duration in the tonal phonology of pingyao chinese - UCLA ...

DURATION IN THE TONAL PHONOLOGY OF 

PINGYAO CHINESE 

JIE ZHANG 

zhang@ucla.edu 

This thesis investigates the effects of phonetic duration on tonal behavior, 

especially tone sandhi, in Pingyao Chinese. Two types of phonetic duration 

are under consideration: duration of the rime in a syllable, and the duration 

between the end of a rime and the beginning of the following rime across a 

syllable boundary. Rime duration conditions the pitch distance between the 

tonal targets of a contour tone—the longer the rime, the more pronounced 

the tonal transition. The overall duration of a disyllabic or multisyllabic word 

constrains the pitch movements of the word—the pitch can only be allowed 

to inflect up to a certain complexity in a word. Moreover, given the limited 

duration between the end pitch of a rime and the starting pitch of the 

following rime, the tonal grammar prefers a less drastic pitch change across 

the syllable boundary. A general OT grammar is first constructed based on 

these duration factors and other traditional phonological considerations such 

as faithfulness and the OCP. A language-specific OT grammar for Pingyao 

is then presented. The grammar accounts for the sandhi pattern as well as 

lexical realization of Pingyao tones. Its advantages over previouslydocumented 

rule-based analyses are also discussed. 

1. INTRODUCTION 

In this thesis, I investigate the effects of phonetic duration on tonal 

behavior, especially tone sandhi, in Pingyao Chinese. The correlation 

between phonetic duration and tonal behavior was first investigated in a 

series of works by Duanmu (Duanmu 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994a, 

1994b). This idea is further explored in this thesis. Two types of 

phonetic duration are under consideration: duration of the rime in a 

syllable, and the duration between the end of a rime and the beginning 

of the following rime across a syllable boundary. I argue that the rime 

duration conditions the pitch distance between the tonal targets of a 

contour tone that the rime realizes—the longer the rime duration, the 

more pronounced a tonal transition can be realized on it. In other 

words, a certain rime duration only allows the pitch to travel up to a 

certain distance. As stop-closed syllables are usually shorter than open 

syllables in Chinese dialects (see Kao 1971 on Cantonese, Zee and 

Maddieson 1979 on Shanghai, among others), the widely documented 

phenomenon—less pronounced tonal contours on stop-closed syllables 

than open syllables in Chinese dialects —is a manifestation of this 

condition. Similarly, the overall duration of a disyllabic or 

multisyllabic word constrains the pitch movements of the word—the 

pitch can only be allowed to inflect up to a certain complexity in a 

word depending on the length of the word. I argue that tone sandhi on

2 UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 3 

disyllabic or multisyllabic words in Chinese dialects partly results from 

such constraints. Another durational factor for tone sandhi is the 

duration between the end of a rime and the beginning of the following 

rime across a syllable boundary. Given the limited duration between 

the end pitch of a rime and the starting pitch of the following rime, the 

tonal grammar prefers a less drastic pitch change across the syllable 

boundary. This preference, interacting with other phonetic or 

phonological factors, might lead to tone sandhi—paradigmatic changes 

of tonal values of the relevant syllables. 

This thesis adopts the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory 

(Prince and Smolensky 1993) and is organized in the following way: 

Section 2 discusses the constraint families that are relevant to the 

account of tonal behavior in Chinese, illustrated by examples from 

various dialects. The functional motivations for these constraints are 

also investigated; Section 3 gives a detailed account for various aspects 

of tonal behavior of Pingyao Chinese with special focus on the 

disyllabic tone sandhi, utilizing the families of constraints formulated 

in Section 2; Section 4 is the conclusion. 

2. THE CONSTRAINT FAMILIES 

Under the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory, I propose that 

the following three families of constraints, which I term Duration, 

Faithfulness and Register, are responsible for the tonal behavior of a 

given dialect of Chinese. The Duration constraint family encompasses 

the restrictions on pitch movements on the rime, the disyllabic or 

multisyllabic word, and at the syllable boundary; the Faithfulness 

constraint family is responsible for both the underlying-base and basesandhi 

tonal correspondence; and the Register constraint family consists 

of a series of traditional OCP constraints on tonal registers, banning 

two or more adjacent high or adjacent low registers. Sections 2.1—2.3 

introduce each constraint family in turn. 

2.1. Constraint Family I: Duration 

As stated above, the Duration constraint family consists of constraints 

on pitch movements on the rime, the disyllabic or multisyllabic word, 

and at the syllable boundary. It is thus natural to consider that this 

constraint family is composed of three sub-families: Duration (Rime), 

Duration (Word) and Duration (Boundary).

Zhang—Duration in the Tonal Phonology of Pingyao Chinese 3 

2.1.1. Sub-Family I: Duration (Rime) 

In many Chinese dialects, one of the possible syllable structures is 

/C 0V 1T/, where /T/ stands for voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/, or ///. We 

call this type of syllables stop-closed syllables. We further term 

syllables with the structure /C 0V 1// checked syllables. The tones that 

are realized on stop-closed syllables are called ru tones in traditional 

Chinese documentation. It is generally agreed among Chinese linguists 

that the checked syllables are characteristically shorter in duration than 

other types of syllables (Lin and Wang 1992, Wang 1985). Historical 

sources such as Kangxi Zidian (Kangxi Dictionary) 1 documented that 

the checked syllables were characterized by their short length. Recent 

phonetic studies by Kao (1971) and Zee and Maddieson (1979) also 

show that in modern Cantonese and Shanghai dialects, the average 

duration of non-checked syllables is longer than that of the checked 

syllables. Tables (1) and (2) summarize the some results of Kao (1971) 

and Zee and Maddieson (1979). 

(1) Cantonese (Kao 1971) 

Syll 

Type 

Syll 

Dur 

Tonal 

Value 

/CV/ /CVM/ 

(M=/j w 

m n N/) 

/CV * M/ 

(M=/j w 

m n N/) 

/CVT/ 

(T=/p t 

k/) 

/CV * T/ 

(T=/p t 

k/) 

339ms 352ms 294ms 207ms 117ms 

/53 2 , 35, 21, 23, 55, 33, 22/ /5, 3, 2/ 

(2) Shanghai (Zee and Maddieson 1979) 

Syll Open Syllable Checked Syllable 

Type Tone A Tone B Tone C Tone D Tone E 

Syll 

Dur 

262ms 327ms 332ms 102ms 147ms 

Tonal 

Value 

/42/ /35/ /24/ /5/ /23/ 

As can be seen from the tables, in Cantonese, whether the vowel is 

long or short, the average syllable duration for a stop-closed syllable is 

1 Kangxi Zidian is a dictionary produced under the imperial order of Emperor Kangxi 

by a committee of lexicographers in the year 1716. 

2 I use the traditional Chao letters to represent tones. So 1 indicates the lowest pitch 

and 5 indicates the highest pitch. Contour tones are represented by concatenating two 

or more level tone symbols. E.g., 35 represents a high rising tone.


considerably shorter than that for a sonorant-closed syllable or an open 

syllable (207ms and 117ms vs. 352ms, 294ms and 339ms); in 

Shanghai, the average duration of the two types of checked syllables 

(102ms and 147ms) is only around one third to one half of that of the 

three types of open syllables (262ms, 327ms and 332ms). 

It can also be seen from the tables that the ru tones—tones realized 

on stop-closed syllables—in these two dialects are either level or only 

with a weak contour. In Cantonese, the three ru tones are all level 

tones—high-level /5/, mid-level /3/ and low-level /2/, while the tones 

realized on other types of syllables can have contours such as /53/, /35/, 

/21/ and /23/. In Shanghai, the ru tone associated with the shortest 

type of syllables—Tone D, is a high-level tone /5/, and the other ru 

tone—Tone E, has a weaker pitch rise compared to Tone C (/23/ vs. 

/24/). In other words, the shorter the rime, the flatter the pitch contour 

it permits. 

To account for these phenomena regarding ru tone realization, I 

propose that in a tonal grammar, a family of constraints—Duration 

(Rime), should be postulated. It is formulated as in (3). 

