Sonority bias in Rugao di-syllabic syllable contraction

Chenchen Xu,Yen-Hwei Lin,Karthik Durvasula

doi:10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4316

Chenchen Xu, Yen-Hwei Lin + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v3i1.4316

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Abstract

Two analyses, vowel sonority and the linear order of pre-contraction vowels, have been proposed to account for the vowel selection between two competing vowels in Chinese syllable contraction. An experiment was run to test whether sonority and/or linear order bias the vowel selection in Rugao syllable contraction. Our results confirmed the role of vowel sonority, and did not present supporting evidence for the linear order analysis. Sonority hierarchies along the dimensions of both height and centrality exhibit the same consistent and robust pattern, providing a new perspective to look at competing vowels in vowel-related phonological processes.

Highlights

Syllable contraction, called syllable merger or syllable fusion, is the process by which consecutive syllables are merged into one syllable that has the segments from both; tone contraction happens along with the segment contraction process (Lin 2007)
Syllable contraction is documented for many varieties of Chinese including Taiwan Mandarin (Chung 1997, Lin 2007), Taiwanese Southern Min (Chung 1996, Hsu 2003), Hakka (Chung 1997), Cantonese (Wong 2006), Tianjin (Wee et al 2005) and Jianghuai (Xu 2014)
This paper investigates syllable contraction data from speakers of Rugao, a dialect of the Lower Yangzi Mandarin group (Li & Thompson 1989:4), spoken in Rugao, Jiangsu Province, China

Summary

Introduction

Called syllable merger or syllable fusion, is the process by which consecutive syllables are merged into one syllable that has the segments from both; tone contraction happens along with the segment contraction process (Lin 2007). According to Chung’s (1996) skeletal tier account, cases of di-syllabic contraction can be viewed as six slots merging into three slots (Figure 1), assuming that Chinese syllables have a basic three-slot template XXX. In such a template, the vowel nucleus takes the middle slot. The vowel nucleus takes the middle slot In this templatic account, the association of segments to the template starts with the two edges: when two syllables are to be contracted, the leftmost and rightmost segments of the di-syllabic word must be preserved in the contracted output. Contraction in many other Chinese languages including Standard Mandarin (Cheng & Xu 2009), Cantonese (Wong 2006) and Jianghuai (Xu 2014)

XXX à XXX

Results

Discussion

Conclusion