Tone sandhi
| Sound changeandalternation |
|---|
| Fortition |
| Dissimilation |
Tone sandhiis a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirectional tone into a one-directional tone. Tone sandhi is a type ofsandhi,which refers to fusional changes, and is derived from the Sanskrit word for "joining."
Languages with tone sandhi
[edit]Tone sandhi occurs to some extent in nearly alltonal languages,manifesting itself in different ways.[1]Tonal languages, characterized by their use ofpitchto affect meaning, appear all over the world, especially in theNiger-Congolanguage family of Africa, and theSino-Tibetanlanguage family of East Asia,[2]as well as other East Asian languages such asKra-Dai,andPapuan languages.Tonal languagesare also found in manyOto-Mangueanand other languages of Central America,[2]as well as in parts of North America (such asAthabaskanin British Columbia, Canada),[3]and Europe.[2]
Many North American and African tonal languages undergo "syntagmatic displacement", as one tone is replaced by another in the event that the new tone is present elsewhere in the adjacent tones. Usually, these processes ofassimilationoccur from left to right. In some languages of West Africa, for example, an unaccented syllable takes the tone from the closest tone to its left.[4]However, in East and Southeast Asia, "paradigmatic replacement" is a more common form of tone sandhi, as one tone changes to another in a certain environment, whether or not the new tone is already present in the surrounding words ormorphemes.[1]
Chinese languages
[edit]Many languages spoken in China have tone sandhi; some of it quite complex.[2]Southern Min(Minnan), which includesHokkien,Taiwanese,andTeochew,has a complex system, with in most cases every syllable changing into a different tone, and which tone it turns into sometimes depending on the final consonant of the syllable that bears it.
Take for exampleTaiwanesevarieties ofHokkien,which have twotonemes(numbered 4 and 8 in the diagram above) that occur inchecked syllables(those ending in astop consonant) and five tonemes in syllables that do not end in a stop. In Taiwanese, within aphonological phrase,all its non-neutral-tonesyllables save for the last undergo tone sandhi. Among the unchecked syllables, tone 1 becomes 7, 7 becomes 3, 3 becomes 2, and 2 becomes 1. Tone 5 becomes 7 or 3, depending on dialect. Stopped syllables ending in⟨-p⟩,⟨-t⟩,or⟨-k⟩take the opposite tone (phonetically, a high tone becomes low, and a low tone becomes high) whereas syllables ending in aglottal stop(written as⟨-h⟩in Pe̍h-ōe-jī) drop their final consonant to become tone 2 or 3.
Tone sandhi inSinitic languagescan be classified with a left-dominant or right-dominant system, depending on whether the leftmost or rightmost item keeps its tone. In a language of theright-dominantsystem, the right-most syllable of a word retains its citation tone[a].All the other syllables of the word must take their sandhi form. Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi and Taiwanese Hokkien tone sandhi are both right-dominant.
In aleft-dominantsystem, the leftmost tone tends to spread rightward.[6][7][8]
Shanghaineseis an example of a left-dominant system.[9]
Hmong
[edit]The seven or eight tones ofHmongdemonstrate several instances of tone sandhi. In fact the contested distinction between the seventh and eighth tones surrounds the very issue of tone sandhi (between glottal stop (-m) and low rising (-d) tones). High and high-falling tones (marked by -b and -j in theRPAorthography, respectively) trigger sandhi in subsequent words bearing particular tones. A frequent example can be found in the combination for numbering objects (ordinal number + classifier + noun): ib (one) + tus (classifier) + dev (dog) > ib tugdev (note tone change on the classifier from -s to -g).
Tone sandhi versus morphological tone change
[edit]Tone sandhi is compulsory as long as the environmental conditions that trigger it are met. It is not to be confused with tone changes that are due toderivationalorinflectional morphology.For example,Cantonesehas a derivational process known aschanged tone,which only applies in certain semantic domains: the wordtong4(/tʰɔːŋ˨˩/;Đường) means "sugar", whereas the derived wordtong2(/tʰɔːŋ˧˥/;also writtenĐường) means "candy". Such a change is not triggered by the phonological environment of the tone, and therefore is not an example of sandhi.
