Tone Sandhi In Fu'an Dialect: An Optimality Theoretic Account

This thesis aims to develop a theoretical analysis of tone and tone sandhi in disyllabic sequences in Fu'an dialect within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT).The phonetic data used as reference in the thesis is from Liang (1983), which proposes that there are seven citation tones in Fu'an dialect: T1 (33), T2 (11), T3 (42), T4 (35), T5 (23), T6 (5) and T7 (2). The present thesis makes some revisions to the data because, for one thing, Liang's data was got through the researcher's perceptional judgment without acoustic experimental instruments. On the other hand, the research was carried out in 1960 and 1980; language is always on its way of change. Accordingly, for the tone system to be more typologically reasonable, phonological interpretations lead to the following proposals:(1). The pitch value of T3 (42) are treated as 53 due to a cross register constraint which prohibits a high registered tone (4) from co-occurring with a low registered tone (2), and vice versa (Yip 1980, Bao 1990).(2). The tone sandhi of disyllabic sequence T3+T2 (T3+T2→35+53) in Liang (1983) is better to be treated as T3+T2→35+51, under the analysis of speech analysis program called Praat.(3). In Liang's (1983) data, the change of T1's pitch value from 33 to 23 in the sequences T1+T2 and T1+T3 is a kind of phenomenon caused by physiological mechanism and habit of human articulation and thus there is no need to give a phonological analysis to it. As Wu & Lin (1989:157) put it, fundamental frequency (F0) curve on the spectrogram usually has a rising curve in the beginning position which is called "wantou" (弯头) as compared to the falling curve in the final position called "jiangwei" (降尾)/declination.(4). Two phenomena of coarticulation are recognized in Liang's (1983) data and are further illustrated by Wang's (1997) geometrical model of tonal representation: the change of T2 (11) to 51 when T2 follows T3 (53) (i.e. T3+T2→35+51); and the change of T7 (2) to 5 when T7 follows T3 (i.e. T3+T7→35+5).Therefore, the underlying tones of Fu'an dialect could be summarized as: Yinping (T1) 33, Yangping (T2) 11, Shangsheng (T3) 53, Yinqu (T4) 35, Yangqu (T5) 23, Yinru (T6) 5, and Yangru (T7) 2. Furthermore, those underlying tones have also been represented based on Wang's (1997) geometrical model of tonal representation.Of all the 49 (7^*7) possible tonal combinations in disyllabic sequences of Fu'andialect, there are five major types of tone sandhi:(1)X→MM/T1_{X∈{T2, T3,}} or X→MM/MM_{X∈{T2, T3,}}(2)T1→HH/_{T1, T4, T5, T6, T7} or MM→HH/_{MM, MH, LM, H, L}(3)T3→MH/_{T2, T3, T7} or HM→MH/_{LL, HM, L}(4)T3→HH/_{T1, T4, T5, T6} or HM→HH/_{MM, MH, LM, H}(5)X→HH/_T(X∈{T4, T5, T6, T7}) or X→HH/_T(X∈{MH, LM, H, L})The tone sandhi above shows that in Fu'an dialect, besides those phenomena of "wantou" and coarticulation, the first syllable has a high tendency to become high level tone HH in most cases except in the case of T3 (when T3 proceeding T2 or T3 or T7, it changes to a high rising tone MH) and T2 (when T2 is on the first position, it remains stable). The second syllable has a relatively high degree of stability except in the case of T2 and T3 (when T2 or T3 following T1, they change to MM).The above tone sandhi can be explained in the framework of OT, with the following constraints and the constraint ranking hierarchy formed by them. The constraint ranking hierarchy that is specific to Fu'an dialect is: MAX-(T); LL.TT Stability>>^*TM.XT (X∈{L, H});^*TM.TL;^*R.R>>R-ID (T)>>^*F; ^*LT.TT; Falling. TT(?)Level. TT (TT∈{LL, HM, L})>>Left (T)→HH >>DEP-(T).