Tone Sandhi and Tonal Coarticulation in Tianjin Chinese

Abstract

Abstract We present in this article an acoustic study on tone sandhi and tonal coarticulation in Tianjin Chinese. Our results indicate that Tianjin tone sandhi is likely influenced by Standard Chinese and is undergoing a number of changes, causing variations and exceptions to the sandhi patterns, and the majority of the sandhis are non-neutralizing, contra traditional descriptions. Tonal coarticulation in Tianjin exhibits a number of well-known cross-linguistic properties: progressive assimilation, regressive dissimilation, a greater progressive effect, and a number of High/ Low asymmetries. Despite the dissimilatory properties observable from both tone sandhi and tonal coarticulation, they seem to have different characteristics, indicating different sources for the two processes.