Tone Sandhi In Changsha Chinese: An Optimality Theoretic Account

This thesis aims at developing an analysis of the tones and tone sandhi in Changsha Chinese, a sub-dialect of the Xiang Dialects of Chinese, within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT).Up till now, the data of Changsha Chinese are all auditorily based and focus on the surface segments and tones. Neither phonetic experiment nor phonological analysis has been done. This thesis is to report the surface tone inventory in Changsha Chinese based on the fieldwork done in 2004 and the phonetic experiments conducted in 2005; to present the underlying tones and their phonological structures within the framework of Autosegmental Phonology based on the phonetic facts obtained in the acoustic experiment; and to give an OT account of the tone sandhi patterns in Changsha Chinese.Audio recordings were made of 8 native speakers of Changsha Chinese. The test words are mainly divided into two groups: 30 monosyllabic words in citation forms and 1658 words in disyllabic sequences in consideration of the 36 (6*6) possible combinations. Data recordings, annotations and pitch modifications of the test syllables were done with the help of software Praat 4.2.17. The statistic computations including converting F0 values into pitch values were all conducted in SPSS 13. The phonetic evidence suggests that there are 6 citation tones in Changsha Chinese. Form the perspective of acoustic properties, all are either in a rising shape or in a falling shape (T1 -|(23); T2 -|(13); T3 -|(42); T4 -|(45); T5 -|(21); T6 -|(24)), i.e., there is no level tone in citation forms.For the tone system to be more typologically reasonable, phonological interpretations lead to the following proposals:(1) The pitch values of T3 and T6 are retreated as -|(53) and -|(35), which are attributed to a cross register constraint.(2) T5 is essentially a level tone, since the final fall in F0 is considered as an illustration of declination.(3) Considering the classificatory scheme in tone typology, T1, T4, together with T5 are analyzed as level tones (T1 -|(33); T4 -|(55); T5 -|(22)).Given the geometrical model proposed by Bao (1990), the underlying tones in Changsha...