Moraic Footing in Suzhou Chinese: Evidence from Toneless Moras

Yuhong Zhu

doi:10.3765/amp.v9i0.4862

Abstract

The current study provides additional phonetic data for the light-initial sandhi patterns in Suzhou Chinese, illustrating a context-sensitive pitch alternation that is not present after heavy-initial forms, and has not been attested in other neighboring Northern Wu varieties either. I propose that such pitch alternation is due to interpolation effects on toneless prosodic constituents, here toneless moras. A binary trochee built directly on moras yields an unparsed (i.e. toneless) final mora in light-heavy disyllables, accounting for the pitch patterns on the surface. Such an analysis is not only empirically adequate, but also echoes the cross-linguistic structural observation that a foot head lighter in weight than the dependent is generally dispreferred (Head-Dependent Asymmetry; cf. Dresher and van der Hulst 1998).

Highlights

Suzhou Chinese, a major dialect of the Northern Wu family, demonstrates complex tone sandhi patterns often referred to as left dominance by Chinese phonologists (Chan and Ren 1989; Duanmu 1995; 1999; Chen 2000, Yan and Zhang 2016; Zhang 2007, among others)
This paper explores the last property of toneless prosodic units: pitch of toneless moras/syllables are best explained as "interpolation" between true tonal targets (Pierrehumbert 1980; Pierrehumbert and Beckman 1988; Myers 1998)
The current study aims to bridge this gap by providing an illustration of pitch alternation led by interpolation in Suzhou Chinese, a Northern Wu variety

Summary

Introduction

Suzhou Chinese, a major dialect of the Northern Wu family, demonstrates complex tone sandhi patterns often referred to as left dominance by Chinese phonologists (Chan and Ren 1989; Duanmu 1995; 1999; Chen 2000, Yan and Zhang 2016; Zhang 2007, among others). The third mora in such a sequence remains unfooted in all cases, and cannot host any phonological tone These light-initial words contrast with heavy-initial ones, which are fully parsed by a binary syllabic foot: (μ+μ+.μ-μ-). Moraic Footing in Suzhou Chinese (1b) states the relationship between the prosodic structure and the surface phonetics: unparsed moras cannot host any phonological tone, and function merely as "midpoints" of interpolation between the flanking tonal targets. This directly contrasts with footed moras with phonological tones, which remain stable in pitch regardless of neighboring tonal context.

Background

The data

A foot-based analysis

Discussion and conclusion