The Tone Sandhi In Yiyang Dialect Of Chinese

This thesis aims at developing a phonological analysis of the fact that the patterns of tone sandhi triggered by a morpho-syntactically driven metical structure in Yiyang Dialect (hereafter YYD) within the framework of non-linear phonology. Concretely speaking, this research includes (1) the pitch model after the tone sandhi; (2) the interaction between the metrical structure and the position of the tone sandhi; (3) the interaction between the morpho-syntactically structure and the metrical structure.Cui (1998) observes that YYD displays a tone sandhi of some type which is related to the distinction between so-called "light" and "heavy" syllables in a sequence of morphemes, and that tone sandhi takes place in the "light" syllable only. However, the data from YYD provided by Cui are all auditorily based and limited in the surface segments and tones. Neither experimental nor phonological interpretation has been provided in his work (1998). And up till now, there is no related analysis. Based on the fieldwork and acoustic experiments conducted in 2005, as Cui's hypothesis, tone sandhi occurs solely in the reduced syllable. Stressed syllables retain their lexical tone while recessive syllables uniformly changed.Besides this, in YYD, different morphological structures display different metrical structures. That is to say, there exist interfaces among morpho-syntactic, metrical and tonal layers.This thesis is to describe the surface segments and tone inventory in the YYD based on the data collected from the field work and the acoustic experiments conducted in 2005; to analyze the underlying representations of segments and tones, the syllable structure and tone bearing unit of the YYD within the framework of non-linear phonology; and to give a non-linear analysis of the interaction among morpho-syntactic, metrical and tonal structures.The main evidence this thesis is provided in order to interpret the interaction among morpho-syntactic, metrical structure and phonological grammars with respect to the following two aspects: (1) In YYD, morpho-syntactic structure determines the metrical structure of the disyllabic sequences. (2) In YYD, the metrical structure of the disyllabic sequences determines the position of the tone sandhi.