Tonal Contour and Register Harmony in Chaozhou

Abstract

The proper treatment of tonal contour has been a perennially controversial issue in nonlinear phonology. The controversy pits the Africanists, who work mainly on African tone languages, against the Asianists, who work on Asian tone languages, especially Chinese. The fault line predates the advent of generative linguistics. Pike (1948), for example, explicitly recognizes two typologically different tone systems : contour tone systems, which are typical of Asian languages, and terraced-level tone systems, which are typical of African languages. In generative phonology, attempts have been made to analyze contour tone systems with the same theoretical assumptions and representational structure motivated for terraced-level tone systems. Woo (1969) made among the first attempts in that direction, arguing against the feature system proposed by Wang (1967). More recently, Yip (1989, 1992, 1995), Chen (1992, 1996), Duanmu (1990, 1994), Chang (1992), Tsay (1994), and I (Bao 1990, in press) have continued the debate. In this squib I discuss the tone sandhi facts from one Chinese dialect, Chaozhou, and argue that tonal register is separate from tonal contour. The representation of tone must accomodate the register-contour separation