(3) a. The family consists of a series of constraints: 

Dur(R)f1, Dur(R)f2, ..., Dur(R)fn (n>1) 

b. For 1≤k≤n, constraint Dur(R)fk is defined as follows: 

a pitch contour x is licensed by a rime whose sonorant 

duration is at least fk(x). 

c. For 1≤k


The intrinsic ranking is determined by the fact that the candidates 

which satisfy the constraint Dur(R)fk+1 are a subset of the candidates 

which satisfy the constraint Dur(R)fk. 3 Thus the violation of 

Dur(R)fk implies the violation of Dur(R)fk+1. Therefore the only 

sensible ranking between the two constraints is Dur(R)fk ≥≥ 

Dur(R)fk+1, otherwise the effect of Dur(R)fk will never be visible. 

For a specific function fk, the following generalizations can be made: 

(5) a. if n (n=1 or 2) pitch targets have to be reached to produce 

tone x, and n+1 pitch targets have to be reached to produce 

tone y, then f k(x)≤f k(y). 

b. if for both tone x and tone y, n (n=2 or 3) pitch targets 

have to be reached to produced them, and the accumulative 

pitch distance between pitch targets is smaller for tone x 

than for tone y, then f k(x)≤f k(y). 

The implication of (5a) is that the preferred rime duration to license a 

contour tone is no shorter than that to license a level tone, and the 

preferred rime duration to license a concave or convex contour is no 

shorter than that to license a simple rising or falling contour; and the 

implication of (5b) is that for two tonal contours with the same number 

of pitch targets, the farther apart the pitch targets, the longer the rime is 

preferred to be. 

There are articulatory and auditory reasons for these generalizations. 

Articulatorily, a pitch change is implemented by laryngeal structure 

movements, and these movements are made possible by contraction and 

relaxation of the relevant muscles (Borden, Harris and Raphael 1994, 

Erickson, Baer and Harris 1983, Kakita and Hiki 1976, Lindqvist 1972, 

Ohala 1978, Ohala and Ewan 1973, Sundberg 1973). A more 

complicated pitch change involves more complicated laryngeal structure 

movements and muscle state change, thus prefers to have a longer time 

to implement; and a tonal contour with farther-apart pitch targets 

requires the muscles to contract or relax to a greater degree, thus also 

prefers a greater duration of its carrier. Auditorily, the perceived tonal 

contour depends on the duration of the tone carrier. Black (1970), 

Greenberg and Zee (1979) document that given the same distance of 

pitch movement, the longer the duration of the vowel, the more 

“contour-like” the tone is perceived by the listener. Thus it is 

3 This can be proved as follows. Suppose for pitch contour t, a sonorous rime 

duration of d satisfies the constraint Dur(R) fk+1 , then from the definition of 

Dur(R) fk+1 , d≥fk+1(t). Since fk+1(t)≥fk(t), we have d≥fk(t). Thus tone t on duration 

d satisfies the constraint Dur(R) fk . Therefore, the candidates which satisfy the 

constraint Dur(R) fk+1 are a subset of the candidates which satisfy the constraint 

Dur(R) fk .


preferable to have a longer rime duration to enhance the perception of a 

tonal contour with more inflections or greater pitch change. 

The Dur(R) constraints that directly interact with other 

phonological or phonetic factors of the grammar in determining the 

actual tonal realization are only a subset of the constraint family, 

because in this family, some constraints rank so high that they are 

never violated, and some constraints rank so low that they are never 

satisfied. For example, the top-ranked constraint Dur(R)f1 can be 

considered as a universal requirement on tonal realization purely 

determined by limitations of human physiology. It bans contour 

realizations that humans cannot physically achieve due to insufficient 

duration. Since it hinges on universal biomechanical limitations of 

humans, it is necessarily undominated in every tonal grammar. On the 

other hand, a constraint that requires the rime duration to be at least 10s 

is ranked so low in the grammar that it is never active, because no 

rimes will ever be that long in any given language. 

Two questions remain unsolved regarding this constraint sub-family: 

how high can “n” be counted in a grammar and how is the interval 

between f k(x) and f k+1(x) (1≤k


quantitative phonetic study has been done on this topic, I do not have 

specific language data to support either hypothesis. My guess would be 

that there exist dialects which exploit either possibility. 

Bao (1990) and Chen (1996), in their account of the ru tone 

realization of Pingyao Chinese, consider the weak pitch transition of ru 

tones in comparison to non-ru tones to be a low-level phonetic 

implementation process (also see Yip 1995). But more has to be said 

to account for the abundance of level ru tones in Chinese dialects. The 

phonologically active constraint family Duration (Rime) under the OT 

framework allows us to give a unified account for the “levelness” and 

“less-abruptness” of ru tones within phonology. The account for 

Pingyao ru tone realization is given in Section 3.3.3.1. 

2.1.2. Sub-Family II: Duration (Word) 

Contour dissimilation has been documented as a commonly attested 

tone sandhi pattern in Chinese dialects (Bao 1992, Yue-Hashimoto 

1987). Some disyllabic sandhi patterns in Zhenjiang (Zhang 1985), a 

Mandarin dialect spoken in southern China, are given in (6) to illustrate 

the contour dissimilation process in tone sandhi. 

(6) Zhenjiang (Zhang 1985) 

a. 42-42 —> 35-42 b. 42-31 —> 35-31 

c. 31-42 —> 35-42 d. 31-31 —> 35-31 

As can be seen in (6), in Zhenjiang, when two falling contours occur 

adjacent to each other in the base form, the first falling contour 

becomes a rising contour in the sandhi form. 

A similar pattern can be seen in Pingyao (Hou 1980, 1982a). 

Examples in (7) illustrate some sandhi behavior of disyllabic and 

trisyllabic words in Pingyao. Examples (7a) and (7b) are attested in the 

sandhi of modifier-noun disyllabic words; examples (7c) and (7d) are 

attested in the sandhi of subject-predicate trisyllabic words with the 

form AAB where A is the reduplicated subject morpheme and B is the 

predicate morpheme. 

(7) Pingyao (Hou 1980, 1982a) 

a. 35-13 —> 35-53 b. 35-35 —> 35-53 

c. 35-35-13 —> 35-53-13 d. 35-35-35 —> 35-53-13 

In the disyllabic forms illustrated by (7a) and (7b), when two rising 

tones are juxtaposed, the second rising tone changes to a high falling 

tone; in the trisyllabic forms illustrated by (7c) and (7d), the second


rising tone in a three-adjacent-rise tonal combination also changes to a 

falling tone. 

In order to formally describe the changes in pitch contour resulting 

from the contour dissimilation process, I define the concept of tonal 

inflection point as follows: 

(8) Definition: a tonal inflection point is a point T i in time 

such that the pitch value of T i is either higher than the pitch 

value of T i-1 and T i+1, or lower than the pitch value of T i-1 and 

T i+1. 

The result of above-mentioned contour dissimilation process can thus 

be generally described as the reduction of tonal inflection points: in a 

disyllabic word with a tonal combination 35-35, there are two tonal 

inflection points, but in 35-53, there is only one; in a trisyllabic word 

with a tonal combination 35-35-13, there are four tonal inflection 

points, but in 35-53-13, there are only two. These are shown 

schematically in (9) and (10). 

(9) a. 35-35 b.35-53 

5 5 

55 

3 3 

3 3 

(10) a.35-35-13 b.35-53-13 

5 5 

5 5 

3 3 

1 

3 

3 3 

Thus instead of referring directly to this type of contour 

dissimilation, I propose that a tonal grammar directly poses restrictions 

on the number of tonal inflection points that can be realized on a 

phonological word or phrase due to its limited duration. A family of 

constraints—Duration (Word) which specifies the maximum number of 

inflection points in a phonological word is formulated as follows: 

(11) a.The family consists of a series of constraints: 

Dur(W)g1, Dur(W)g2, ..., Dur(W)gn (n>1) 

b.For 1≤k≤n, constraint Dur(W)gk is defined as follows: 

1 

3


a word with x syllables can carry at most gk(x) tonal 

inflection points. 

c. For 1≤k


able to license a fairly complicated pitch transition, too-frequent 

acceleration and deceleration of the laryngeal muscles are still 

dispreferred. Thus even if the tonal inventory of one particular dialect 

allows the possibility of having more inflection points in a 

phonological word, the dispreference for too-complex a muscle 

movement in a short duration might put a stricter upper limit for the 

number of inflection points that can be realized in the domain in 

question. 

Processes described as contour dissimilation may also result in an 

increase of tonal inflection points, as illustrated by examples from 

Huojia—a northern dialect (He 1979), and Pingyao (Hou 1980) in 

(14)—(15). 

