical tones and contextual tones as produced by children fitted with CIs, exploring the potential effects of age at implantation and length of CI experience on their acquisition of the Mandarin tonal system. Method Seventy-two Mandarin-learning preschoolers with CIs, varying in age at implantation (13–42 months) and length of CI experience (2–49 months), and 44 normal hearing 3-year-old controls were recruited. Tonal productions were elicited from both groups using picture-naming tasks and acoustically compared. Results Only the early implanted group (i.e., implanted before the age of 2 years) produced normal-like lexical tones and generally had contextual tones approximating those of the normal-hearing children. The other children, including those with longer CI experience, did not have typical tonal productions; their pitch patterns for lexical tones tended to be flatter, and contextual tone productions were unchanged across tonal contexts. Conclusion Children with CIs face challenges in acquiring Mandarin tones, but early implantation may help them to develop normal-like lexical tone categories, which further facilitates their implementation of contextual tones. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8038889

The phonological word in the Ningbo dialect

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-161
Author(s):  
Xiang Lyu
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Phonological Information ◽  
Prosodic Word ◽  
Phonological Word ◽  
The World ◽  
Rule Application ◽  
Phonological Rule ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Complete Survey

Abstract This paper examines the domain of the prosodic word in the Ningbo dialect. The goal of this paper is to provide a critical review of the studies on the prosodic word (PW) in various languages of the world, and to investigate the phonological phenomena within the domain formed by morpho-syntactic words in the Ningbo dialect as well as discussing the role that the prosodic word plays in the phonological rule application in the Ningbo dialect. This paper provides a complete survey on various types of morpho-syntactic formation in the Ningbo dialect as well as examining the application of phonological phenomena with reference to the different types of morpho-syntactic words. It will show that the lexical tone sandhi rule (LTS) applies within the domain formed by the major types of morpho-syntactic words in Ningbo dialect. However, pure phonological information may also affect the application of LTS.

scholarly journals Acoustic Study of Tone 3 Sandhi in Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Hui Yin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Gender Effects ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Taiwan Mandarin ◽  
The Third ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Beijing Mandarin ◽  
Mandarin Tone

Studies on Mandarin tone sandhi have focused on Beijing Mandarin. Taiwan has been politically separated from mainland China since 1949, but it is not known if tone sandhi in Taiwan Mandarin displays different patterns or characteristics. However, there has been no comparative study to investigate if Beijing Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin display the same tone sandhi pattern. This study aims to fill this gap by comparing Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin through a productive experiment to examine acoustic differences between sandhied tone 3 and lexical tone 2. The results indicate that tone 3 sandhi among Mandarin dialects is not a homogeneous category, but displays a graded phenomenon of a categorical change and tonal reduction. The experimental evidence shows that acoustic difference between sandhied tone 3 and lexical tone 2 is larger in Beijing Mandarin than that in Taiwan Mandarin. Gender effects are also detected and acoustic difference in female samples is consistently larger than that in male samples across Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin. The findings suggest that the third tone sandhi in Beijing Mandarin is more like a categorical change (i.e., changed to lexical tone 2) whereas the sandhi in Taiwan Mandarin is more like a tonal reduction.

Effects of Fundamental Frequency Contours on Sentence Recognition in Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (11) ◽  
pp. 3855-3864
Author(s):  
Wanting Huang ◽  
Lena L. N. Wong ◽  
Fei Chen ◽  
Haihong Liu ◽  
Wei Liang
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Sentence Recognition ◽  
Test Conditions ◽  
Age Appropriate ◽  
F0 Contour ◽  
Appropriate Sentences

Purpose Fundamental frequency (F0) is the primary acoustic cue for lexical tone perception in tonal languages but is processed in a limited way in cochlear implant (CI) systems. The aim of this study was to evaluate the importance of F0 contours in sentence recognition in Mandarin-speaking children with CIs and find out whether it is similar to/different from that in age-matched normal-hearing (NH) peers. Method Age-appropriate sentences, with F0 contours manipulated to be either natural or flattened, were randomly presented to preschool children with CIs and their age-matched peers with NH under three test conditions: in quiet, in white noise, and with competing sentences at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Results The neutralization of F0 contours resulted in a significant reduction in sentence recognition. While this was seen only in noise conditions among NH children, it was observed throughout all test conditions among children with CIs. Moreover, the F0 contour-induced accuracy reduction ratios (i.e., the reduction in sentence recognition resulting from the neutralization of F0 contours compared to the normal F0 condition) were significantly greater in children with CIs than in NH children in all test conditions. Conclusions F0 contours play a major role in sentence recognition in both quiet and noise among pediatric implantees, and the contribution of the F0 contour is even more salient than that in age-matched NH children. These results also suggest that there may be differences between children with CIs and NH children in how F0 contours are processed.

On the Relationship Between General Auditory Sensitivity and Speech Perception: An Examination of Pitch and Lexical Tone Perception in 4- to 6-Year-Old Children

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 487-498
Author(s):  
Puisan Wong ◽  
Man Wai Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Auditory Sensitivity ◽  
Pitch Discrimination ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Perceptual Training ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Tone Perception ◽  
Tone Discrimination

Purpose Theoretical models and substantial research have proposed that general auditory sensitivity is a developmental foundation for speech perception and language acquisition. Nonetheless, controversies exist about the effectiveness of general auditory training in improving speech and language skills. This research investigated the relationships among general auditory sensitivity, phonemic speech perception, and word-level speech perception via the examination of pitch and lexical tone perception in children. Method Forty-eight typically developing 4- to 6-year-old Cantonese-speaking children were tested on the discrimination of the pitch patterns of lexical tones in synthetic stimuli, discrimination of naturally produced lexical tones, and identification of lexical tone in familiar words. Results The findings revealed that accurate lexical tone discrimination and identification did not necessarily entail the accurate discrimination of nonlinguistic stimuli that followed the pitch levels and pitch shapes of lexical tones. Although pitch discrimination and tone discrimination abilities were strongly correlated, accuracy in pitch discrimination was lower than that in tone discrimination, and nonspeech pitch discrimination ability did not precede linguistic tone discrimination in the developmental trajectory. Conclusions Contradicting the theoretical models, the findings of this study suggest that general auditory sensitivity and speech perception may not be causally or hierarchically related. The finding that accuracy in pitch discrimination is lower than that in tone discrimination suggests that comparable nonlinguistic auditory perceptual ability may not be necessary for accurate speech perception and language learning. The results cast doubt on the use of nonlinguistic auditory perceptual training to improve children's speech, language, and literacy abilities.

Pig, tone sandhi and wumin

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Ballard
Keyword(s):  
Tone Sandhi
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document