Tone Sandhi in Taiwanese and Phasal Spell-out

Abstract

The paper examines the C particle kong in Taiwanese. Following Simpson and Wu (2002), the paper argues that tone sandhi that kong participates in provides an argument for multiple spell-out. It is also shown that the kong construction can be used to tease apart different approaches to multiple spell-out and successive-cyclic movement. In particular, tone sandhi with kong provides evidence for the approach argued for in Bošković (2016a), which dispenses with the Phase-Impenetrability Condition and where spell-out targets phases and successive-cyclic movement targets phrases above phases. The paper also provides a uniform account of the derivational PF effect regarding tone sandhi in Taiwanese and the derivational PF effect regarding primary stress assignment in English noted in Bresnan (1972).*