(14) Huojia (He 1979) 

53-31 —> 53-13 

(15) Pingyao (Hou 1980) 

13-35 —> 31-35 

In all these cases, the tone sandhi causes the number of tonal 

inflection points to change from 0 to 1. The example in Huojia is 

schematically shown in (16). 

(16) 53-31 —> 53-13 

5 

5 

3 

3 

1 

—> 

This phenomenon can be regarded as an effect of a constraint which 

poses restrictions on the minimum number of tonal inflection points in 

a word. The constraint is formulated in (17). 

(17) Dur(W) Min(Inf): a phonological word should have at least 

one tonal inflection point. 

The motivation for this constraint might have perceptual bases. A 

parallel to the tonal inflection point is stress. If we identify a lexical 

unit—a word—with one stress maximum, then the culminative 

function of stress is to mark the number of lexical units in a domain 

without necessarily identifying their boundaries (Trubetzkoy 1939). 

The tonal inflection point is by definition culminative. Its presence 

3 

1 

3


may serve the same function as the culminative property of stress, 

namely, marking the presence of lexical units. Another analogy that 

can be drawn to the preference of a tonal inflection point is the 

indispensability of the nucleus in a syllable. The nucleus of the 

syllable marks the peak of richness in spectral information and energy 

and helps the demarcation of syllable domains. It is conceivable that a 

peak in fundamental frequency would help in the demarcation of word 

domains. 

Clearly the constraint on minimum number of tonal inflection points 

is not motivated by durational requirements. But for the sake of 

grouping all the constraints regarding tonal inflection point together, I 

still group it under the constraint sub-family Duration (Word). 

The ranking of Dur (W) Min(Inf) and the series of Dur(W)g 

constraints is unsettled and can vary across dialects. Thus a dialect in 

favor of at least one tonal inflection point and a dialect that prefers no 

tonal inflection point at all are both conceivable. Pingyao is an attested 

case of the former type, and the abundance of dialects which display a 

spreading of the tonal contour on the first syllable to the whole word, 

such as Danyang (Lü 1980) and Shanghai (Shen 1981, Xu et.al 1981), 

can be taken as examples of the latter type. Some tone sandhi of Old 

Shanghai (from Shen 1981) is given in (18). Underline indicates tones 

on checked syllables. 

(18) Old Shanghai (Shen 1981) 

53-53 —> 55-53 13 -53 —> 11 -13 

53-35 —> 55-31 13 -35 —> 11 -13 

53-13 —> 55-53 13 -13 —> 11 -13 

In conclusion, Duration (Word) consists of a group of constraints 

mandating the number of tonal inflection points in a word or phrase. 

The constraints on the maximum number of tonal inflection points are 

ranked in a hierarchy as in (12). Another constraint requires that a word 

has at least one tonal inflection point. These constraints are both 

functionally motivated and empirically grounded. 

2.1.3. Sub-Family III: Duration (Boundary) 

Tonal coarticulation is a widely attested phenomenon in Chinese 

dialects (Shen 1990, Xu 1994, 1997) as well as other East Asian 

languages such as Thai and Vietnamese (Abramson 1979, Han and Kim 

1974). For instance, Shen (1990)’s results show that in standard 

Mandarin, when a high falling tones 51 occurs before a high level tone 

55 or another high falling tone 51, the offset of the first tone does not


fall as low as before a rising tone 35 or dipping tone 214. This effect 

is taken by Shen (1990) and Xu (1994) to be phonetic adaptation and 

thus distinguished from tone sandhi which supposedly has phonemic 

effects. 

Three major distinctions are made between tone sandhi and tonal 

coarticulation in Shen (1990). First, tone sandhi is attributed to 

language-specific morphophonemic constraints, while tonal 

coarticulation is attributed to language-independent biomechanical 

constraints. Second, sandhi tones may be considered as a result of tonal 

dissimilation or assimilation, but tonal coarticulation cannot be 

described in such terms. Third, the effects of tone sandhi are phonemic, 

but the effects of tonal coarticulation are purely phonetic. In other 

words, tone sandhi does not have to preserve tonal identity while tonal 

coarticulation does. 

I, on the other hand, would like to propose that under the OT 

framework, these distinctions between tone sandhi and tonal 

coarticulation can be reconciled in a tonal grammar which utilizes 

articulatorily and auditorily based constraints. 

Let us consider the distinctions discussed in Shen (1990) one by one. 

First, since Optimality Theory accounts for cross-linguistic 

variations by differences in constraint ranking, not constraint 

composition (Prince and Smolensky 1993), different tone sandhi 

behavior of various dialects can be accounted for by language-specific 

ranking of language-independent constraints, some of which have 

universal biomechanical bases. As a matter of fact, the constraint subfamilies 

Duration (Rime) and Duration (Word) proposed in previous 

sections both have articulatory and auditory bases. I have argued that 

they are relevant to the sandhi realization and should be encoded in the 

grammar. Thus tone sandhi does have access to the universal 

biomechanical constraints in an OT grammar. The “language-specific 

morpho-phonemic constraints” are manifestations of the different 

rankings of language-independent constraints. 

Second, tonal dissimilation and assimilation might be the effect of 

phonetic constraints in an OT grammar. Section 2.1.2, for instance, 

examplifies that some tonal dissimilation phenomena can be accounted 

for by the same phonetic principles which supposedly account for tonal 

coarticulation. Hence the second distinction made in Shen (1990) does 

not necessarily hold in an OT grammar.


Third, the phonemic effects of tone sandhi and phonetic effects of 

tonal coarticulation can also be regarded as the result of constraint 

ranking differences. In a language which only displays tonal 

coarticulation like Cantonese, the faithfulness constraints which require 

the sandhi tones to have the same identity as the base tones and the 

articulatorily-based constraints which prefer tones to coarticulate rank as 

undominated in the grammar, while the constraints whose satisfaction 

would yield paradigmatic tonal changes rank low and are suppressed by 

the more highly ranked faithfulness constraints; but the faithfulness 

constraints could potentially be violable and interact with conflicting 

constraints in a different grammar. These conflicting constraints, 

together with the constraints that favor tonal coarticulation, may yield a 

language which displays paradigmatic tonal changes. Moreover, 

sometimes the phonemic vs. phonetic distinction is not clear-cut. For 

example, in Jingpho—a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by Jingpho 

people in China (Liu 1984), there are three basic lexical tones: 31, 55 

and 33. When a 31 tone is preceded by a 55 tone, it becomes a high 

falling tone 51: 55-31 —> 55-51. This can be regarded as a tonal 

coarticulation process. But the tonal identity of the base tone has been 

changed from a low falling to a high falling. 4 Also, in Jingpho, 51 

carries some load of contrast such that it can occur as a lexical tone in 

kinship terms, further indicating that this tonal coarticulation process 

might actually involve a phonemic change. Because of these reasons, 

the phonemic vs. phonetic distinction between tone sandhi and tonal 

coarticulation does not firmly hold either. 

As an alternative, I propose that the tonal grammar has a sub-family 

of constraints: Duration (Boundary). It is formulated as in (19). 

(19) a. Suppose α 0, α 1, α 2, ..., α n are a series of real numbers 

indicating frequency differences on f 0 dimension, and 

0=α 0


c. For 0≤k≤n, Dur(B)fallαk is defined as follows: 

a pitch fall greater than α k across a syllable boundary is 

not allowed. 

Given 0=α 0


between two contrastive tones and it does not play any contrastive role 

itself, it is not important for this pitch change per se to be saliently 

perceived. Moreover, since this duration is most likely loaded with 

spectral and intensity changes, the perceptual sensitivity to tonal 

movement is considerably decreased during this period (House 1990). 

This makes the tonal change in this duration difficult to resolve. 

Therefore, it is well-justified to consider only the articulatory factors 

instead of both the articulatory and the auditory factors in constructing 

this family of constraints and establishing its intrinsic ranking. Given 

that the duration between two rimes is generally considerably shorter 

than the average duration of a syllable (around 50ms vs. around 250ms, 

measured from 10 tokens of my own speech in Mandarin), the fact that 

an abrupt pitch change can sometimes occur across the syllable 

boundary, while such an abrupt change almost never occurs on a very 

short syllable supports the view that articulation is the only 

consideration for pitch changes across the syllable boundary, while both 

articulation and perception are at stake for pitch changes on a syllable. 