Examples
[edit]Mandarin Chinese
[edit]Standard Chinese(Standard Mandarin) features several tone sandhi rules:
- When there are two 3rd tones in a row, the first one becomes 2nd tone. E.g. Ngươi hảo (nǐ+hǎo>ní hǎo)[2][10]
- Theneutral toneis pronounced at different pitches depending on what tone it follows.
- Không (bù) is 4th tone except when followed by another 4th tone, when it becomes 2nd tone. E.g. Không phải (bù+shì>bú shì)
- Một (yī) is 1st tone when it represents the ordinal "first". Examples:Cái thứ nhất(dìyīgè). It changes when it represents the cardinal number "1", following a pattern of 2nd tone when followed by a 4th tone, and 4th tone when followed by any other tone. Examples: (for changing to the 2nd tone before a 4th tone)Một lần(yī+cì>yí cì),Một nửa(yī+bàn>yí bàn),Trong chốc lát;Trong chốc lát(yī+huìr>yí huìr); (for changing to the 4th tone before another tone)Giống nhau(yī+bān>yì bān),Một mao(yī+máo>yì máo).
Yatzachi Zapotec
[edit]Yatzachi Zapotec,anOto-Mangueanlanguage spoken in Mexico, has three tones: high, middle and low. The three tones, along with separate classifications for morpheme categories, contribute to a somewhat more complicated system of tone sandhi than inMandarin.There are two main rules for Yatzachi Zapotec tone sandhi, which apply in this order:
- (This rule only applies to class B morphemes.) A low tone will change to a mid tone when it precedes either a high or a mid tone: /yèn nājō/ → yēn nājō "neck we say"
- A mid tone will change to a high tone when it is after a low or mid tone, and occurs at the end of a morpheme not preceding a pause: /ẓīs gōlī/ → ẓís gōlī "old stick"[11]
Molinos Mixtec
[edit]Molinos Mixtec,anotherOto-Mangueanlanguage, has a much more complicated system of tone sandhi. The language has three tones (high, mid, or low, or 1, 2, or 3, respectively), and all roots are disyllabic, meaning that there are nine possible combinations of tones for a root or "couplet". The tone combinations are expressed here as a two digit number (high-low is represented as 13). Couplets are also classified into either class A or B, as well as verb or non-verb. A number of specific rules depending on these three factors determine tone change. One example of a rule follows:[12]
"Basic 31 becomes 11 when following any couplet of Class B but does not change after Class A (except that after 32(B') it optionally remains 31"
ža²ʔa² (class B) "chiles" + ži³či¹ (class A) "dry" > ža²ʔa²ži¹či¹ "dry chiles"[12]
Akan
[edit]Akan,a Niger-Congo language spoken inGhana,has two tones: high and low. The low tone is default.[13]In Akan, tones at morpheme boundaries assimilate to each other through tone sandhi, the first tone of the second morpheme changing to match the final tone of the first morpheme.
For example:
- àkókɔ́ + òníní > àkókɔ́óníní "cockerel"
- ǹsóró + m̀má > ǹsóróḿmá "star(s)"[14]
Motivations
[edit]Tone sandhi, especially the case of the Taiwanese Hokkien tone circle, often lacks intuitive phonetic explanations. Specifically, sandhi rules may target classes of phones not previously identified as natural, the conditioning environments may be disjoint, or the tone substitutions may occur without any reason. This is because waves of sound change have hidden the original phonetic motivation of the sandhi rule. In the case of Chinese varieties, though,Middle Chinese tonescan be used as natural classes for tone sandhi rules in modern varieties, showing that diachronic information needs to be considered to understand tone sandhi.[15] However, phonetic motivations have been identified for specific varieties.[16] The phonetic unnaturalness of many tone sandhi processes have made it difficult for phonologists to express such processes with rules or constraints.[17]
Phonologically, tone sandhi is often anassimilatoryordissimilatoryprocess. Mandarin Tone 3 sandhi, explained above, is an example of anObligatory Contour Principleeffect because it involves two tone 3 syllables next to each other. The first of the two tone 3's becomes a tone 2 to dissimilate from the other syllable.[18]
Transcription
[edit]Sinologists sometimes use reversedChao tone lettersto indicate sandhi, with the left-facing letters of the IPA on the left for the underlying tone, and reversed right-facing letters on the right for the realized tone. For example, the Mandarin example ofnǐ[ni˨˩˦]+hǎo[xaʊ˨˩˦]>ní hǎo[ni˧˥xaʊ˨˩˦]above would be transcribed:
- [ni˨˩˦꜔꜒xaʊ˨˩˦]
The individual Unicode components of the reversed tone letters are ⟨꜒ ꜓ ꜔ ꜕ ꜖⟩.
