The Tone Sandhi Domain of Shanghai Chinese: A Quantitative Analysis Using Conversation Text

Abstract

In Shanghai Chinese, tone sandhi occurs in polysyllabic words and phrases. The domain of tone sandhi has been investigated in terms of not only theoretical approaches but also dialectological description since 1980s, and recently a laboratory phonological study provides auditory-data about the well-formedness of the sandhi domain. This paper summarizes previous studies of the sandhi domain of Shanghai Chinese and analyzes production data of the domain using conversational text. Although basic characteristics of attested sandhi domains could be explained by previous studies, we found some formation patterns of the domain that have not been reported previously.