An Analysis Of Tone Sandhi In Huangxian County Dialect

This thesis presented here is to give a comprehensive analysis of tone sandhi in Huangxian Dialect by experimental means and from a phonological perspective.According to experiment results, there are four citation tones in HXD: Tl (Yinping) 212, T2(Yangping)44, T3(shangsheng)12, T4(Qusheng)51 .The underlying representations are Tl LL, T2 HH. T3 LH, T4 HL respectively.In analyzing tone compounds in disyllabic sequences, three tone sandhi rules are sorted out as follows:Tone sandhi process in trisyllabic sequences can be described by the sandhi rules above mentioned. But there is some difference between trisyllabic sequences and disyllabic sequences. Not both of the first two tones undergo tone sandhi process in trisyllabic sequences. In some compounds, only one of the first two tones undergoes sandhi process and the other either remains unchanged or undergoes phonetic modification.The thesis presents an OT analysis of tone sandhi in HXD. OT is a new theory which breaks off the confines of the derivation by the ordered rules and concentrates on the ranking of constraints. The tone sandhi process in disyllabic sequences and those trisyllabic combinations in which the first two components undergo tone sandhi and in which neither of the first two tones undergo sandhi process can be analyzed by the following ranked constraints :R.MAX(T) DEP-IO(T), MAX(T), HH-PRIORITY 'Low. 'RISING, * L-TONOME, 1DENT-IO OCP...