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]
References
[edit]- ^ab Gandour, Jackson T. (1978). "The perception of tone". In Fromkin, Victoria A. (ed.).Tone: A Linguistic Survey.New York: Academic Press Inc. pp. 41–72.ISBN978-0122673504.
- ^abcde Yip, Moira(2002).Tone.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ISBN9780521774451.
- ^ Pike, Eunice V. (1986). "Tone contrasts in Central Carrier (Athapaskan)".International Journal of American Linguistics.52(4): 411–418.doi:10.1086/466032.S2CID144303196.
- ^ Wang, William S-Y. (1967). "Phonological features of tone".International Journal of American Linguistics.33(2): 93–105.doi:10.1086/464946.JSTOR1263953.S2CID144701899.
- ^Chen, Matthew Y. (2000).Tone Sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-511-04053-9.OCLC56212035.
- ^Zhang, Jie (2007-11-23)."A directional asymmetry in Chinese tone sandhi systems".Journal of East Asian Linguistics.16(4): 259–302.doi:10.1007/s10831-007-9016-2.ISSN0925-8558.S2CID2850414.
- ^Rose, Phil (March 2016)."Complexities of tonal realisation in a right-dominant Chinese Wu dialect - disyllabic tone sandhi in a speaker form Wencheng".Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society.9:48–80.ISSN1836-6821.
- ^Yue-Hashimoto, Anne O. (1987). "Tone Sandhi across Chinese Dialects". In Chinese Language Society of Hong Kong; Ma, M.; Chan, Y. N.; Lee, K. S. (eds.).Wang Li Memorial Volumes: English Volume.Joint Publishing Co., HK. pp. 445–474.hdl:10722/167241.ISBN978-962-04-0339-2.
- ^Zhu, Xiaonong Sean (2006).A grammar of Shanghai Wu.LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics. München: LINCOM EUROPA.ISBN978-3-89586-900-6.
- ^ Chen, Matthew (2004).Tone Sandhi: Patterns Across Chinese Dialects.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ISBN0521652723.
- ^ Schuh, Russell G. (1978). "Tone rules". In Fromkin, Victoria A. (ed.).Tone: A Linguistic Survey.New York: Academic Press Inc. pp. 221–254.ISBN978-0122673504.
- ^ab Hunter, Georgia G.; Pike, Eunice V. (2009). "The phonology and tone sandhi of Molinos Mixtec".Linguistics.7(47): 24–40.doi:10.1515/ling.1969.7.47.24.S2CID145642473.
- ^ Abakah, Emmanuel Nicholas (2005)."Tone rules in Akan".The Journal of West African Languages.32(1): 109–134.RetrievedApril 14,2013.
- ^ Marfo, Charles Ofosu (2004)."On tone and segmental processes in Akan phrasal words: A prosodic account".Linguistik Online.18(1): 93–110.doi:10.13092/lo.18.768.ISSN1615-3014.RetrievedApril 14,2013.
- ^Chen, Matthew Y. (2000).Tone Sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-511-04053-9.OCLC56212035.
- ^Rose, Phil (1990-01-01)."Acoustics and Phonology of Complex Tone Sandhi".Phonetica.47(1–2): 1–35.doi:10.1159/000261850.ISSN1423-0321.S2CID144515303.
- ^Zhang, Jie (2014-01-30)."Tone Sandhi".Oxford Bibliographies.doi:10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0160.
- ^Yip, Moira (2007-02-01)."Tone".In Lacy, Paul de (ed.).The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology(1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 229–252.doi:10.1017/cbo9780511486371.011.ISBN978-0-511-48637-1.