Trisyllabic tone 3 sandhi patterns in Mandarin produced by Cantonese speakers

Jung Yueh Tu, Janice W S WONG, Jih Ho Cha

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

Abstract

The third tone sandhi in Mandarin is a well-studied rule, where a Tone 3 followed by another Tone 3 is changed as a rising tone, similar to Tone 2. This Tone 3 sandhi rule is straightforward in disyllabic words, which is phonetically driven for the ease of production. In three or more than three syllables with Tone 3, however, the Tone 3 sandhi application is more complicated and involves both the prosodic and morph-syntactic domains, which makes it difficult for L2 learners. This study aims to understand how L2 learners with another tone language experience could master the Mandarin Tone 3 sandhi rule. Specifically, the study investigates the production of Tone 3 sandhi in trisyllabic Mandarin words by Cantonese speakers. In the current study, 30 Cantonese speakers were requested to produce 15 trisyllabic words ("1+[2+3]" and "[1+2]+3" sandhi patterns) and 5 hexasyllabic sentences with Tone 3 in sequences. The analyses of results center on three major types of error patterns: overgeneralization, under application, and combination. The findings are discussed with regard to the phono-syntactic interactions of Tone 3 sandhi at the lexical and phrasal levels as well as the influence of the Cantonese tonal system.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3177-3180
Number of pages4
JournalProceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH
Volume2017-August
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Event18th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2017 - Stockholm, Sweden
Duration: 20 Aug 201724 Aug 2017

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Signal Processing
  • Software
  • Modelling and Simulation

User-Defined Keywords

  • Cantonese CSL learners
  • Mandarin tones
  • Tonal production
  • Tone sandhi
  • Trisyllabic words

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