Intuitively, there can be another series of constraints that simply 

restrict the pitch difference across a syllable boundary regardless of 

rising or lowering. These constraints may be regarded as the 

conjunction of constraints Dur(B)riseα k and Dur(B)fallαk (Hewitt 

and Crowhurst 1995, Kirchner 1996, Smolensky 1995). They are 

formulated as follows: 

(22) For 0≤k≤n, Dur(B)αk=Dur(B)riseαk ∧ Dur(B)fallαk: 

a pitch change greater than αk across a syllable boundary is 

not allowed. 

Given that a violation of either Dur(B)riseαk or Dur(B)fallαk 

will imply a violation of Dur(B)αk, the following intrinsic ranking is 

rendered: 

(23) For 0≤k≤n, Dur(B)riseαk, Dur(B)fallαk ≥≥ Dur(B)αk. 

From (20), (21) and (23), the constraints and their intrinsic ranking in 

this constraint sub-family can be summarized as in (24).


(24) Dur(B)riseαn≥≥Dur(B)riseαn-1≥≥...≥≥Dur(B)riseα0 

|∨ |∨ |∨ 

|∨ |∨ |∨ 

Dur(B)fallαn≥≥Dur(B)fallαn-1≥≥...≥≥Dur(B)fallα0 

|∨ |∨ |∨ 

|∨ |∨ |∨ 

Dur(B)αn ≥≥ Dur(B)αn-1 ≥≥...≥≥ Dur(B)α0 

The assimilatory tonal coarticulation effect can be captured by such a 

family of constraints. The ubiquity of tonal coarticulation can be taken 

as an effect of the high ranking of these constraints. And as it is argued 

earlier in this section, the phonemic effects of tone sandhi can be 

regarded as a result of the interaction of these constraints with the 

faithfulness constraints as well as other phonetic or phonological 

requirements in the grammar. The constraint family Faithfulness is 

discussed in Section 2.2, and the detailed analysis of Pingyao tone 

sandhi in Section 3 gives an example of how these constraints function 

in a particular grammar. 

2.2. Constraint Family II: Faithfulness 

In a tonal grammar, there must be a family of constraints that requires 

the surface lexical tone to be similar to the underlying lexical tone (if 

such tone is to be postulated), and the sandhi form to be similar to the 

base form. Otherwise, the tonal form that optimally satisfies the 

“tonotactic” constraints in the grammar will be the realization of every 

single form. The constraint family Faithfulness serves this purpose. 

Its basic components are defined in (25a)—(25b). 

(25) a. Pres(R): preserve the tonal register of the base form (or 

the underlying tonal representation) in the sandhi form (or 

the surface representation). 

b. Pres(C): preserve the tonal contour of the base form (or 

the underlying tonal representation) in the sandhi form (or 


The concepts of tonal register and tonal contour are collectively taken 

from Wang (1967), Yip (1980), Bao (1990), Duamnu (1990), among 

others. Tonal contour refers to the change in fundamental frequency of 

a tone across the time domain. Thus the basic values for a tonal 

contour are rising and falling. In some tonal systems, the combination 

of these two basic values is exploited, rendering a convex or concave 

tonal contour. Moreover, some tone languages divide the pitch range 

into two—high and low, and use this division to cross-classify with 

tonal contour to express tonal contrast. This is the notion of register.


The two pitch ranges are referred to as high register and low register. 

For example, in Pingyao, a 13 tone can be characterized as a low rising 

tone, while a 53 tone can be characterized as a high falling tone. 

For syllables in different prosodic positions, the ranking of the 

faithfulness constraints might differ, because conceivably, it is easier 

for a tone on a prosodically weak syllable to sacrifice its identity in 

tone sandhi than a tone on a prosodically strong syllable. Thus (25a) 

and (25b) can each be considered as a group of constraints ranked 

according to a prominence hierarchy of the syllables, with the syllables 

highest in the prominence hierarchy rank the highest in the faithfulness 

hierarchy. This idea is formalized in (26). Pres(σ k, R) means to 

preserve the tonal register of the syllable σ k, and Pres(σσ k, C) means 

to preserve the tonal contour of the syllable σ k. 

(26) If σ 1—σ n (n>1) are syllables prosodically ranked from high to 

low, then 

a. Pres(σ 1, R) ≥≥ Pres(σ 2, R) ≥≥ ... ≥≥ Pres(σ n, R). 

b.Pres(σσ 1, C) ≥≥ Pres(σ 2, C) ≥≥ ... ≥≥ Pres(σ n, C). 

Yue-Hashimoto (1987) points out that in Chinese dialects, the 

prosodically dominant syllable usually displays a full range of tonal 

contrasts after sandhi while the prosodically weak syllable tends to 

undergo tonal neutralization. Many Wu dialects of Chinese have a leftprominence 

prosodic property; thus tone sandhi in these dialects usually 

neutralizes the second syllable in a disyllabic word while keeps the 

tonal contrast on the first syllable. On the other hand, in numerous 

Northern and Min dialects, tonal contrasts are more faithfully retained in 

word-final position due to their right-prominence prosodic property 

(Wright 1983, Yue-Hashimoto 1987). These phenomena can be taken 

as results of the intrinsic constraint ranking in (26). 

Another piece of evidence that supports the constraint ranking in (26) 

is from the tone sandhi of subject-predicate AAB words in Pingyao. In 

Pingyao as well as many other Northern Chinese dialects, a morpheme 

can be reduplicated to denote diminutive or endearing meaning. Thus 

the base form for an AAB word is a subject-predicate disyllabic word 

AB, and the subject syllable A is reduplicated. Some examples of 

subject-predicate AAB words in Pingyao are given in (27a), and the tone 

sandhi paradigm of this type of words is given in (27b). 

(27) a.pŃ pŃ pø/ 

book book thin 

“the book is thin”


yø/ yø/ kÓu 

medicine medicine bitter 

“the medicine tastes bitter” 

sø/ sø/ tsÓú 

rope rope thick 

“the rope is thick” 

b. σ 1, σ 2\σ 3 13 35 53 

13-13 13-13-13 13-31-35 13-35-423 

35-35 35-53-13 35-53-13 13-35-423 

53-53 53-13-13 53-31-35 53-35-423 

As can be seen in (27), in most of the sandhi forms, the word-initial 

and word-final syllables preserve the tone in their base form (let us 

assume that the high falling property of 53 in preserved in the first half 

of the sandhi form 423), but the tone on the word-medial syllable is 

drastically different from its base form. This phenomenon becomes 

easily understandable if we adopt the constraint ranking in (26) and the 

fact that word-initial and word-final syllables are prosodically stronger 

than word-medial syllables. 

The phonetic correlates of the prosodic differences between “strong” 

and “weak” syllables remain unclear to me, especially in the disyllabic 

forms. Neither Yue-Hashimoto (1987) nor Wright (1983) gives 

quantitative data on duration or energy differences between the 

prosodically strong and weak syllables. 

The constraints Pres(σ k, R) and Pres(σ k, C) can be conjoined to 

form a constraint Pres(σ k, T), defined as in (28). 

(28) For 1≤k≤n, Pres(σ k, T)=Pres(σ k, R) ∧ Pres(σ k, C): 

preserve the tonal register and tonal contour of the base form 

(or the underlying tonal representation) in the sandhi form (or 


Again, since a violation of either Pres(σ k, R) or Pres(σ k, C) will 

imply a violation of Pres(σ k, T), the intrinsic ranking in (29) 

follows: 

(29) For 1≤k≤n, Pres(σ k, R), Pres(σ k, C) ≥≥ Pres(σ k, T).


A summary of the constraints and their ranking in this constraint 

sub-family is given in (30). 

