On the Relationship between Two Types of Multisyllabic Tone:A Case Study of NN Reduplications in Pingliang Dialect
This article discusses two types of multisyllabic tone,"less-neutralized type"and"highly-neutralized type"(hence LMT and HMT respectively),in Pingliang dialect,focusing on NN reduplications and other disyllabic words.The latter type is all pre-sented as tone sandhi,while the former very seldom.It is observed that the HMT of NN reduplications presents highly patterned left-prominent and right-prominent prosody depending on different citation tones of the first syllable,while LMT of disyllabic words is more varied and less unified.It is proposed that HMT is formed,driven by prosodic pattern to better fulfill the Relative Prominence Principle,and hence serves as a shared pattern,while LMT seldom does so.This proposal is expected to provide a satisfactory explanation for the differentiation between LMT and HMT,which is widely reported in Northwest Chinese.
万方数据
维普
