An OT Analysis Of Tone Sandhi In Suzhou Dialect

This thesis aims at two goals:introduction of tonal information in Suzhou dialect through a phonetic experiment:phonological analysis of tonal behaviors within the framework of Optimality Theory.The study on tones of Suzhou dialect mainly cover three aspects:citation tones,disyllabic tone sandhi and neutral tone in S+N pattern.An experiment is done in this thesis in order to get authentic data of the tones in Suzhou dialect.The experimental results of citation tones,disyllabic tone sandhi and neutral tone in S+N pattern,presented with the assistance of praat5406.a speech analyzing software,are analyzed.There are altogether four tones in Suzhou dialect:yinping(T1:212/21),yangping(T2:55/54).shangsheng(T3:23/34).qusheng(T4:51/52).Among them,the duration of T1,sometimes surfaces as a concave tone.is the longest;the duration of T4,a high falling tone.is the shortest.The order of duration is T1>T3>T2>T4.As to disyllabic tone sandhi forms,strictly speaking,there is only one tone sandhi form:T1?T3_T1.The pitch value of neutral tone is determined by phonetics as well as phonology.In S+N pattern.the starting point of the neutral tone co-articulates with the ending point of the preceding stressed syllable.An OT analysis of disyllabic tone sandhi and neutral tone in S+N pattern is given.which proves that Optimality Theory can successfully analyze tonal behavior in Suzhou dialect.The overall constraint hierarchy for disyllabic tone sandhi and neutral tone in S+N pattern in Suzhou dialect is ?-TONE?R-ID(T).FAITHNUCLEARTONE.*LLLL?(T)?*LL.L?*HN,OCP(WHOLETONE).