Abstract

Abstract Nuosu Yi, a Tibeto-Burman language, has a tone sandhi pattern, where a lexical [33] -tone is realized as [44]-tone on the surface. This tone sandhi pattern in Nuosu Yi is described as having a “weak phonological status (Gerner, 2013: 28)”. In this study, we confirm this observation and further show the role of phonological length in the tone sandhi patterns. A closer examination of the sandhi contexts, however, reveals an intricate interplay between phonology and morphology of various aspects of Nuosu Yi grammar. Tone sandhi is conditioned by word size and morphological processes. Monosyllabic words, but not multi-syllabic words, tend to undergo tone sandhi, and tone sandhi is sensitive to morphological operations such as compounding.

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