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.