Trisyllabic tone 3 sandhi patterns in Mandarin produced by Cantonese speakers

Jung-Yueh Tu, Janice Wing-Sze Wong, Jih-Ho Cha

Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingConference proceedingpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
3 Downloads (Pure)

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
Title of host publicationProceedings of Interspeech 2017
PublisherInternational Speech Communication Association
Pages3177-3180
Number of pages4
ISBN (Print)9781510848764
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2017
Event18th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech 2017 - Stockholm, Sweden
Duration: 20 Aug 201724 Aug 2017
https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/interspeech_2017/index.html (Conference programme)
https://www.proceedings.com/36411.html (Conference proceedings)

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech
PublisherInternational Speech Communication Association
Volume2017-August

Conference

Conference18th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech 2017
Country/TerritorySweden
Period20/08/1724/08/17
Internet address

Scopus Subject Areas

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

User-Defined Keywords

  • Mandarin tones
  • trisyllabic words
  • tone sandhi
  • tonal production
  • Cantonese CSL learners

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