Neutralization of Taiwanese tone sandhi: An acoustic study

Taiwanese tonal alternation is realized in a circular chain shift fashion for both smooth and checked syllables. Debate regarding the processes of Taiwanese tonal alternation has centered on whether a surface tone is derived from an underlying tone, or whether a surface tone is selected without undergoing any derivation. The current study investigates this controversial issue by examining Taiwanese checked tone and smooth tone neutralization in production. In particular, we analyzed whether smooth citation and sandhi tone 55 (T51→T55) are completely neutralized in F0 contour, F0 height, and duration. We further extended the Taiwanese neutralization literature by also comparing smooth citation and sandhi tone 21 (T33→T21), checked citation and sandhi tone 53 (CT21→CT53), and checked citation and sandhi tone 21 (CT53→CT21). Non-sandhi exceptions were also included to evaluate the effect of position-in-word on F0 height and duration given that citation tones always appear in phrase-final position. Complete neutralization would indicate a surface-tone-storage-and-access point of view, whereas incomplete neutralization would suggest a derivational account for the production of Taiwanese tonal alternation. Results showed complete neutralization for checked tones after factoring out the positional effect. Results for smooth tones and theoretical implications will be also be discussed.