scholarly journals Directionality of Disyllabic Tone Sandhi across Chinese Dialects is Conditioned by Phonetically-Grounded Structural Simplicity

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tingyu Huang ◽  
Youngah Do
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Segmental Phonology ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Structural Simplicity

Despite various work which aimed to identify the phonetic and structural underpinning of tone sandhi directionality, the underlying mechanism that governs tone sandhi remains unknown. We note that the two widely discussed properties of tone sandhi, their phonetic grounds and directionality, correspond to two types of cognitive biases widely investigated in segmental phonology, namely substantive bias and structural bias respectively. This study examines structural simplicity and phonetic naturalness of tone sandhi patterns across seventeen Chinese varieties. Based on a structure-based analysis, we show that tone sandhi patterns are overwhelmingly uni-directional (i.e. structurally simple) either throughout a sandhi system or within each grammatical category. Crucially, uni-directionality is largely right-dominant, which could be attributed to its phonetic grounding. We argue that structural simplicity grounded on phonetic substance better captures tone sandhi asymmetries and such phonetically-grounded structural simplicity bias is reflected in the asymmetries of Chinese tone sandhi directionality.

Flavor halos andconsumer perceptions offood healthfulness

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-707
Author(s):  
Nguyen Pham ◽  
Maureen Morrin ◽  
Melissa G. Bublitz
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Repeated Exposure ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Medicinal Products ◽  
Dietary Compliance ◽  
Health Goals ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Prevalence Of Obesity ◽  
Cough Syrup

Purpose This paper aims to examine how repeated exposure to health-related products that contain flavors (e.g. cherry-flavored cough syrup) create “flavor halos” that can bias perceptions about the healthfulness of foods that contain the same flavors (e.g. cherry-flavored cheesecake). Design/methodology/approach Six experiments, using both between- and within-subjects designs, explore the effects of flavor halos in hypothetical and actual consumption settings. They test the underlying mechanism, rule out competing explanations and identify an opportunity to correct the cognitive biases created by flavor halos. Findings Flavor halos can be created via repeated exposure to flavored medicinal products in the marketplace. These flavor halos bias dieters’ judgments about the healthfulness of vice foods containing such flavors. Dieters are motivated toward a directional conclusion about food healthfulness to mediate the guilt associated with consuming indulgent products. Providing dieters with corrective information mitigates these effects. Research limitations/implications The authors examine one way flavor halos are created –via repeated exposure to flavored medicinal products. Future research should explore other ways flavor halos are created and other ways to mitigate their effects. Practical implications Considering the prevalence of obesity, organizations striving to help consumers pursue health goals (e.g. weight watchers) can use flavors to improve dietary compliance. Health-care organizations can help consumers understand and correct the cognitive biases associated with flavor halos. Originality/value By identifying flavor halos, this work adds to the literature investigating how flavors influence consumers’ judgments about healthfulness. The results suggest dieters apply flavor halos as they engage in motivated reasoning to license their indulgent desires.

Indirect tone-prominence interaction in Kunming tone sandhi

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui-shan Lin
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Head Position ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Similar Correlation ◽  
Beijing Mandarin ◽  
Chinese Dialects

Abstract Kunming exhibits a special kind of interaction between tone and prominence whereby the prosodic headedness is shown to play an indirect role in tone sandhi. Due to higher-ranked tonal faithfulness constraints, lower tones, which are universally unfavored in the head position, do not change to higher tones, and higher tones, which are universally unfavored in the non-head position, do not change to lower tones. Nonetheless, though the unfavored tone-(non-)head correlation does not directly trigger tone sandhi, it indirectly decides whether tone sandhi will take place. Falling tones, inter-syllabic tone segment disagreement, and tonal combinations with identical contours are marked tonal structures in the language. But not all these structures result in tone sandhi. The penalization of these structures is tied to an unfavored tone-(non-)head correlation; only when an undesired tone-(non-)head correlation is involved are the marked tonal structures penalized. The indirect tone-(non-)head interaction observed in Kunming is special but not unique to the language as a similar correlation is found in the Chinese dialects of Dongshi Hakka and Beijing Mandarin.

PIG, TONE SANDHI AND WUMIN

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
William L. Ballard
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Historical Relationship

Several scholars have made various remarks about the language history of the Wu and Min areas. Some of these remarks concern non-Chinese languages that may have been spoken in the area(s) and that may have left some traces in the forms of Chinese spoken there now (substrata). Other remarks concern the possible prehistory of what appear now to be transitional or mixed forms, or features that may be present due to some ancient influence or borrowing. In considering such matters it is important to keep in mind the basic principles (and biases) of historical linguistics, and of the potential role of philological materials in the discussion. My fieldwork in China this spring, as well as my research in the past, point to some special historical relationship between southern Wu and northern Min. This appears to mean that the boundaries between the northern and southern types of each of the two dialect groups are stronger than they have been portrayed in the past, and that the traditional boundary between Wu and Min is considerably weaker than has been supposed. The total sum of dialect facts cannot be ignored in trying to ascertain the language history of this area; it would appear that various elements of the traditional view of the history of the southern dialects are in error in various ways. In particular, it is at least possible that Wu and Min, in some sense, share a common ancestor not common to any other Chinese dialects.