(30) If σ1—σn (n>1) are syllables prosodically ranked from high to 

low, then 

Pres(σ 1, R) ≥≥ Pres(σ 2, R) ≥≥ ... ≥≥ Pres(σ n, R) 

|∨ |∨ |∨ 

|∨ |∨ |∨ 

Pres(σ 1, T) ≥≥ Pres(σ 2, T) ≥≥ ... ≥≥ Pres(σ n, T) 

|∧ |∧ |∧ 

|∧ |∧ |∧ 

Pres(σσ 1, C) ≥≥ Pres(σ 2, C) ≥≥ ... ≥≥ Pres(σ n, C) 

2.3. Constraint Family III: Register 

The constraint families Duration and Faithfulness do not suffice in 

accounting for all the possible sandhi patterns. The following sandhi 

from a predicate-object disyllabic Pingyao word illustrates this point: 

(31) 35-35 —> 31-35 

ex: pœ ÇiN 

fail spirit 

“to disappoint” 

kuei tßÓAN 

passsing 

“performance in the village after summer harvest” 

In (31), the first 35 in a 35-35 concatenation becomes a low falling 

tone 31. But whether from the consideration of minimizing the pitch 

distance across the syllable boundary or being more faithful to the base 

form, 53-35 will be a better sandhi form than 31-35: there is no pitch 

difference across the syllable boundary for 53-35, but there is a pitch 

change at the syllable boundary for 31-35; 53 preserves the high tonal 

register of the base tone 35 while 31 fails to do so; and just as 31-35, 

53-35 has only one tonal inflection point. What makes 31-35 the 

winning form? The traditional account for this phenomenon is register 

dissimilation. Along this line, I propose that in an OT grammar, there 

are constraints which pose restriction on the concatenation of same 

registers. In general terms, for a word with n syllables, the following 

family of constraints which I term Register is at stake: 

(32) a.The constraint family consists of a series constraints: 

Reg(n), Reg(n-1), ..., Reg(2) (n≥2) 

b.For 2≤k≤n, constraint Reg(k) is defined as follows:


same register on k adjacent syllables is not allowed. 

Since when j>k, the violation of Reg(j) implies the violation of 

Reg(k), there is an intrinsic ranking among these constraints: 

(33) Reg(n) ≥≥ Reg(n-1) ≥≥ ... ≥≥ Reg(2). 

For the above disyllabic words in Pingyao, the only valid constraint 

from this constraint family is Reg(2), and it requires the registers of 

the two tones to be different. Let us assume for now that the predicateobject 

Pingyao words are right-prominent and that Pres(σ2) and 

Num(Inf)≤≤1 are undominated constraints in this particular tonal 

grammar. Then by ranking the constraint Reg(2) over Dur(B) 0 and 

Pres(σ 1, R), the correct sandhi form 31-35 is derived from the 

grammar, as illustrated by the tableau in (34). 

(34) 35-35 —> 31-35 

35-35 Reg(2) Dur(B) 0 Pres(σ 1, R) 

✿ 31-35 * * 

53-35 *! 

Similar to the constraint on the minimum number of tonal inflection 

point, the motivation for this family of dissimilation constraints might 

also have perceptual bases. Bladon (1986), after Tyler et.al (1982) and 

Delgutte et.al (1982), proposes that a dynamic change in the speech 

signal facilitates auditory nerve firing. Although Bladon’s discussion 

primarily focuses on changes of spectral characteristics and acoustic 

energy, it is conceivable that a dynamic change in fundamental 

frequency will have the similar effect. If so, then the preference for 

register dissimilation in a tonal grammar directly follows. 

In this section, not claiming exhaustiveness, I have laid out three 

families of constraints which are responsible for the tonal behavior of 

Chinese dialects: Duration, Faithfulness and Register. The articulatory 

and/or auditory motivations for each family of constraints were also 

discussed. In the next section, I give a complete account for the 

Pingyao disyllabic tone sandhi utilizing the constraints proposed in this 

section, thus further supporting the claim that phonetic duration plays a 

decisive role in the tonal behavior of a tone language. 

3. PINGYAO TONE SANDHI 

3.1. Introduction to Pingyao and the Jin Dialects


Pingyao is a dialect spoken in Pingyao City, Shanxi Province in 

central China. It belongs to the Jin dialect group which includes 

dialects spoken in Shanxi and its vicinity. The existence of checked 

syllables (syllables that end in a glottal stop) and the exploitation of 

structure-sensitive tone sandhi, namely, associating different tone sandhi 

processes with words of different syntactic structures, are two of the 

main characteristics of these dialects. 

My data for Pingyao are taken from Hou (1980, 1982a, 1982b) as 

well as field notes from work with 2 native speakers of Pingyao—Zhao 

Xiuying and Xue Baoqing—I carried out during the summer of 1996. 

Most of the sandhi forms documented in Hou (1980) and Hou (1982a) 

were recorded and pitch tracks were made on a CSL (Computerized 

Speech Laboratory) in the Phonetics Laboratory of UCLA. The 

experimental results generally coincided with Hou’s documentation. 

Therefore Hou’s transcription was used in the phonological analysis 

unless otherwise noted. 

3.2. The Phonetic Inventory of Pingyao 

In traditional Chinese dialectology, the phonetic inventory of a dialect 

is usually given in two groups: onsets and rimes. The following data 

from Hou (1980) abide by this tradition. In the onset chart, column and 

row represent place and manner of articulation respectively. The rime 

chart is arranged by rime initials according to the tradition of Chinese 

documentation. The non-IPA symbols in Hou (1980) are changed into 

the corresponding IPA symbols. The apical vowels following /s, z, ts, 

tsÓ/ and /ß, Ω, Êß, ÊßÓ/ are represented by /È s / and /È ’ / respetively. Notice 

that a possible rime is in the form /V 1/, /V 1N/, or /V 1//. On very rare 

occasions the rime is in the form /V 1’/. 

(35) Pingyao (Hou 1980) 

a. Onsets: 

p t k 

pÓ tÓ kÓ 

s ß Ç x 

z Ω 

ts Êß cÇ 

tsÓ ÊßÓ cÇÓ 

m n nz =≠ N 

l


b.Rimes: 

A iA uA yA 

È ’ Ø iØ yØ 

u´ y´ 

œ uœ 

O iO 

È ’ i u y 

È s Ë 

´’ 

ei uei 

ú iú 

AN iAN uAN 

Ń iN uN yN 

ø/ iø/ uø/ yø/ 

Pingyao has five lexical tones: 13, 23 , 35, 53, 54 . The underlined 

tones are ru tones which are realized only on checked syllables. Due to 

the phonetic characteristic of checked syllables, they are also called 

“short tones” in Hou (1980). Examples in (36) show lexical items that 

carry these tones. 

(36) a.13 pu “to hatch” 

iN “overcast” 

b. 23 pø/ “to push aside” 

xuø/ “hair” 

c. 35 pu “cloth” 

tuN “to move” 

d. 53 pu “to mend” 

tiN “nap” 

e. 54 pø/ “a musical instrument” 

xuø/ “to live” 

In tone sandhi forms, five other tones might also appear: 31, 32 , 45 , 

423, 423 . 

3.3. Pingyao Tone Sandhi 

Tone sandhi behavior in Pingyao is syntactically conditioned. Words in 

different syntactic configurations have different tone sandhi forms even 

if they have the same base form. In this section, I first present the data 

for the predicate-object/subject-predicate disyllabic tone sandhi in 

Pingyao and discuss Bao (1990) and Chen (1996)’s analyses for it, then 

I offer a different account for the data in an OT framework, utilizing 

constraints I proposed in Section 2. This account is then extended to 

explain another disyllabic sandhi pattern of a different syntactic


configurations of Pingyao which Bao 1990 and Chen 1996 fail to 

account for. 

3.3.1. Predicate-Object/Subject-Predicate Disyllabic Word Tone Sandhi 

Tone sandhi behavior of disyllabic words of predicate-object or subjectpredicate 

configuration in Pingyao is summarized in (37). The leftmost 

column and the top row show the base form of the first and second 

syllable respectively. The body of the table indicates the sandhi forms 

of the disyllabic words. Some examples are given in (38). 

(37) σ 1\σ 2 13 23 35 53 54 

13 13-13 13- 23 31-35 35-423 35- 423 

23 23 -13 23 - 23 32 -35 45 -423 45 - 423 

35 13-13 13- 23 31-35 35-423 35- 423 

53 53-13 53- 23 53-35 35-423 35- 423 

54 54 -13 54 - 23 54 -35 45 -423 45 - 423 

(38) Base form Sandhi form Gloss 

kuaN mŃ 13-13 13-13 “to close the door” 

close door 

tÇiA pœ 13-35 31-35 “the family is broken up” 

home fail 

tÇi mA 13-53 35-423 “to ride a horse” 

ride horse 

yØ ßŃ 35-13 13-13 “the yard is deep” 

yard deep 

pœ ÇiN 35-35 31-35 “to disappoint” 

fail spirit 

xA y 35-53 35-423 “to rain” 

down rain 

kÓú tiØ 53-13 53-13 “honeymouthed” 

mouth sweet 

tsu´ tÇiA 53-35 53-35 “to raise the price” 

raise price 

´’ nzuAN 53-53 35-423 “easy to be persuaded” 

ear soft 

3.3.2. Bao (1990) and Chen (1996) 

Bao (1990) and Chen (1996) give two similar rule-based analyses for 

the data in (37). In both analyses, the ru tones 23 and 54 are considered 

to be derived from non-ru tones 13 and 53 respectively. The reasons for 

the assumption are: 13 and 23 , 53 and 54 are not only phonetically


similar, but they also display the same sandhi behavior. Examples that 

illustrate the latter point are given in (39). 

