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This dissertation presents a model of Shanghainese lexical tone and intonation based in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework and develops an annotation system for prosodic events in the language, known as Shanghainese Tones and Break Indices Labeling, or Sh_ToBI. Full-sentence phonetic data from 21 Shanghainese speakers (born 1937-1975) were analyzed. Instead of a syllable tone language with left-dominant sandhi, Shanghainese is analyzed here as a lexical pitch accent language, with three levels of phrasing above the syllable. The lowest level of phrasing is the accentual phrase, which is the domain of the three contrastive pitch accents, H*, L*+H, and L*. These pitch accents are paired with one of two AP-final boundary tones: La/L:a or LHa. La/L:a varies freely between a single low target (La) and a low plateau (L:a), and co-occurs with H* and L*+H. LHa is a sharp rising boundary tone which accompanies L*. AP boundary tones always accompany simple pitch accents (H* and L*), while they only appear after bi-tonal L*+H in APs longer than two syllables. AP-initial tone targets, H* and L*, are prominent and are always the local pitch maximum or minimum, respectively.Above the AP is the intermediate phrase (ip), identifiable only by its phrase-final segmental lengthening, following pitch reset, and a lack of following silence. The highest level is the intonational phrase (IP) marked with initial pitch range expansion, and one of three IP-final boundary tones (H%, L%, or toneless %). H% is used in particle-final yes/no questions, interacting variably with preceding tones. L% is used in corrective or other emotionally marked statements, creating contours with preceding tones. % is toneless, and is used in most questions and all unmarked statements. It is recognizable via segmental lengthening, pitch range compression, and a following silence.Beyond this re-analysis of Shanghainese tone and phrasing, the dissertation finds intonational differences between two kinds of focus (general narrow and corrective), and explores the application of tonal reduction (also called ‘right-dominant sandhi’) to both monosyllabic and disyllabic APs. Finally, a break index system for labeling the perceived amount of juncture between syllables was developed.

This study examines how tone sandhi domains (TSDs) are determined in Fuzhou. The data include: (i) regular verb-object phrases (VOs) where the verb takes a direct bare noun object; and (ii) non-canonical VOs where the verb takes an adverbial expression as a surface object. Several observations are made. First, a three-way sandhi exists within every TSD. All antepenultimate syllables neutralize to low tones. A penultimate syllable’s sandhi tone is dependent on the final syllable’s citation tone, which remains unchanged. Second, in regular VOs, a monosyllabic verb consistently forms a single TSD with its direct bare noun object, but a disyllabic verb and its object are separated into two TSDs. Third, in non-canonical VOs, a monosyllabic verb never forms a single TSD with its adverbial object. Three questions are raised. First, what is the nature of each TSD? Second, why does the number of syllables in a verb determine the distinct TSDs formed in regular VOs? Third, how can we account for the different patterns of TSD formation in two types of VOs? We propose that each TSD equals to a prosodic word (PrWd). OT analyses are provided to show how PrWds are derived. The analysis of regular VOs relies on the ranking of a prosodic markedness constraint ft bin above the word-level interface correspondence constraints. The contrast between two types of VOs is explained by applying the model of Multiple Spell-Out and a cyclic interaction of morphosyntax and prosody. This approach is new in explaining the TSDs that are constrained by morphosyntax.

In Shanghai tone sandhi, with the exception of T5 (yangru) sandhi, a pitch-fall occurs at the second or third syllable of a phonological word (or a sandhi domain). Previous analyses argue that this is invoked by the insertion of a default Low tone to satisfy the Well-formedness Condition of the autosegmental theory. However, in the framework of the present autosegmental theory, that condition is no longer necessarily satisfied, and an alternative interpretation, adopting a boundary Low tone, has been suggested. To evaluate the appropriateness of the default and boundary interpretations, we compared pitch contours among di- to tetrasyllabic words in greater detail. The results show that, in T1 to T4 sandhi, disyllabic words tend to have lower pitch contours than tri- and tetrasyllabic words at the first and second syllables, and that, in tetrasyllables, minimum pitch values were constantly attested at the third syllable. These results indicate that in Shanghai tone sandhi, a boundary Low tone is assigned at the right edge of a phonological word, and it is further associated with the third syllable in tetrasyllables. This boundary interpretation further gives an appropriate explanation of the difference of the pitch-fall between Middle and New Shanghai.

In this article, nominal tonology of Tagbana, a Senufo language of Côte d’Ivoire is investigated. The contribution of this article is twofold as it concerns the whole tonal system, including lexical tones, sandhi tone rules, and the organisation of the prosodic hierarchy. It is shown that Tagbana has three level tones (L, M, H) and two floating tones (H) and (L). A mid tone (M) at the end of a noun is always followed by a floating tone (either H or L), which might be a historic trace left by the tone of a Class Marker. Two clusters of sandhi tonal rules are shown to play a role, called ‘Mid Replacement rules’ (RepM) and ‘Spreading rules on H & L’ (SprH&L). The domains of the sandhi tonal rules are studied in some detail, from the Minimal Prosodic Word (root + class marker), the Intermediate and Maximal Prosodic Words (nominal and adjectival compounds), the Prosodic Phrases (particularly in object + verb constructions), to the Intonational Phrase. Considering the prosodic levels above the Minimal Prosodic Word, more tonal sandhi processes are found to apply in smaller prosodic domains than in larger ones.

T3 sandhi in Mandarin is a phonological alternation where two adjacent T3-T3 tones are not allowed and become T[2]-T3. Although this phenomenon has been extensively studied in previous work, concerns about how T3 sandhi is represented in the mental lexicon remain controversial. We approached the issue of representation in a series of cross-modal priming experiments, including two semantic priming experiments with and without context. Our results indicated that T2 failed to prime a target beginning with T3 in a non-sandhi context. However, both T2 and T3 were able to induce semantic activation when appropriate contextual information was present. Conversely, when such information was absent, only T3 activated the lexical entry. Thus, our study suggests that T3 is specified, as expected for dissimilation, and T2 is resolved by a re-writing rule only under appropriate contextual information.

The author of this paper explains the interpretation of the diphthongs in the epic ”Stephen the Little” by Serbian poet Petar II Petrovich Njegos from the epoch of romanticism. They are: а) tautovocalic diphthongs in the same word, b) tautovocalic diphthongs at the word boundary and its enclitics, c) tautovocalic diphthongs at the word boundary and its proclitics, d) tautovocalic diphthongs at the boundary of two phonetic words, i.e. in sandhi. The analysis comprises the epic ”The Mountain Wreath” and the epic ”The Ray of the Microcosm”, and some of Njegos`s poems, аs well as examples from Serbian folk poems published in the first collection of folk poems ”Маlа prostonarodnya slavenо‑serbska pěsnarica” by Vuk Stefanovich Karadjich.

The current study examined whether or not lexical access is influenced by detailed phonological features during the silent reading of Chinese sentences. We used two types of two-character target words (Mandarin sandhi-tone and base-tone). The first characters of the words in the sandhi-tone condition had a tonal alternation, but no tonal alternation was involved in the base-tone condition. Recordings of eye movements revealed that native Mandarin Chinese readers viewed the base-tone target words more briefly than the sandhi-tone target words when they were infrequent. Such articulation-specific effects on visual word processing, however, diminished for frequent words. We suggest that a conflict in tonal representation at a character/morpheme level and at a word level induces prolongation in fixation duration on infrequent sandhi-tone words, and conclude that these tonal effects appear to reflect articulation simulation of words during the silent reading of Chinese sentences.

The purpose of this study is to test the applicability of Tone Three Sandhi (T3S) when the critical syllable is a monosyllabic topic preceding a topic boundary. A recitation task from 37 native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin was employed. The results from human judgements indicated that the participants predominantly produced the critical syllables with Tone 3 (T3). Additionally, the fundamental frequency of the critical syllables demonstrated a falling contour, showing that T3S was not applied. Intonation break-ups and the prolongation of the critical syllables lent strong support to the view that the topic syllable was at an intonation/phonological phrase-final position. The findings can be elegantly accommodated by constraint-based analyses, which propose that T3S must be avoided when two T3 syllables are separated by an intonation/phonological phrase boundary. Issues relating to pauses, speech rates and word frequency effects are also discussed.

This review is based on the roundtable conference promoted by professors Carmen Matzenauer, Luciani Tenani and Christina Abreu Gomes and coordinated by professor Jose Magalhaes, aiming to discuss various perspectives in the field of phonology, in honor of the outstanding linguist Leda Bisol. A lecture given by Carmen Matzenauer on Generative Phonology and its main assumptions (e.g. levels of representation, rules and features) initiates the roundtable conference, in which she presents language acquisition data and discusses some ramifications of Generative Phonology, specifically Nonlinear Phonology. Furthermore, Luciani Tenani presents interesting examples concerning vocalic sandhi in Brazilian Portuguese based on assumptions derived from Prosodic Phonology located in the domains of Generative Phonology. Eventually, Christina Abreu Gomes discusses Exemplar-based models applied to phonological theory, referencing the continuity between lexicon and grammar proposed by these models as well as presenting effects of type and token frequencies in the use of language.

This study is the first comprehensive acoustic study to examine the acquisition of two Mandarin tone sandhi rules: the third tone sandhi and the more phonetically motivated, half-third sandhi rule by both tonal (Cantonese) and non-tonal (American English) speakers using a Wug Test. Participants were asked to form disyllables from two monosyllabic morphemes. To test for the operation of the lexical versus the computation mechanisms in sandhi rule application, both real and various types of wug (nonsense) morphemes were included. Functional data analysis revealed that Cantonese and American speakers apply the two rules similarly on both real words and wug words, suggesting that the sandhi forms are stored as part of the representation of the abstract Tone 3 (T3) category, and computation of allophonic variants is likely to be involved during production. However, in their computation of tone sandhi rules, L2 learners showed less detailed and less accurate production of tonal contours compared to native speakers, due, perhaps, to less detailed phonological representations of allophonic variants. In general, Cantonese speakers performed better than American speakers. Perceptual mapping between Mandarin sandhi T3 to existing Cantonese tone categories may be responsible for the observed pitch contours among Cantonese speakers. Finally, no phonetic bias was found in the application of the two sandhi rules among these groups of L2 learners, which is likely due to more variability in L2’s speech, obscuring any differences that may exist.

Khoekhoegowab has a tone sandhi process that replaces each underlying tonal melody with an arbitrary secondary melody. This process at first appears to be an unusual example of a "left-dominant" sandhi process in the sense of Yue-Hashimoto (1987) or Zhang (2007). Within a given domain, the leftmost word retains its base from, but the other words undergo paradigmatic substitution; left-dominant systems typically involve spreading of a tonal melody rather than substitution. However, this description of Khoekhoegowab sandhi seems to break down when we consider verbs. Prior descriptions disagree as to whether verb sandhi depends on the placement of a tense-marking clitic (Haacke 1999) or the embedding status of the clause (Brugman 2009). This paper presents the results of a new prosodic production experiment aimed at resolving this conflict. The result is a hybrid generalization: verbs in matrix clauses undergo sandhi when preceded by a tense marker, but verbs in embedded clauses resist sandhi across the board. Thus, Khoekhoegowab continues to look like an exceptional left-dominant system: The verb and tense marking form a sandhi domain in matrix clauses (triggering sandhi on the verb whenever it is not leftmost within that domain), but in embedded clauses verbs form their own independent domain instead.

This poster investigated the mental representation of tone sandhi words (words that undergo tonal alternation) in Kunming Chinese. Auditory-auditory priming lexical decision task was conducted to examine whether the surface forms or the underlying forms of the sandhi words were stored in the mental lexicon and accessed during spoken word recognition. Results showed that the surface forms of T1 and T3 sandhi words were stored episodically in the mental lexicon. Although tone 1 sandhi and tone 3 sandhi rules differ in opacity, they were stored similarly, casting doubts on the role of opacity in determining the representation of sandhi patterns.

This paper provides a corpus-based study of agreement with post-nominal adjectives in coordinate nominal expressions with only one determiner in European Portuguese (EP). It aims to provide clues to understand the patterns of agreement that contradict the predictions of our previous studies in which we made a distinction between two constructions corresponding to the same categorial linear outputs: (a) those associated with the reference of only one entity and (b) those in which nouns are used to refer distinct entities. Since it was suggested by those previous studies the existence of parallel patterns of agreement between Spanish and EP in these types of constructions, we aim to provide a preliminary comparative study that allow us to explore this possibility, namely in what concerns the closest conjunct agreement in both gender and number (considering the different behaviors of the values of these features). Finally, we aim to evaluate the adequacy of some proposals presented for Spanish to explain the EP data, contributing to the description of these structures and presenting some clues for further investigation.

Este trabalho investiga os contextos em que ocorrem processos de sândi vocálico externo em Lung’Ie, uma língua crioula de base portuguesa falada na Príncipe Island, São Tomé e Príncipe, e sua relação com o sistema suprassegmental da língua. Através da análise da relação entre acento e tom nos processos de sândi, esta pesquisa pretende demonstrar que o padrão tonal do Lung’Ie, tal como descrito por Maurer (2009), não bloqueia o fenômeno, que é bloqueado em determinados contextos de acento. A contribuição desta pesquisa envolve a compreensão do sistema suprassegmental do Lung’Ie e da relação das categorias de tom e acento na língua.

Morphemes involved in the formation of Somali verbs and nouns are, in most instances, clearly individuated into categories corresponding to their role in word formation. Verbs contain a base, derivational extensions, inflectional affixes, and clitics that attach in a fixed order. Nouns also contain a base and derivational affixes, but little inflectional morphology. Indeed, both parts of speech have similar morphological templates in Somali, but the relationship between the language’s morphological domains and prosodic domains has only recently become a subject of detailed inquiry. We add to this ongoing trend by illustrating in this paper that there are close correlations between these domains in the language’s verbal and nominal systems that can be elucidated by morphophonological processes; certain processes occur only in a particular prosodic domain, and these process/domain combinations are similar in both the nominal and verbal systems. By establishing diagnostic phenomena attributable to phrase-level domains, this paper fills a gap between recent works focused only on defining prosodic characteristics of Somali words (Downing & Nilsson 2017; Green & Morrison 2016) and the accentual behavior of Somali clauses (Le Gac 2002, 2003a, b).

Despite various work which aimed to identify the phonetic and structural underpinning of tone sandhi directionality, the underlying mechanism that governs tone sandhi remains unknown. We note that the two widely discussed properties of tone sandhi, their phonetic grounds and directionality, correspond to two types of cognitive biases widely investigated in segmental phonology, namely substantive bias and structural bias respectively. This study examines structural simplicity and phonetic naturalness of tone sandhi patterns across seventeen Chinese varieties. Based on a structure-based analysis, we show that tone sandhi patterns are overwhelmingly uni-directional (i.e. structurally simple) either throughout a sandhi system or within each grammatical category. Crucially, uni-directionality is largely right-dominant, which could be attributed to its phonetic grounding. We argue that structural simplicity grounded on phonetic substance better captures tone sandhi asymmetries and such phonetically-grounded structural simplicity bias is reflected in the asymmetries of Chinese tone sandhi directionality.

The current study provides additional phonetic data for the light-initial sandhi patterns in Suzhou Chinese, illustrating a context-sensitive pitch alternation that is not present after heavy-initial forms, and has not been attested in other neighboring Northern Wu varieties either. I propose that such pitch alternation is due to interpolation effects on toneless prosodic constituents, here toneless moras. A binary trochee built directly on moras yields an unparsed (i.e. toneless) final mora in light-heavy disyllables, accounting for the pitch patterns on the surface. Such an analysis is not only empirically adequate, but also echoes the cross-linguistic structural observation that a foot head lighter in weight than the dependent is generally dispreferred (Head-Dependent Asymmetry; cf. Dresher and van der Hulst 1998).

Many studies have found that native Mandarin speakers produce T3 sandhi in a non-neutralized way, with the sandhi tone not fully merged into its sandhi target. This makes it interesting to investigate whether advanced learners of Mandarin will produce T3 sandhi in a similar or different way as well as reasons underlying it. Results from this carefully controlled experimental study show that advanced Korean learners of Mandarin produce T3 sandhi in a neutralized way, in contrast to non-neutralized production by native Mandarin speakers. This is probably due to Korean speakers’ learning of the explicit T3 sandhi rule in their L2 learning program, as compared to the implicit learning of the T3 sandhi rule by Mandarin speakers. Though Korean speakers produce T3 sandhi in a neutralized way, their production of sandhi T3 is found to be overall flatter in f0 curve than that of native Mandarin speakers; this is consistent with their production of Mandarin lexical T2, the base tone of the sandhi target T2. This finding suggests that these advanced L2 learners’ sandhi production is restrained by the way they produce Mandarin lexical tones.

Nasal harmony in Paraguayan Guarani spreads mostly leftward in a morphological word. This regressive nasalization is triggered by a phonologically nasal consonant or stressed nasal vowel and does not affect voiceless stops. A limited process of progressive nasalization affects morpheme-initial voiceless stops across a morpheme boundary. Many forms that include a causative prefix show this kind of progressive nasalization. However, this nasal spread lacks any obvious nasal trigger and does not occur consistently. In this paper, I propose an explanation of these cases as vestiges of earlier phonological rules from pre-Proto-Tupi-Guarani but not active in Paraguayan Guarani, followed by the emergence of a regressive oralization rule and ending in a reanalysis of the basic form of the causative prefix. In so doing, I will provide a revised sequence of changes involving contour allophones in the reconstruction of Proto-Tupi-Guarani (PTG).

Tone 3 (T3) in Mandarin is one of the most difficult tones for second-language (L2) learners given its variants in different contexts. While previous studies investigated L2 learners’ acquisition of T3 in the sandhi context, it remains unclear how L2 learners’ learning experience modulates their phonological knowledge of T3 sandhi in producing different types of words. This study used a wug production test to investigate the effect of Mandarin learning experience on the production of the sandhi form (a rising tone) by experienced and inexperienced Korean-speaking learners. The acoustic analyses showed that experienced Korean-speaking L2 learners were better at using their phonological knowledge of T3 sandhi than less experienced learners when producing pseudo and novel words, but not real Chinese words. The experienced learners had higher pitch values and a steeper rising slope for the T3 sandhi form of pseudo words, and higher pitch values for that of novel words, than the inexperienced learners. The findings suggested that learners’ increased experience with Mandarin facilitated their use of the phonological knowledge of T3 sandhi. Given learners’ difficulties with the T3 sandhi rule, language teachers are suggested to develop teaching materials with different word types to promote the generalization of the rule.

Through this paper we are proposing a framework for enunciation of Sanskrit shlokas and phrases. Sanskrit shlokas have been known to have a cathartic effect on the mind and soul. But due to the richness of the language and the lack of a large number of teachers, few are able to tap its benefits. We propose a new method of sandhi splitting based on the shloka characteristics and the utilization of the seq2seq model with attention for generating shlokas. On testing, the model generates an MOS of 3.25 out of 4.

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar a ocorrência de processos fonológicos de cunho estilístico a partir de um corpus poético do Português Arcaico, as Cantigas de Santa Maria, atribuídas à lavra do Rei Afonso X de Castela, o rei “Sábio”. Trata-se, portanto, de verificar os possíveis condicionamentos linguísticos envolvidos na sua realização, sobretudo no que se refere a fenômenos de sândi – crase, elisão e hiato, conforme a noção de opacidade proposta por Kiparsky (1985). Com base nos dados analisados, foi possível concluir que o trovador não possui tanta liberdade para “criar” ou não formas desviantes, segundo sua vontade, para satisfazer necessidades artísticas, fato corroborado pela baixíssima margem de arbítrio de que dispunham.

Strict criteria on phonological categoryhood coupled with strict privativity of representation inevitably lead to a conclusion that sonorants must not contain a prime responsible for voicing. Assuming that this prime is also not supplied to sonorants in the course of phonological derivation, this class of segments, contrary to observed patterns, should be inactive with respect to voicing phenomena. Presonorant sandhi voicing in Cracow-Poznan Polish is used to show how such apparent patterns can be dealt with without compromising the above theoretical assumptions. This however has consequences which bear on almost every aspect of laryngeal phonology. Some of them include: arbitrariness of the relation between phonology and phonetics, emergent nature of laryngeal categories, minimization of the role of phonological computation, re-evaluation of typical analytical criteria for deciding on phonological representation of laryngeal distinctions, which are used in phonological practice, as well as a possibility ...

Consonant cluster simplification in Tundra Nenets coexists with other consonantal alternations, such as fricative strengthening, lenition of stops, and a variety of NC-effects, which all apply within the same phrasal domain. These processes interact with each other, suggesting an opaque ordering within the same post-lexical domain and thus presenting a challenge not only for inherently parallel theories like classical Optimality Theory, but also for the cyclic derivational approaches such as Stratal OT. We analyze all instances of Tundra Nenets cluster simplification as coalescence and show that a variety of apparently opaque alternations accompanying cluster simplification can be seen as transparent on this account. We also argue that strengthening in consonant clusters is caused by an intermediate stage where coda obstruents lose their place and turn into a glottal stop.

The present study investigated the effect of certain unique morphophonemic features of Kannada words on the rate of stutters in a group of 22 adolescent and adult persons who stuttered in an oral reading task. A linear regression analysis showed that word length ranging from 1 to 8 syllables was a potent variable in the occurrence of stutters accounting for 25.3% of stutters. A composite index of morphophonemic complexity with points assigned for sandhi, geminates, consonant clusters, and number of morphemes accounted for a small 7.5% variability in observed stutter rates. Sandhi words and the hybrid content-function words were no more effective than other words in determining stutter rates. Results are discussed in relation to past findings for other languages and current neurolinguistic models of speech production.

This article traces the history of how modern Western linguistics adopted the term 'sandhi' from the Sanskrit grammatical tradition and adapted it to its theoretical needs. In particular, we will acknowledge the fundamental role played by Müller,1 who combining both Indic ('Prakriyā' grammars and 'Prātiśākhyas') and Western approaches (those of Colebrooke and Bopp) to the representation of Sanskrit grammar, coined in 1866 the labels of 'internal sandhi' and 'external sandhi'. Such labels gained momentum thanks to the works of Whitney in the 19th century and Bloomfield in the 20th century and eventually became common parlance in Western linguistics.

This paper examines the application of the Iambic/Trochaic Law to complex tone languages like Jieyang (Teochew, Southern Min). With bidirectional tone sandhi on top of its six-tone inventory, duration and intensity measurements were obtained and fitted into Linear Mixed Effects Regression models to inspect whether duration and intensity contrasts of the two sandhi types match the predictions based on the Law. Results confirmed an interaction between rhythmic type and sandhi type, and that prominence indicated by duration and intensity contrasts largely behaves the way as predicted by the Law. This suggests that tone sandhi can be metrically-motivated via duration and intensity, contributing to the rhythmic organization of tone languages altogether.This paper has provided novel support for metrical prominence of tone languages based on the Iambic/Trochaic Law, adding complex tone languages and production results to the recent literature on rhythmic groupings.

Seenku (Mande, Burkina Faso) displays a complex tone sandhi system, sensitive to phonological, morphological, and syntactic structure. In this paper, I argue that the opaque, phonetically unnatural alternations are best accounted for in an allomorph selection approach, following work by Tsay and Myers (1996), Zhang and Lai (2008), and others on Taiwanese Southern Min sandhi. In this model, lexical entries contain multiple surface allomorphs along with subcategorization frames, and forms that follow the same pattern are abstracted into increasingly general lexical templates or schemas. Morphology is post-syntactic, with syntactic structure matched with lexical entries, along the lines of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Embick and Noyer 2007), but with a richer generative lexicon, as in Construction Morphology (Booij 2010b) or analogical approaches to word formation (e.g. Bybee 1995). The domains of application and the interaction of tone sandhi with both itself and other morphotonological processes point to the need for cyclic application, which I implement using phase-based spell out (Uriagereka 1999; Chomsky 2000). This approach allows for productive extension of the patterns without recourse to an overly complicated phonological component.

Tone sandhi in Wuxi Chinese involves “pattern substitution,” whereby the base tone on the first syllable is first substituted by another tone, then spread to the sandhi domain. We conducted a wug test to investigate native Wuxi speakers’ tacit knowledge of tone sandhi and found that the substituion aspect of the sandhi is not fully productive, but the extension aspect is, and sandhi productivity is influenced by the phonetic similarity between base and sandhi tones. These results are discussed in the context of how phonological opacity, phonetic naturalness, and lexical frequency influence phonological learning, and a grammatical learning model that can predict Wuxi speakers’ experimental behavior is proposed.

Phonological descriptions often make reference to prosodic boundaries without exploring the origins of those boundaries. In the Onset Prominence representational framework, prosodic boundaries fall out from the same mechanisms that govern word-internal phonology. These mechanisms are parametric. Opposing settings for these parameters in Polish and English allow for a unified analysis of apparently diverse phonological phenomena including cluster phonotactics, the behavior of post-vocalic consonants, the realization of word-initial vowels, and the application or non-application of external sandhi.

Disyllabic sequences in Shanghai Wu undergo different types of tone sandhi depending on their structure: phonological words (e.g., modifier–nouns) spread the initial tone across the disyllable, while phrases (e.g., non-lexicalized verb–nouns) maintain the final tone and level the contour of the nonfinal tone. We investigated the productivity of the two tone sandhi types through 48 speakers’ productions of real and nonce disyllables. Our results show that (a) the word-level tone sandhi in Shanghai indeed involves tone spreading, while the phrase-level sandhi is better interpreted as phonetic contour reduction, (b) the spreading sandhi generally applies productively to nonce words, but there are some differences in tone production between real and nonce words that are attributable to both categorical non-application and gradient application of the sandhi in nonce words, and (c) the structure dependency of Shanghai tone sandhi is also productive, as the speakers produced qualitatively different f0 patterns in modifier–noun nonce words and verb–noun nonce phrases. These results indicate that in order to arrive at a full picture of tone sandhi patterning, experimental data that shed light on the generalizations that speakers make from the speech input are necessary.