Reverse-engineering Tones and Tone Sandhi in Wenzhou Dialect: Between-speaker Differences and Historical Development

Abstract

Auditory and acoustic descriptions are presented for the tones and tone sandhi of two Wenzhou speakers in disyllabic words with tones from the historical ping+ qucategories. Differencesbetween the speakers both in isolation tones and tone sandhi are demonstrated. It is suggested that the opaque morphotonemic relationships between sandhi and isolation tones are better accounted for historically, rather than as synchronic operations on unique underliers. The effects of stress / metrical strength are an important factor. Show more