The Status of Narrow Tone Sandhi in Shanghai Tonology

Abstract

This study examines phonetic vs. phonological interpretations on the status of “Narrow Tone Sandhi” in Shanghai Chinese by analyzing acoustic phonetic data. The results show that 1) the faster the speech rate was, the smaller the size of pitch movements became, 2) contour shapes were preserved regardless of speech rates, and 3) although the tonal shapes of Yinping and Yinqu became relatively similar because of the pitch size reduction, most of the differences between the two pitch values were significant in all speech rates. These findings indicate that Narrow Tone Sandhi applies at the level of phonetics rather than phonology.