Contour-tone spreading and tone sandhi in Danyang Chinese

Phonology ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie K. M. Chan
Keyword(s):  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Tone Spreading

An important contribution to our knowledge of tone sandhi among the Chinese dialects is Lü's (1980) article on the tones and tone sandhi behaviour of Danyang, a Wu dialect of Chinese. Lü's description of Danyang is, to date, our only source on the dialect. While it is a northern Wu dialect, the tone sandhi patterning in Danyang differs from Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi and other dialects in the vicinity. There are a number of interesting problems related to tone in the dialect. This paper restricts the topic to only one of these problems, namely the treatment of the six basic tone patterns in Danyang, focusing in particular on the pattern in which a contour tone is copied Onto adjacent syllables in the tone sandhi domain.

Forthcoming articles

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-651
Keyword(s):  
Review Article ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Directed Motion ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Comparative Syntax ◽  
Downstream Effects ◽  
Minimalist Approach ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Chinese Dialects

Theodora Alexopoulou & Dimitra Kolliakou: On linkhood, topicalization and clitic left dislocationFrancis Cornish: ‘Downstream’ effects on the predicate in a Functional Grammar clause derivationAndrew Spencer: Gender as an inflectional categoryIda Toivonen: A directed motion construction in SwedishZ. Bao: Review article on MATTHEW Y. CHEN, Tone sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialectsR. Freidin: Remarks on basic syntax. Review article on P. CULICOVER, Principles and parameters: an introduction to syntactic theory; J. MCCAWLEY, The syntactic phenomena of English; A. RADFORD, Syntactic theory and the structure of English: a Minimalist approach; and I. ROBERTS, Comparative syntaxT. Langendoen: Review article on M. ARONOFF & J. REES-MILLER, The handbook of linguisticsS. S. Mufwene: Colonization, globalization and the plight of ‘weak’ languages: a rejoinder to Nettle & Romaine’s Vanishing voices. Review article on D. NETTLE & S. ROMAINE, Vanishing voices : the extinction of the world’s languages

scholarly journals Phonetically Grounded Structural Bias in Learning Tonal Alternations

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tingyu Huang ◽  
Youngah Do
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Results ◽  
Structural Learning ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Mandarin Speakers ◽  
The Right ◽  
Mandarin Tone ◽  
Structural Simplicity

This study investigates the hypothesis that tone alternation directionality becomes a basis of structural bias for tone alternation learning, where “structural bias” refers to a tendency to prefer uni-directional tone deletions to bi-directional ones. Two experiments were conducted. In the first, Mandarin speakers learned three artificial languages, with bi-directional tone deletions, uni-directional, left-dominant deletions, and uni-directional, right-dominant deletions, respectively. The results showed a learning bias toward uni-directional, right-dominant patterns. As Mandarin tone sandhi is right-dominant while Cantonese tone change is lexically restricted and does not have directionality asymmetry, a follow-up experiment trained Cantonese speakers either on left- or right-dominant deletions to see whether the right-dominant preference was due to L1 transfer from Mandarin. The results of the experiment also showed a learning bias toward right-dominant patterns. We argue that structural simplicity affects tone deletion learning but the simplicity should be grounded on phonetics factors, such as syllables’ contour-tone bearing ability. The experimental results are consistent with the findings of a survey on other types of tone alternation’s directionality, i.e., tone sandhi across 17 Chinese varieties. This suggests that the directionality asymmetry found across different tone alternations reflects a phonetically grounded structural learning bias.

Are attractive reviewers more persuasive? Examining the role of physical attractiveness in online reviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 728-739
Author(s):  
Marie Ozanne ◽  
Stephanie Q. Liu ◽  
Anna S. Mattila
Keyword(s):  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Online Reviews ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Brand Evaluations ◽  
The Impact

Purpose While online reviews are of paramount importance in brand evaluations and purchase decisions, the impact of a reviewer’s attractiveness is not well understood. To bridge that gap, this paper aims to explore how physical attractiveness cues through profile photos influence customers’ brand evaluations. Design/methodology/approach The first study assesses the impact of attractiveness and review valence on brand evaluations. The authors used an experimental design and tested the model with an ANCOVA. Study 2 examines the impact of attractiveness in the context of multiple reviews and tests attractiveness heuristic as the underlying mechanism. Findings The findings indicate that when an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer writes a positive review, brand evaluations are enhanced. However, such an effect does not occur with a negative review. With multiple reviews varying in valence, cognitive load activates the use of an attractiveness heuristic when a positive review is written by an attractive (vs less-attractive) reviewer, thus leading to enhanced brand evaluations. Originality/value These findings highlight the presence of the attractiveness halo effect in online reviews and offer important implications to social media marketers. While previous studies have largely focused on review characteristics (e.g. star ratings, strength of the argument, etc.), this study focuses on reviewer characteristics (i.e. attractiveness) and cognitive biases associated with online brand evaluations.

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