(39) 13-35—>31-35 23 -35—> 32 -35 (contour reveral on σ 1) 

35-13—>13-13 35- 23 —>13- 23 (register lowering on σ 1) 

53-35—>53-35 54 -35—> 54 -35 (no change) 

35-53—>35-423 35- 54 —>35- 423 (final pitch rise) 

In (39), the left column shows sandhi behavior of the non-ru tones 13 

and 53 and the right column shows the sandhi behavior of their ru tone 

counterpart 23 and 54 , we can clearly see that 13 and 23 , 53 and 54 

behave identically in tone sandhi except that the sandhi form of a non-ru 

tone is still a non-ru tone while the sandhi form of a ru tone is still a ru 

tone. The sandhi table in (37) can thus be simplified to the table in 

(40) which only illustrates the sandhi of non-ru tones. The sandhi of ru 

tones can be deduced from the sandhi of their non-ru counterparts. The 

less-pronounced pitch transition for ru tones is attributed to low-level 

phonetic implementation: the contour tends to level off when realized 

on short syllables (Bao 1990). 

(40) σ 1\σ 2 13 35 53 

13 13-13 31-35 35-423 

35 13-13 31-35 35-423 

53 53-13 53-35 35-423 

The tonal representation that Bao (1990) argues for is shown in (41). 

(41) T 2 

c r 

2 

t t 

The representation in (41) can be construed as: tone (T) consists of 

Contour (c) and Register (r). In addition, the Contour node is allowed 

to branch (Bao 1990). Bao’s representation of 13, 35 and 53 are given 

in (42).


(42) a. 13 b.35 c. 53 

T T T 

2 2 2 

c r c r c r 

2 | 2 | 2 | 

t t L t t H t t H 

| | | | | | 

l h l h h l 

Bao (1990)’s account appeals to three rules: Register Spreading, 

Contour Metathesis and Register Lowering. The formulation of these 

three rules is illustrated in (43), (44) and (45). 

(43) Register Spreading: spread the register of σ 2 to σ 1 if σ 1 has a 

rising contour. 

l h 

T T 

c r r 

(44) Contour Metathesis: reverse the contour of σ 1 if σ 1 and σ 2 

have the same contour and σ 2 has a high register. 

T T 

| ty 

c —> c / __ c r 

fh fh fh | 

x y y x x y H 

(45) Register Lowering: lower the register of σ 1 from H to L if 

both σ 1 and σ 2 have a rising contour. 

T T 

fh fh 

r—> r/ __ c c r 

| | fh fh 

H L l h l h 

These three rules are strictly ordered: R-Lowering>Metathesis>R- 

Spreading. The derivation of the sandhi forms is shown in (46). R-


Lowering>Metathesis guarantees 35-35 becomes 31-35, not 53-35, and 

Metathesis>R-Spreading guarantees 13-35 becomes 31-35, not 53-35. 

(46) Base Tone R-Lowering Metathesis R-Spreading Surface 

13-13 — — — 13-13 

13-35 — 31-35 — 31-35 

13-53 — — 35-53 35-423 

35-13 13-13 — — 13-13 

35-35 13-35 31-35 — 31-35 

35-53 

— 

— 

— 35-423 

53-13 — — — 53-13 

53-35 — — — 53-35 

53-53 — 35-53 — 35-423 

The 423 concave tone is introduced into the system by a Contour 

Formation rule which simply adds an h-node under the contour node 

after the application of the three rules in (43)-(45). 

(47) Contour Formation 

c ] w 

t¥P 

h l h 

Bao (1990) takes the Pingyao case to be an argument for the tonal 

representation in (41) in which Register and Contour are in a sister 

relation since in his analysis, the Register node has to be able to spread 

alone as required by the rule in (43). Chen (1996), on the other hand, 

offers an alternative analysis by merging R-Lowering and R-Spreading 

into one R-Neutralization rule, hence taking Pingyao as an argument 

for a more restricted tonal representation in which the contour pitch 

nodes are dominated by the Register node, as in (48). The formulation 

of Register Neutralization is shown in (49). 

(48) T (=r) 

2 

t t (=c)


(49) Register Neutralization: when σ 1 has a rising contour, its 

register becomes high if σ 2 has a falling contour and becomes 

low if σ 2 has a rising contour. 

T 

c r --> 

l h 

H / __ 

L / __ 

c 

h l 

c 

l h 

The order of this rule and the Contour Metathesis rule is: R- 

Neutralization > Metathesis. 

Chen (1996) argues that the alternative analysis he offers has several 

advantages over Bao’s analysis. Trivially, it employs fewer rules. 

More importantly, the R-Neutralization rule stated in (49) makes 

intuitive sense since it encodes the anticipatory effect of pitch 

modulation—the register rises in anticipation of a fall, and lowers in 

preparation for a rise. 5 The derivation of the sandhi forms is shown in 

(50). 

(50) Base Tone R-Neutralization Metathesis Surface 

13-13 — — 13-13 

13-35 — 31-35 31-35 

13-53 35-53 — 35-423 

35-13 13-13 — 13-13 

35-35 13-35 31-35 31-35 

35-53 

— 

— 35-423 

53-13 — — 53-13 

53-35 — — 53-35 

53-53 — 35-53 35-423 

5 Chen (1996) also claims that the rules in the alternative analysis act like 

wellformedness conditions (WFCs) to be simultaneously met by the sandhi forms. Thus 

the extrinsic rule order that Bao’s analysis hinges on can be dispensed with. But a 

closer scrutiny of the derivation process of the sandhi forms reveals that even though 

the sandhi forms satisfy the WFCs instantiated by the rules simultaneously, the 

derivation of 31-35 from 35-53 still hinges on the extrinsic order R- 

Neutralization>Metathesis. If the order of the rules is reversed, 53-35, an unattested 

sandhi form for 35-53, will be the derived pattern. This is illustrated by the following 

process: 

Base tone --> Metathesis --> R-Neutralization --> Surface tone 

35-35 53-35 n/a 53-35


To summarize, Bao (1990) and Chen (1996) give two rule-based 

analyses of the predicate-object/subject-predicate disyllabic tone sandhi 

of Pingyao in support of their different tonal representations ((41) for 

Bao and (48) for Chen). In the following section, I give an OT analysis 

of the data utilizing articulatorily and/or auditorily based constraints 

motivated in Section 2 and further argue that the crucial issue in tone 

sandhi is how the articulatory/auditory constraints in the grammar are 

satisfied, not the geometrical representation of tone. 

3.3.3. An OT Analysis for Predicate-Object/Subject-Predicate 

Disyllabic Word Tone Sandhi 

3.3.3.1. Ru Tones vs. Non-Ru Tones in Lexical Realization 

As mentioned in Section 2.1.1, in both Bao and Chen’s analyses, the ru 

tones 23 and 54 are considered to be derived from their non-ru 

counterparts—13 and 53. The less-pronounced pitch transition for the 

ru tones is the result of contours leveling off on checked syllables—a 

low-level phonetic implementation process (also see Yip 1995). In the 

following analysis, I instead propose that the abruptness difference in 

pitch transition on syllables of various length is the effect of a subfamily 

of constraints Duration (Rime) in the constraint family Duration 

in a tonal grammar. 

As discussed in Section 2.1.1, checked syllables are characteristically 

shorter in duration than other types of syllables (/CV/ and /CVN/). To 

verify this generalization in Pingyao, a phonetic study on the duration 

of checked syllables vs. non-checked syllables was carried out with one 

native speaker of Pingyao. 

The speaker read 16 disyllabic Pingyao words, each word with 2 

repetitions. Of the 64 syllables recorded, 32 were checked syllables and 

the other 32 were non-checked syllables. Of the 32 checked syllables, 

16 occurred in word-initial position and 16 in word-final position; and 

the same for the 32 non-checked syllables. Thus the prosodic contexts 

of the checked syllables and non-checked syllables were evenly matched. 

The duration of the sonorant portion of the rime in these tokens was 

measured. The result showed that the average duration of the sonorant 

portion of the rime in a checked syllable was 148ms, while the same 

measurement for non-checked syllables was 260ms—the former was 

only 57% of the latter. These results illustrate that the generalization 

“checked syllables are significantly shorter than non-checked syllables” 

holds true in Pingyao.


Let us assume that Dur(R)fk is the constraint at stake from the 

constraint family Duration (Rime) in the account of Pingyao ru tone 

realization. The definition of Dur(R)fk is repeated in (51a). Most 

importantly, the function fk has the properties in (51b)-(51d): 6 

(51) a. Dur(R)fk: a pitch contour x is licensed by a rime whose 

sonorant duration is at least fk(x). 

b. 148ms


(55) CV/ /13/ —> [23] 

Input: 

CV/ /13/ 

Dur(R)fk Pres(σ, C) Pres(σ, R) 

CV/ [13] *! 

✿ CV/ [23] * 

CV/ [33] **! 

CV/ [35] *! * 

CV/ [45] * *! 

When the syllable is open or has a nasal coda as in (54), since the 

sonorant portion of the rime is around 260ms and 

148ms


to be phonologically active constraints in an OT grammar, in this case 

Duration (Rime) constraint family. 

3.3.3.2. An OT Analysis for Predicate-Object/Subject-Predicate 

Disyllabic Word Tone Sandhi 

The sandhi pattern of the predicate-object/subject-predicate disyllabic 

words in Pingyao is repeated in (56). Only the non-checked forms are 

included in the table. The sandhi for the checked forms is discussed 

afterwards. 

(56) σ 1\σ 2 13 35 53 

13 13-13 31-35 35-423 

35 13-13 31-35 35-423 

53 53-13 53-35 35-423 

The following facts are to be observed in the sandhi pattern: 

• The tone on σ 2 is always preserved, even when 53 becomes 423 in 

σ 2 position, the high falling property of 53 is preserved in the first 

half of the sandhi form. 

• A pitch rise always surfaces at the end of the word. 

• 53 is a more stable tone than 13 and 35—in σ 1 position, it is more 

often preserved than 13 and 35; in σ 2 position, although the sandhi 

form is 423, the high falling property of 53 is preserved in the first 

half of the sandhi form. 

Three corresponding constraints are posited in the grammar to capture 

these facts: 

• Pres(σ 2, T): preserve the tonal property on the second syllable. 

• Word Final Rise: there must be a pitch rise word finally. 

• Pres(53): preserve the property of a base high falling tone in the 

sandhi form. 

The first constraint Pres(σ 2, T) comes from the Faithfulness 

constraint family. I attribute the inviolability of this constraint to the 

right-prominence prosodic property of this type of Pingyao words. 

Again, the phonetic correlates of prominence are not clear to me. The 

phonetic study I carried out with a native speaker of Pingyao did not 

reveal significant differences in duration or energy between the first and 

second syllables in a disyllabic word with predicate-object or subjectpredicate 

configuration. One possibility is that there were such 

phonetic differences at some stage of the historical development of 

Pingyao, but these differences were lost in the diachronic changes.


Thus the mystery of prominence is to be unveiled by further research in 

historical Pingyao phonology or more advanced phonetic measurement 

of the synchronic data. 

The second and third constraints do not belong to the constraint 

families discussed in Section 2 and are particular to the Pingyao dialect. 

The second constraint Word Final Rise might also be related to 

the prominence of the second syllable. Sundberg (1973)’s study shows 

that the implementation of a rising pitch requires more articulatory 

effort and longer duration than that of a falling pitch. On one hand, 

speakers are willing to exert more articulatory effort in a stronger 

prosodic position; on the other hand, a metrically prominent position 

might require gestures which need more production effort to mark its 

prominence. E.g., English stress is manifested by longer duration and 

greater intensity. In Pingyao, we speculate that an end pitch rise is one 

of the mechanisms that embody the right-prominence of a phonological 

word. 

The third constraint Pres(53) seems to be quite arbitrary. But 

consider that 53 is the only underlying falling tone in the tonal 

inventory of Pingyao, its special status in Pingyao tonology becomes 

more understandable. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged, especially 

in African languages, that in tonal assimilation processes, a high tone 

typically cause surrounding non-high tones to raise their pitch, while a 

low tone usually does not lower a high tone to a low tone (Hyman and 

Schuh 1974, Stevick 1969). Mbui and Ngizim are languages that 

display this asymmetry (Hyman and Schuh 1974). This indicates the 

special status of high tones in tone languages—they are more often 

preserved than low tones. For thesereasons, although Pres(53) is a 

constraint peculiar to Pingyao, it is not arbitrary. It is shown later in 

this section that in the tone sandhi of disyllabic words of other syntactic 

configurations, Pres(53) is also a highly ranked constraint in the 

grammar. 

As for the ranking of these three constraints, while the first two are 

undominated as the sandhi pattern suggests, the last constraint is 

violable since a base form 53-53 concatenation becomes 35-423 after 

sandhi. This fact suggests that there are other constraints that interact 

with these constraints to determine the sandhi of the tonal system. 

Notice that the change from 53-423 to 35-423 renders the difference 

in the number of tonal inflection points in the word. As illustrated in 

(57), there are 3 tonal inflection points in the base form 53-423, while 

there are only 2 in the sandhi form 35-423.


(57) a.53-423 b.35-423 

5 

4 

3 

5 

4 

3 

3 

2 

I propose that the following constraint from the constraint family 

Duration (Word) is at stake in this particular grammar: 

(58) Dur(W)gk/gk(2)=2: a word with x syllables can carry at 

most gk(x) tonal inflection points, and the function gk satisfies 

the condition gk(2)=2. 

Since we are only dealing with disyllabic forms here, for clarity and 

simplicity reasons, we give the above constraint the following name: 

Num(Inf)≤2. 

A look at the data in (56) reveals that this constraint is never violated 

in the sandhi forms. The sandhi forms 13-13 and 35-423 have two 

tonal inflection points, and the sandhi forms 31-35, 53-13 and 53-35 

have one. This is shown schematically in (59). We thus rank the 

constraint Num(Inf)≤2 as undominated in this grammar. 

(59) a.13-13 b.35-423 

5 

3 3 

4 

1 

1 

3 

c. 31-35 d. 53-13 e. 53-35 

5 5 

5 5 

3 3 3 3 

1 

1 

2 

3 

2 

3 

3 3 

The schematic in (59) also suggests that there is always at least one 

tonal inflection point in this type of disyllabic words. Forms like 13- 

35 or 53-31 which do not have tonal inflection points do not surface as 

sandhi forms. Therefore the constraint Dur(W) Min(Inf) from the


constraint family Duration (Word) plays a role in the tone sandhi in 

question. The definition of Dur(W) Min(Inf) is repeated in (60). 

(60) Dur(W) Min(Inf): a phonological word should have at least 

one tonal inflection point. 

Again, for reasons of simplicity and clarity, I use the name 

Num(Inf)≥1 for further reference of this constraint. Since this 

constraint is never violated in this type of sandhi, we rank it as 

undominated as well. 

So far we have five working constraints for the predicateobject/subject-predicate 

disyllabic word tone sandhi in Pingyao: 

Pres(σ 2, T), Word Final Rise, Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥1 and 

Pres(53). While the first four constraints are undominated in the 

grammar, the last constraint is violable and dominated by the first three 

constraints. The ranking is illustrated in (61). 

(61) Pres(σ 2, T), Word Final Rise, Num(Inf)≤2, 

Num(Inf)≥1 >> Pres(53) 

Let us see what these constraints and their ranking give us so far. 

First, they guarantee that when the second syllable is 53 in the base 

form, its sandhi form will be 423. This is true because in order to 

satisfy both Pres(σ 2, T) and Word Final Rise, the sandhi form 

must be 423—the first half of which preserves the high falling property 

of 53 and the second half of which implements a pitch rise. We might 

wonder why 534 or 535 is not the winning sandhi form, because they 

more faithfully preserve the high falling property of the base tone 53 

and realize a final pitch rise as well. My belief is that the sandhi 

realization might well be 534 or 535. Since there is only one 

contrastive concave tone in the sandhi forms, we expect the speakers to 

have greater phonetic variation in its realization. 423 might only 

reflect one possible realization and why it is transcribed as such could 

be purely due to the random choice of the original field worker. 

