The Types Of Prosodic Structure And Tone Sandhi Of Disyllabic Words In Chinese Dialects

In the past two decades,more and more scholars have noticed the influence of prosodic structure on the tone sandhi in Chinese dialects,and proposed the term "prosodic tone sandhi".The article supports this view and believes that in addition to grammatical and semantic tone sandhi,other tone sandhi should be analyzed within the framework of prosody.Specifically,the article focuses on the bi-syllabic words of Chinese dialects and proposes two basic prosodic structures of left-dominant and rightdominant.Categorized by these two prosodic structures,the corresponding tone sandhi is illustrated in order to demonstrate the fact that prosodic pattern “drives” tone sandhi.Chapter 1 introduces the rules of the prosodic features of world languages and gradually focuses on the research of East Asian and Chinese.It summarizes the manifestations of stress and unstress in Chinese and lists the current controversy on lexical stress.Then it leads to the core content of the article,namely the relationship between prosody and tone sandhi.Some research has shown that the stressed syllable retains the citation form and the unstressed syllable becomes the sandhi form.Chapter 2 shows that there are two basic prosodic structures in Chinese dialects: left-dominant and right-dominant.The article also elaborated on the relationship between stress/unstress and tone.And the presupposition of the article is that prosody “drives” tone sandhi.Specifically,the tone of monosyllable must meet the requirements of prosody when it enters the multi-syllable,otherwise,the tone sandhi will occur.Chapter 3 describes the neutral tones under the left-dominant prosodic structure.The chapter takes Changsha and Loudi dialect as examples to analyze the reason why the unstress produces neutral tones.The results show that the neutral tone retains original characteristics and becomes the corresponding short-level tone(or short tone).The tone value is the beginning or ending pitch of the original tone.The reason is that the one mora in the unstressed syllable cannot carry the rising or falling contour.Chapter 4 takes Beijing and Yinchuan dialect as examples to describe the neutral tone under the left-dominant structure.The article analyzes the lexical structure and acoustic characteristics of words of neutral tone in the two dialects and summarizes the similarities and differences.In terms of similarities,the words of neutral tone belong to a dynamic,colloquial,and analogous left-dominant structure.The essence of the neutral tone is "detonic".But the neutral tone in the Yinchuan dialect is not a light syllable.Chapter 5 takes Chengdu and Songjiang dialects as examples to demonstrate the tonal spreading under the left-dominant prosodic structure.The chapter describes the rightward tonal spreading contained in the unstressed syllable.It is found that the tonal spreading has some certain conditions and presents a systematic and dynamic characteristic.Tonal spreading can be divided into pitch and feature spreading,both of which will cause the final syllable of unstress to lose its original tonal features.Chapter 6 elaborates on the bi-syllabic words of the Fuzhou dialect to discusses the regressive assimilation of tone under the right-dominant structure.The chapter believes that the Fuzhou dialect has a right-dominant prosodic structure reflected by its finals and tone sandhi which is associated with regressive assimilation.It is found that the unstressed syllable in the front is assimilated by the tones of the stress in the back.There are two regressive assimilation phenomena: partial and complete assimilation.Chapter 7 discusses the tonal neutralization under the right-dominant prosodic structure.The chapter takes Liujia,Kaijian,and Pumen dialect as examples to show the similarities of the tone sandhi.The tones on the first syllable are all neutralized into two lower pitches.The tonal neutralization is caused by the lowering of tones.The tones of unstressed syllable neutralized,while the stress syllable remains unchanged.Compared with in left-dominant structure,tonal neutralization in the right-dominant is different.Chapter 8 reveals the relationship between the prosody and tone of some ethnic languages.The chapter focuses on the toneless Tibetan language in Hongtu and the Tujia language in Daba with tones.The result found that the prosodic structure of the Hongtu language is right-dominant,and its tones on stressed syllables are relatively high.The Daba language is based on the left-dominant structure,and the pitch on stress spreads to the unstress.These rules of tone sandhi are similar to Chinese dialects.Chapter 9 shows the conclusion of the article and the outlook for future research.There are two main conclusions.One is that unstress has specific requirements for the internal pitch.If the tone embedding the unstress does not meet this requirement,then the tonal change can be driven.The second is that the tone sandhi under the leftdominant and right-dominant prosodic structures are diverse or "asymmetric".Besides,the deficiencies of this research and the prospects for the future are described.