| ROA: | 159 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Feet, tonal reduction and speech rate at the word and phrase level in Chinese |
| Authors: | Moira Yip |
| Comment: | Paper submitted to Proceedings of the OTS Workshop on Prosodic and Phrasal Phonology, Utrecht 1996 |
| Length: | 27 |
| Abstract: | Feet, tonal reduction and speech rate at the word and phrase level in Chinese Moira Yip Abstract Chinese languages group syllables into prosodic units, which I will call feet, and these feet form the domain of tone deletion and tone sandhi processes, as well as segmental lenition effects. This paper offers an OT analysis of the cross-linguistic variation in tone retention/tone deletion in non-head syllables and feet, and the variation in foot size. It is shown that the tonal facts require HeadMax constraints that require retention of head tones. Together with the HeadDep and HeadIdent constraints of Alderete 1995, this completes the family of positional faithfulness constraints. In the tonal analog of Russian vowel reduction, it is shown that in Wu dialects faithfulness may be complete in head syllables, partial in head feet, and violated elsewhere. It is further shown that n-ary feet must be admitted, and this is achieved by a low ranking of Ft-Bin-Max. The final section looks closely at n-ary feet in Nantong, and compares two alternative analyses of apparent changes in prosodic structure conditioned by speech rate. Note: This paper has been submitted to the Proceedings of the OTS Workshop on Prosodic and Phrasal Phonology. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |