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This study investigates the predictability effects of pitch accent on word recognition using the sandhi rule in Kansai Japanese (KJ). Native KJ speakers and native Tokyo Japanese (TJ) speakers (control group) saw images of four objects while hearing modifier + noun phrases and selected the corresponding image as quickly as possible. The word-initial tone of the noun's initial mora was predictable or unpredictable based on the tone of the preceding modifier's final mora in KJ but not in TJ. Experiment 1 found faster reaction times in the predictable conditions compared with the unpredictable conditions in KJ speakers but only when the modifier had an all-low tone sequence. This finding suggests that a modifier-ending that changes following the sandhi rule can function as a reliable cue to constrain an upcoming tone, whereas a modifier-ending tone that remains the same as in the citation form cannot (although the next tone is predictable). Unexpectedly, we found the same effect, albeit weaker, in TJ speakers. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and additionally showed that the facilitation effect was not due to TJ speakers having sufficient exposure to KJ to be familiar with the KJ sandhi rule. We speculate that the effect in TJ speakers is related to a language universal constraint against a sequence of low tones without a high tone within a phonological word, which may urge listeners to listen for a high tone in the upcoming input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Předmětem tohoto článku je sandhi v češtině, analýza tohoto jevu na základě materiálu získaného z českého mluveného korpusu ORTOFON v2. Norma spisovné češtiny na mezislovní hranici připouští pouze realizaci neznělého obstruentu před sonorou stojící na začátku slova. Provedený výzkum ukázal, že v češtině dochází k častým odchylkám od stávající spisovné normy. Na mezislovní hranici jsou zaznamenány výslovnosti se znělou souhláskou na konci slova před iniciálni sonorou.

In many languages numerals may appear in different forms depending on the context, which Greenberg (1978) called the contextual and absolute forms respectively. Greenberg made the universal generalization that if a numeral has two forms, then all the lower numerals also do. He then mentioned Mandarin Chinese as an exception because while its numeral '2' has two forms, he thinks that the lower numeral '1' doesn't. This paper argues for a different view about Mandarin '1'–that is, '1' actually has two forms just like '2', despite their segmental identity. Then I argue that the two forms of '1' and '2' are not distinguished by use as Greenberg claimed for '2', but rather by the morphophonological context: the contextual form appears when followed by overt material at the point of vocabulary insertion of the numeral, otherwise the absolute form appears. This generalization, together with the key assumption that vocabulary insertion proceeds bottom-up, leads to a particular structure for enumerating numerals like liǎng gè nv̌hái 'two girls', where the Cardinal head liǎng 'two' takes the Classifier Phrase gè nv̌hái as its complement. This paper also provides novel evidence suggesting that in Mandarin a complex enumerating numeral like '125 pears' merges the complex cardinal phrase '125' with the Classifier Phrase, supporting He (2015) and challenging Ionin & Matushansky (2016, 2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionThis study investigates whether unfamiliar tone sandhi patterns in Tianjin Mandarin can be implicitly learned through an artificial language learning experiment, and if the acquired knowledge is rule-based and generalizable.MethodsParticipants were trained to learn monosyllabic words and disyllabic phrases with their attention focused on a word-order rule, while unknowingly being exposed to unfamiliar tone sandhi patterns. A judgement test with trial-to-trial confidence ratings was conducted to assess the learning outcomes and participants’ awareness.ResultsResults revealed significantly above-chance performance on tone sandhi patterns for learned phrases. This learning effect was generalized to unseen phrases made up of familiar words, but not to phrases with new words, indicating a degree of abstraction across instances, though the learning is not fully rule-based. The confidence rating results suggest that participants were unaware of the structural sandhi knowledge, but the reaction time data of the judgement test indicate that the sandhi knowledge was learned with awareness at the level of noticing.DiscussionThe results have been discussed in light of theories of implicit learning and the findings of previous research on phonological learning.

The tone values of a Tone 4 (T4) syllable are conventionally assumed to change from '51' to '53' when the syllable is followed by another T4 syllable in Mandarin Chinese. Literature focusing on T4 alternation is still inconclusive regarding the contexts for the alternations and whether the phenomenon should be better categorized as tone sandhi (i.e., represented as an abstract phonological rule in mental grammar) or tonal coarticulation (i.e., a natural articulation phenomenon at the phonetic level). The current study probes into these issues by focusing on disyllabic pseudowords, right-branching trisyllabic words as well as unstructured trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic digits. Productions from a total of 148 participants were collected and fundamental frequency (f0) contours, vowel lengths and f0 slopes were included in the analysis. The results from the experiments supported the tonal coarticulation view and showed that the trigger for the alternations was the high-onset tones following T4. Implications to the phonological analysis on tonal alternations in Mandarin Chinese are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines field investigation and phonetic experiments to study the monosyllabic tone and tone sandhi of the Jino language as spoken in Baka village. The study found that the phenomenon of tone sandhi in bisyllabic words of Jino language has describable rules: from a diachronic perspective, morphemes with the same historical origin exhibit the same tone alternation characteristics when constructing words, while morphemes with different historical origins exhibit different tone alternation characteristics. Morphemes derived from the *Proto-Lolo Tone 1 reorganize the metrical relationship between morphemes in word construction, resulting in unstressed and stressed tones. From the perspective of synchronic phonological analysis, the obligatory contour principle restricts the occurrence of tones in bisyllabic words. In addition, this paper also proposes some new views on the historical development of tones in Jino language from an empirical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Central Tibeto-Burman (or Kuki-Chin) languages have diverse systems of lexical and grammatical tone. Previous literature on South Central suggests that researchers can expect to encounter broad variation between languages and dialects. The goals of this paper are twofold: (1) to offer an overview of tone research in South Central languages, and (2) to prepare the linguistic field researcher to incorporate tone study into their data collection and analysis.

Nuosu Yi, a Tibeto-Burman language, has a tone sandhi pattern, where a lexical [33] -tone is realized as [44]-tone on the surface. This tone sandhi pattern in Nuosu Yi is described as having a "weak phonological status (Gerner, 2013: 28)". In this study, we confirm this observation and further show the role of phonological length in the tone sandhi patterns. A closer examination of the sandhi contexts, however, reveals an intricate interplay between phonology and morphology of various aspects of Nuosu Yi grammar. Tone sandhi is conditioned by word size and morphological processes. Monosyllabic words, but not multi-syllabic words, tend to undergo tone sandhi, and tone sandhi is sensitive to morphological operations such as compounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Slavica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wroclaw University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Uipo, also called Khoibu, is an underdescribed Tibeto-Burman language spoken by around 1800 people in the Chandel district of Manipur. Uipo has four lexical tones: a high falling tone, a low level tone, a low falling tone and a high level tone. These are called Tone 1, Tone 2, Tone 3 and Tone 4 respectively. When tones are combined within one word, there are two sandhi rules that explain how the tones change. This article will look at the different context where tone sandhi occurs, focusing on compounds, possessive constructions, and nominal attribution. For instance, a noun that start with a Tone 1 or a Tone 2 syllable will get a Tone 4 when following a Tone 2 possessive prefix. There are examples of minimal pairs that become homonymic in certain morphological contexts, and these are used to illustrate that the tonal category of a given words has really changed. Interestingly, what otherwise seem like phonological rules have some specific lexical exceptions. For instance, the word toŋ1kan2 does not change its tone in contexts where it is expected. The sandhi rules are argued to be  evidence that Uipo has a four-tone system, as opposed to what has been proposed by some previous accounts of the language which have described it as having only three.

Based on a first-time acoustic analysis of the checked-tone sandhi patterns in Suzhou (Northern Wu), I argue that the tone sandhi pattern of light-initial prosodic words in Suzhou can best be accounted for using two types of trochaic feet, disyllabic and bimoraic trochees (based on Kager 1993). The choice of which type of foot to use is made by mediating the quantity relationship between foot heads and dependents (cf. Head-Dependent Asymmetry/HDA; Dresher and van der Hulst 1998). Consequently, a light-heavy disyllable is parsed by a bimoraic trochee, satisfying HDA at the cost of violating Syllable Integrity (Breteler 2018; Kager and Martínez-Paricio 2018; Breteler and Kager 2022): (μ+. μ-)μ. The unfooted mora cannot bear any tone (cf. de Lacy 2002) and surfaces as pitch interpolation between phonological tones (Pierrehumbert and Beckman 1988; Gussenhoven 2004). This paper addresses a key debate in prosodic typology, viz. the interaction of tone, syllable quantity, and metrical structure (Kehrein et al. 2018). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes the segmental and suprasegmental phonology of Adur Niesu, a Loloish (or Ngwi) language spoken mainly in Liangshan, Sichuan, southwest China. Phonemically, there are 41 consonants, 10 monophthongs and 1 diphthong in Adur Niesu. All Adur syllables are open. Its segmental changes mainly happen to the vowels, featuring high vowel fricativization, vowel lowering, vowel centralization, vowel assimilation and vowel fusion. It is common for Adur Niesu syllables to be reduced in continuous speech, with floating tones left. There are three main types of syllable reduction: complete reduction including the segment and tone, partial reduction with a floating tone left, and partial reduction with the initial consonant left. Adur Niesu employs tones as an important means for lexical contrast, namely, high-level tone 55, mid-level tone 33, and low-falling tone 21. There is also a sandhi tone 44. There are two types of tonal alternation: tone sandhi and tone change. Tone sandhi occurs at both word and phrasal levels, and is conditioned by the phonetic environment, while tone change occurs due to the morphosyntactic environment. Finally, some seeming tonal alternation is the result of a floating tone after syllable reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research investigated the tonal system of the Hakka dialect spoken in the Aceh province of Indonesia. The aim of the research was twofold. First, it retranscribed the dialect’s tonal inventory and provided a comparison with Meixian Hakka and the inventory found in Chen’s (2007) research. Second, it analyzed the Shang Tone Sandhi Rule (STSR) of the dialect and its prosodic domain. The data were collected with a careful design based on the number of syllables, different prosodic structures, and a variety of tonal combinations. The data were collected from two informants, who were female Hakka native speakers that originated from Banda Aceh, Indonesia. The research used mainly an impressionistic approach with some support from Praat Version 6.2.14 to evaluate the pitch of the tones. As for the research’s transcription, the researchers opt for the simpler yet phonologically distinct three-level height system (H, M, L) rather than the five-pitch category of Chao. The research identifies that there are six tonal values in this dialect. The tonal alternation rule, i.e., STSR, operates in a multisyllabic domain, and only the tone at the end of a domain is intact from tonal alternation. The STSR is not sensitive to the syntactic domain c-command relation of the Direct Reference Hypothesis. It also behaves differently compared to the Guangxing dialect Yangping Tone Sandhi Rule. As for prosody, the hierarchical domain of the rule in Aceh Hakka is bounded within the Utterance (U), which is different from the Yinping tone sandhi domain in Meinong Hakka, in which tone sandhi is blocked by the I domain (intonational phrase domain). Therefore, the researchers postulate that the domain for Aceh Hakka Shang tone sandhi lies in the Utterance (U).

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é propor uma descrição dos três processos de sândi vocálico externo no português vernacular de São Tomé (PST): a degeminação (DG), a elisão (EL) e a ditongação (DT). A partir de um corpus composto por 113 sentenças distintas que apresentavam o encontro vocálico em fronteira de palavra (V#V), analisamos a produção de seis informantes santomenses, totalizando 216 ocorrências por falante ou 1315 tokens totais. Com auxílio do Praat, inspecionamos os dados e mensuramos o encontro vocálico e, quando este era desfeito, a vogal resultante, de modo a detectarmos a implementação dos fenômenos. Esses, por sua vez, também foram analisados conforme diferentes fronteiras (palavra e frase fonológica; sintagma entoacional) e proeminências prosódicas (lexical e de palavra fonológica), além de serem considerados fatores segmentais como a qualidade vocálica dos segmentos-alvo. Constatamos que os três processos são produtivos no PST: 32% DG; 36% EL; 52.5% DT. Ademais, ocorrem em diferentes fronteiras prosódicas: palavra fonológica (ω + ω), frase fonológica (ϕ + ϕ), e, no caso da ditongação, entre sintagmas entoacionas (IP+IP) desde que sua fronteira não seja delimitada por pausa. Em relação ao acento, a proeminência da frase fonológica foi o fator preponderante para impedir os processos em evidência, bloqueando a degeminação, caso o acento da segunda vogal coincidisse com o acento da frase fonológica. Já para a elisão e para a ditongação, o bloqueio ocorreu quando as duas vogais portavam o acento da frase fonológica. Palavras-chave: Sândi; Fonologia; Português; Elisão; Degeminação; Ditongação. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to propose a description of three processes of external vowel sandhi in São Tomé vernacular Portuguese (PST): degemination (DG), elision (EL) and diphthongization (DT). All three processes are found in PST: 32% DG; 36% EL; 52.5% DT. Working with six Santomean informants, we analyzed a corpus of 113 sentences with vowel encounters in word boundaries (V#V). Then, we measured the duration of vowel encounters or the single resulting vowel when the encounter was undone. Factors such as the nature of the prosodic boundaries (phonological word, phonological phrase, and intonational phrase), prosodic stress (lexical and phonological word), and vowel quality are crucial to implementing sandhi processes. However, they occur in different prosodic settings: diphthongization occurs between intonation phrases (IP+IP) insofar their boundary is not limited by a pause. In contrast, elision and degemination occur in phonological word boundaries (ω + ω) and phonological phrase boundaries (ϕ + ϕ). The prominence of the phonological phrase was the preponderant factor in preventing all processes, blocking degemination whenever phonological phrase stress matches with a stressed second vowel. For elision and diphthongization, sandhi was blocked when two stressed vowels co-occurred with the stress of a phonological phrase. Keywords: External vowel sandhi; Phonology; Portuguese; Degemination; Elision; Diphthongization.

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Copyright of International Journal of Chinese Language Teaching is the property of Clifford Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mandarin tone 3 (T3) sandhi is a phonological alternation where a T3 changes to a rising tone when followed by another T3. The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined how sandhi words are processed during dialogue comprehension. Following different wh-questions, the answers embedded a sandhi word in which the first syllable was either pronounced as post-sandhi T3, pre-sandhi T3, or mispronounced T4 at the focus or background position. The results showed that the naturalness rating decreased as the amplitude of a late positivity (LPC) increased in the order of post-sandhi, pre-sandhi, and mispronunciation conditions, reflecting a reanalysis process after encountering the unexpected tone. At the background (vs. focus) position, the effect was more posterior for the mispronunciation condition, and disappeared for the pre-sandhi condition. Our data suggest that the processing of sandhi words is not only influenced by their tonal realisation, but also moderated by their information structural status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, most of the Science and Technology resources available are in English. Developing an Automatic Language Translation Engine from English (source language) to Tamil (target language) is very essential for the people who need to get technical resources in their native language. The challenges in designing such engines using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools include Lexical, Structural, and Syntax level ambiguity. To solve these challenges, the development of a Part- Of-Speech (POS) tagger is essential. The Verb-Framed languages like Tamil, Japanese, and many languages in Romance, Semitic, and Mayan languages families have high morphological richness but lack either a large volume of annotated corpora or manually constructed linguistic resources for building POS tagger. Moreover, the Tamil Language has a low resource, high word sense ambiguity, and word-free order form giving rise to challenges in designing Tamil POS taggers. In this paper, we postulate a Hybrid POS tagger algorithm for Tamil Language using Cross-Lingual Transformation Learning Techniques. It is a novel Mining-based algorithm (MT), which finds equivalent words of Tamil in English on less volume of English- Tamil bilingual unannotated parallel corpus. To enhance the performance of MT, we developed Tamil language-specific auxiliary algorithms such as Keyword-based tagging algorithm (KT) and Verb pattern-based tagging algorithm (VT). We also developed a Unique pair occurrence-tagging algorithm (UT) to find the one-time occurrence of Tamil-English pair words. Our experiments show that by improving Context-based Bilingual Corpus to Bilingual parallel corpus and after leaving onetime occurrence words, the proposed Hybrid POS tagger can predict 81.15% words, with 73.51% accuracy and 90.50% precision. Evaluations prove our algorithms can generate language resources, which can improve the performance of NLP tasks in Tamil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of incomplete neutralisation describes a situation where a putative case of categorical phonological neutralisation is observed to be phonetically non-neutralising. This has been argued to be a problem for phonological theories that employ categorical features. Here, we use two distinct feeding orders of tone sandhi processes from Huai'an Mandarin to show that incomplete phonetic neutralisation is compatible with categorical phonological phenomena. Therefore, incomplete phonetic neutralisation does not automatically inform us of gradient phonological representations. We further show that incomplete phonetic neutralisation can in fact have a large effect size. Such results are not surprising from a classic generative view of phonology where linguistic performance is argued to be a multi-factorial problem, and linguistic knowledge (i.e., competence) is only one of the many factors involved. Furthermore, our results suggest that the observed incompleteness or gradience may have a source outside phonological knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pali classical grammars reflect a specific idea of what Pali Buddhist texts are. According to this traditional idea, texts are mainly conceived as sound and therefore the initial portions of every grammar deal with sound and sound ligature or sandhi. Sandhi in Pali does not work as systematically as it does in Sanskrit and therefore Pali grammarians have struggled with the optionality of many of their rules on sound ligature. Unlike modern linguists, however, they identify certain patterns of fixed or frozen sandhis that are often associated to the formulas of Pali prose. This paper focuses on these specific frozen sandhis in Pali prose and their connection to the nature of Pali literature broadly. The main working hypothesis is the following: in the same way that certain frozen sandhis in verse obey metrical patterns, frozen sandhis in prose suggest that Pali speech-sounds are subordinated to formulaic rhythmic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pali Sandhi is a phonetic transformation from two words into a new word. The phonemes of the neighbouring words are changed and merged. Pali Sandhi word segmentation is more challenging than Thai word segmentation because Pali is a highly inflected language. This study proposes a novel approach that predicts splitting locations by classifying the sample Sandhi words into five classes with a bidirectional long short-term memory model. We applied the classified rules to rectify the words from the splitting locations. We identified 6,345 Pali Sandhi words from Dhammapada Atthakatha. We evaluated the performance of our proposed model on the basis of the accuracy of the splitting locations and compared the results with the dataset. Results showed that 92.20% of the splitting locations were correct, 1.10% of the Pali Sandhi words were predicted as non-splitting location words and 5.83% were not matched with the answers (incomplete segmentation).

This study describes the segmental and suprasegmental phonology of Adur Niesu, a Loloish (or Ngwi) language spoken mainly in Liangshan, Sichuan, southwest China. Phonemically, there are 41 consonants, 10 monophthongs and 1 diphthong in Adur Niesu. All Adur syllables are open. Its segmental changes mainly happen to the vowels, featuring high vowel fricativization, vowel lowering, vowel centralization, vowel assimilation and vowel fusion. It is common for Adur Niesu syllables to be reduced in continuous speech, with floating tones left. There are three main types of syllable reduction: complete reduction including the segment and tone, partial reduction with a floating tone left, and partial reduction with the initial consonant left. Adur Niesu employs tones as an important means for lexical contrast, namely, high-level tone 55, mid-level tone 33, and low-falling tone 21. There is also a sandhi tone 44. There are two types of tonal alternation: tone sandhi and tone change. Tone sandhi occurs at both word and phrasal levels, and is conditioned by the phonetic environment, while tone change occurs due to the morphosyntactic environment. Finally, some seeming tonal alternation is the result of a floating tone after syllable reduction.

In tone languages, some case studies showed that the word-level tonal representation was closely related to the underlying metrical pattern. Based on different tonal patterns in prosodic units, the metrical structures could generally be divided into the left- and right-dominant types in Chinese dialects. Yet the cross-dialectal phonetic realizations (e.g., duration and pitch) between or within these two metrical structures were still unrevealed. The current study investigated the duration and pitch realizations of disyllabic prosodic words in Changsha and Chengdu dialects (the left-dominant structure), and in Fuzhou and Xiamen dialects (the right-dominant structure). Results showed that not all the duration patterns across four Chinese dialects were sensitive to different metrical structures, indicating that the duration might not be the universal cue for metrical prominence in Chinese dialects. In terms of pitch realization across all the four Chinese dialects, level tones (sometimes falling tones) generally appeared in the metrically weak unit, while underlying pitch forms appeared in the metrically strong unit. Compared with duration, pitch might be more robust for prosodic realizations of metrical structures in Chinese dialects. Furthermore, there was an interaction between duration and pitch patterns in Chinese dialects, which could shed new light on the phenomenon of "metrical tone sandhi". Meanwhile, this study also provides some references for the judgment of the metrical stress and prosodic realizations in other Chinese dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed at investigating listening comprehension of sandhi forms (assimilation, linking and contraction.) in Brazilian Portuguese/English Interphonology. Fifty-two Brazilian learners of English, aged 15 to 50 years old at a minimum B1 level of English proficiency, answered two listening tasks, one with and another without sandhi forms, and filled up a questionnaire about the frequency they watched movies in English, with and without subtitles, and listened to songs in English paying attention to their lyrics. The data collected were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. Results indicated that sandhi forms tend to cause listening comprehension difficulties for the Brazilian learners of English who participated in the study, especially when there were content words involved and the sandhi form had a minimal pair. Even though participants used to watch movies and series in English with subtitles, both in English and in Portuguese, a better performance was observed among those who consumed contents without them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Hearing a word that was already expected often facilitates comprehension, attenuating the amplitude of the N400 event-related brain potential component. On the other hand, hearing a word that was not expected elicits a larger N400. In the present study, we examined whether the N400 would be attenuated when a person hears something that is not exactly what they expected but is a viable alternative pronunciation of the morpheme they expected. This was done using Mandarin syllables, some of which can be pronounced with different lexical tones depending on the context. In two large-sample experiments (total n = 160) testing syllables in isolation and in phonologically viable contexts, we found little evidence that hearing an alternative pronunciation of the expected word attenuates the N400. These results suggest that comprehenders do not take advantage of their knowledge about systematic phonological alternations during the early stages of prediction or discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Perceptual training helped tonal learners produce more distinct allotones on both real and wug words. • Perceptual training helped non-tonal learners improve in offset values rather than the shape of the tonal contours. • Non-tonal learners may need more training to apply sandhi rules more effectively on wug words. • Phonetic bias did not necessarily predict the success in acquiring tone sandhi rules by non-native speakers. This study examined the effects of perceptual training on the acquisition of sandhi tones by both tonal (Cantonese) and non-tonal (English) speakers. In the pre- and post-training tasks, participants were presented with two monosyllables in each trial and were asked to produce them as disyllables. During perceptual training, they heard trials of disyllabic words with and without sandhi rule applications and were trained to identify the two types of disyllabic words. Based on functional data analyses, Cantonese speakers improved in building up more detailed and native-like allotone representations and in turn exhibited more native-like speech production in many cases. However, American learners showed improvement mainly in the offset f0 values or the turning point, indicating that they might have failed to pay attention to the shape of the entire tonal contour during perceptual training. For tonal speakers, the improvement of allotone production occurred on both real and wug words, indicating that the perceptual training may lead to more accurate production of tone sandhi rules regardless of syllable types. American learners, however, might need more training to further modify the allotone representation to perform more accurate sandhi tone application, especially in wug words. Finally, phonetic bias did not correctly predict the success of allotone acquisition since other factors such as the acoustic cues used in processing allotones during perceptual training might have affected the learning results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Learners' productivity of tone sandhi is influenced by its phonetic motivation • Mandarin third tone sandhi (T3 sandhi) is less productive than the Half-T3 sandhi • Learners' productivity pattern does not change with increasing proficiency • Learners may have different metalinguistic knowledge of tone sandhi This study investigates whether the phonetic motivation of two Mandarin tone sandhi patterns influences second-language (L2) learners' productivity in novel words. Research has suggested that the Mandarin third tone sandhi (T3 sandhi) and Half-T3 sandhi might pose different learning challenges for L2 learners, but there is no evidence that phonetic motivation influences L2 learners' productive application of the tone sandhi rules. This study re-examines L2 learners' productive application of the two sandhi patterns and further tests whether their productivity patterns change with increasing Mandarin proficiency. Native Mandarin speakers and Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin with high and low proficiency levels completed a wug production experiment that included both real and novel Mandarin disyllabic words. The results of a comparison of real and novel words showed a low productivity of the T3 sandhi among the L2 learners, but no such pattern was found for the Half-T3 sandhi. The differences in the productivity of the two sandhi patterns for L2 learners did not change with increasing Mandarin proficiency, although there was a difference in the production of novel words involving the T3 sandhi, which may be explained by improved metalinguistic knowledge. These results indicated the relevance of phonetic motivation to L2 productivity of the tone sandhi patterns in Mandarin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A "checked" syllable usually refers to one with a short vowel and an oral or glottal coda, which results impressionistically in a "short" and "abrupt" quality. Although common in languages of the world, it is unclear how to characterize checked syllables phonetically. In this study, we investigated the acoustic features of checked syllables in citation and sandhi forms in Xiapu Min, an under-documented language from China. We conducted a production experiment and analyzed the F0, phonatory quality, vowel duration, and vowel quality in checked syllables. The results show that, in citation tones, checked syllables are realized with distinct F0 contours from unchecked syllables, along with glottalization in the end and a shorter duration overall. In sandhi tones, checked syllables lose their distinct F0 contours and become less glottalized. However, the shorter duration of checked syllables is retained in sandhi forms. This study lays out the acoustic properties that tend to be associated with checked syllables and can be used when testing checked syllables in other language varieties. The fact that in Xiapu Min sandhi checked tones become less glottalized but preserve their shorter duration suggests that, when checked syllables become unchecked diachronically, glottalization might be lost prior to duration lengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the assimilation in terms of voicing on the border between words in Macedonian and in Romanian. Although the compared languages belong to different language families, the pronunciation of the obstruental segments in this position is similar. In both Romanian and Macedonian, a regular regressive assimilation is observed on the border between two words. In Macedonian, the voiced obstruent at the end of a word can be pronounced as a voiced or a voiceless before a resonant at the beginning of the next word. It is important that more often the voiced obstruent at the end of the word loses voicing before a vowel in the initial position than before a sonant. In Romanian, before a resonant in the initial position, the voiced obstruent in the final position of the word in front of it is pronounced voiced. The voiceless obstruent on the border between words can be pronounced as a voiced if it occurs before a sonant in the initial position of the next word. This is an optional phenomenonlike the voiceless pronunciation of the voiced obstruent before a resonant on the border of two words in Macedonian. As one can see, in both languages, obstruents at the end of a word behave differently before initial vowels and sonants on the inter-word border.

Chain-shifts, particularly circular ones such as the tone sandhi of Taiwanese Min has been a longstanding challenge to which phonologists of various persuasions have attempted. This paper appeals to markedness against contour tones in non-final positions as the point of departure that sets off a chain reaction due to the need to preserve underlying contrasts in surface forms. The account has implications on the historical development and acquisition of the Min tone circle that awaits verification.

This study investigates whether Mandarin listeners integrate a prosody-covarying phonological variable, the Chinese Tone 3 sandhi (T3S), into auditory sentence disambiguation. The T3S process changes the first of two consecutive low tones (T3) into a rising tone. It applies obligatorily within a foot and optionally across feet. When T3S is optional, it is more likely to apply to Tone 3 syllables across smaller prosodic boundaries than larger ones; the smaller the boundary, the sharper the T3S pitch rise. Participants listened to twenty-seven structurally ambiguous sentences and identified from two written interpretations the one consistent with what they heard. Each sentence contains two consecutive Tone 3 syllables, and posing different prosodic boundaries between the Tone 3 syllables would result in different interpretations. The first Tone 3 syllable was manipulated into three tone shapes (sharp-rising, shallow-rising, low) and two duration types (long, short). The results show higher major-juncture interpretation rates when the first Tone 3 is long than short, when T3S does not apply than when it applies, and when T3S has a shallower than sharper pitch slope. The tone effect further interacts with the foot formation of Tone 3 syllables in each sentence. We propose that listeners have sophisticated knowledge of prosodic variables and use it efficiently in linguistically meaningful contexts.

This study investigated the perception of Mandarin tonal alternations in disyllabic words. In Mandarin, a low-dipping Tone3 is converted to a high-rising Tone2 when followed by another Tone3, known as third tone sandhi. Although previous studies showed statistically significant differences in F0 between a high-rising Sandhi-Tone3 (T3) and a Tone2, native Mandarin listeners failed to correctly categorize these two tones in perception tasks. The current study utilized the visual-world paradigm in eye-tracking to further examine whether acoustic details in lexical tone aid lexical access in Mandarin. Results showed that Mandarin listeners tend to process Tone2 as Tone2 whereas they tend to first process Sandhi-T3 as both Tone3 and Tone2, then later detect the acoustic differences between the two tones revealed by the sandhi context, and finally activate the target word during lexical access. The eye-tracking results suggest that subtle acoustic details of F0 may facilitate lexical access in automatic fashion in a tone language.

This study investigated the perception of Mandarin tonal alternations in disyllabic words. In Mandarin, a low-dipping Tone3 is converted to a high-rising Tone2 when followed by another Tone3, known as third tone sandhi. Although previous studies showed statistically significant differences in F0 between a high-rising Sandhi-Tone3 (T3) and a Tone2, native Mandarin listeners failed to correctly categorize these two tones in perception tasks. The current study utilized the visual-world paradigm in eye-tracking to further examine whether acoustic details in lexical tone aid lexical access in Mandarin. Results showed that Mandarin listeners tend to process Tone2 as Tone2 whereas they tend to first process Sandhi-T3 as both Tone3 and Tone2, then later detect the acoustic differences between the two tones revealed by the sandhi context, and finally activate the target word during lexical access. The eye-tracking results suggest that subtle acoustic details of F0 may facilitate lexical access in automatic fashion in a tone language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our classics the health (Swasthya) is defined as the equilibrium state of Dosha(bodily humor), Dhatu(fundamental elements), Agni (digestive fire) and Mala (waste products) as well as the pleasant state of Aatma(Soul), Indriya(Sense organs) and Manas(Mind). When theDoshas (bodily humor), attaining the Vikrutaavastha (vitiation), leading to a chain of events so called Samprapti(Pathogenesis), ultimately leading to the manifestation of disease. This state is termed as Roga(Disease), which is nothing but contrary to health. To understand and diagnose the Roga at its full stretch, we need to rely upon the SampraptiGhatakas (Factors responsible for the pathogenesis) starting from Dosha (bodily humor), Dushya (Body tissues), Agni(Digestive fire) and Rogamarga (Pathway to disease) etc. So, for maintaining the health, the understanding, analyzing and maintaining the normalcy of the above said factors such asDosha (bodily humor), Dushya(Body tissues), Agni(Digestive fire) and Rogamarga(Pathway to disease) etc. are very much necessary. In this ever-changing world, new diseases are coming up frequently. To treat such diseases the acharyas have told to use Yuktipramana (Knowledge through Intelligence). But to use Yuktipramana(Knowledge through Intelligence) and treat untold disease perfectly one has to know the basic principles i.e., the Siddhantah of Ayurveda to the core thoroughly so that he can assess the Sampraptighatakas (Factors responsible for the pathogenesis) deeply and treat effectively. Once the Rogamarga(Pathway to disease) is understood properly the pathology can be judged at its initial stage itself and can be treated easily. So here an attempt has been made to appreciate role of Rogamarga(Pathway to disease) in complete understanding of Vyadhi (Roga) in terms of manifestation, Sadhyasadhyata (Prognosis)and Chikitsa(Treatment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]