Second, no matter what the base tone of the first syllable is, 31-423 

and 53-423 cannot be the possible sandhi tone. This is obviously valid 

because both 31-423 and 53-423 have three tonal inflection points, 

violating the undominated constraint Num(Inf)≤2.


But we get a tie between 35-423 and 13-423 for the base forms 13- 

53, 35-53 and 53-53 (recall that the correct sandhi form for all these 

three base forms is 35-423). This is illustrated in the tableau in (62). 

(62) 13-53, 35-53, 53-53 —> ? 

13-53 

35-53 

53-53 

Pres 

(σ 2, T) 

WFR Num 

(Inf)≤2 

Num 

(Inf)≥1 

Pres 

(53) 

✿ 35-423 * 

✿ 13-423 * 

Notice the following difference between these two candidates: since 

the first candidate 35-423 has a high rising tone on σ 1 while the second 

candidate 13-423 has a low rising tone at the same position, across the 

boundary between σ 1 and σ 2, 35-423 implements a pitch fall while 13- 

423 implements a pitch rise. This is shown schematically in (63). 

(63) a.35-423 b.13-423 

5 

pitch fall 

4 

3 

3 

pitch rise 

4 

3 

3 

2 

1 2 

To derive the correct sandhi form 35-423, the asymmetry between 

pitch rise and pitch fall across the syllable boundary has to be taken 

into account in the grammar. The intrinsic ranking Dur(B)riseαk ≥≥ 

Dur(B)fallαk in the constraint family Duration (Boundary) just suits 

our needs. The relevant constraints here and their ranking can be 

specified as in (64). 

(64) Dur(B)rise0: no pitch rise across a syllable boundary. 

Dur(B)fall0: no pitch fall across a syllable boundary. 

Dur(B)rise0 >> Dur(B)fall0. 

As a matter of fact, the constraint Dur(B)fall0 is so lowly ranked in 

the hierarchy that it does not play any role in selecting the actual 

winners of the sandhi forms. 

To decide the ranking of the constraint Dur(B)rise0, we first notice 

that 31-35, which has a pitch rise across syllable boundary, is a 

legitimate sandhi form (13-35 —> 31-35, 35-35 —> 31-35). Thus this


constraint is violable. Its ranking with the other violable constraint 

Pres(53) is unsettled so far. The tableau in (65) illustrates the 

derivation of the correct sandhi form 35-423 from the base forms 13-53, 

35-53 and 53-53. 

(65) 13-53, 35-53, 53-53 —> 35-423 

13-53 

35-53 

53-53 

Pres 

(σ 2, T) WFR 

Num 

(Inf) 

≤2 

Num 

(Inf) 

≥1 

Pres 

(53) 

Dur 

(B) 

rise0 

✿ 35-423 * 

13-423 * *! 

But there are still unresolved problems. The constraints in (64) do 

not immediately give us the correct sandhi form for the base form 35- 

13. The tableau in (66) shows that four candidates are in a tie. 

(66) 35-13 —> ? 

35-13 Pres 

(σ 2, T) WFR 

✿ 13-13 

✿ 53-13 

✿ 31-13 

✿ 35-13 

Num 

(Inf) 

≤2 

Num 

(Inf) 

≥1 

Pres 

(53) 

Dur 

(B) 

rise0 

Recall that the winning candidate for base form 35-13 is 13-13, not 

the most faithful 35-13. Notice that one crucial difference between 13- 

13 and 35-13 is that there is a sharp pitch fall across the syllable 

boundary for 35-13, but only a moderate pitch fall for 13-13. The 

intrinsic ranking Dur(B)fallαj ≥≥ Dur(B)fallα i (α j>α i) in the 

constraint family Duration (Boundary) can capture this fact. These 

constraints and their ranking are specified in this grammar as in (67). 

(67) Dur(B)fall3: no sharp pitch fall across a syllable boundary. 

Dur(B)fall1: no small pitch fall across a syllable boundary. 

Dur(B)fall3 ≥≥ Dur(B)fall1. 

The number 3 and 1 indicate the difference in pitch in Chao letters. 

For a specific speaker, α j and α i should be certain frequency values. I 

am using the Chao letters for simplicity and uniformity reasons. 

The constraint Dur(B)fall1, though it outranks (or is equally ranked 

with) Dur(B)fall0, is still a very lowly ranked constraint in this


particular grammar and plays no role in sandhi form selection. Thus 

the two constraints from the constraint family Duration (Boundary) that 

play decisive roles in the sandhi grammar here are: Dur(B)rise0 and 

Dur(B)fall3. The ranking between these two constraints is 

undetermined. We can thus combine these two constraints and call the 

combined constraint Dur(B). The definition of Dur(B) is shown in 

(68). 

(68) Dur(B) = def Dur(B)rise0 ∧ Dur(B)fall3 

This constraint comprises all the restrictions on the pitch change 

across a syllable boundary in this sandhi grammar: a pitch rise or a 

sharp pitch fall is disallowed. Replacing the Dur(B)rise0 constraint 

in tableau (65) with the combined constraint Dur(B) does not change 

the result of the tableau, and replacing the Dur(B)rise0 constraint in 

tableau (66) with the combined constraint rules out the incorrect sandhi 

form 35-13. 

As for selecting the winner among the other three candidates—13-13, 

53-13 and 31-13 in tableau (66), I propose that the faithfulness 

requirement on the tone on σ 1 plays a decisive role. Compare the three 

candidates with the base form 35-13, 13-13 preserves the rising contour 

but does keep the high register of the base tone on σ 1; 53-13 preserves 

the high register but loses the rising contour on σ 1; while the third 

candidate 31-13 preserves neither the register nor the contour of the base 

form of σ 1. The fact that 13-13 wins over 53-13 suggests that it is 

more important to preserve the tonal contour than to preserve the tonal 

register. Thus Pres(σ 1, C) and Pres(σ 1, R) should be two separate 

constraints in the grammar, and the former outranks the latter. To 

determine the ranking of these two constraints with respect to the other 

violable constraints—Pres(53) and Dur(B), two possibilities, (69a) 

and (69b), need to be entertained: 

(69) a.Pres(53), Dur(B), Pres(σ 1, C) >> Pres(σ 1, R) 

b.Pres(σ 1, C) >> Pres(53), Dur(B), Pres(σ 1, R) 

The tableau in (70) illustrates that the ranking in (69a) gives us the 

correct winning candidate 13-13 for the base form 35-13. The tableau 

in (71) shows that the ranking in (69b) gives us two tied 

candidates—13-13 and 35-13. Thus (69a) is the correct ranking of these 

constraints. The undominated constraints Pres(σ 2, T), Word Final 

Rise, Num(Inf)≤2 and Num(Inf)≥1 are not included in the 

tableaux.


(70) 35-13 —> 13-13 

35-13 Pres(53) Dur(B) Pres(σ 1, C) Pres(σ 1, R) 

✿ 13-13 * 

35-13 *! 

53-13 *! 

31-13 *! * 

(71) 35-13 —> ? 

35-13 Pres(σ 1, C) Pres(53) Dur(B) Pres(σ 1, R) 

✿ 13-13 * 

✿ 35-13 * 

53-13 *! 

31-13 *! * 

Adding these two constraints in the tableau in (65) does not alter its 

winner—35-423, as shown in (72)—(74). Again, the undominated 

constraints are not included in the tableaux. 53-423 and 31-423 violate 

the undominated constraint Num(Inf)≤≤2 and thus are not listed in the 

tableaux. 

(72) 13-53 —> 35-423 


✿ 35-423 * 

13-423 *! 

(73) 35-53 —> 35-423 


✿ 35-423 

13-423 *! * 

(74) 53-53 —> 35-423 


✿ 35-423 * * 

13-423 * * *! * 

A summary of the constriants and their ranking so far are given in 

(75). These constraints and their ranking can also account for the 

following sandhi: 13-13 —> 13-13, 53-13 —> 53-13 and 53-35 —> 

53-35. Tableaux (76)—(78) illustrate the derivation of these sandhi 

forms.


(75) Pres(σ 2, T), WFR, Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥1 

⇓ 

Pres(53), Dur(B), Pres(σ 1, C) 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 1, R) 

(76) 13-13 —> 13-13 


✿ 13-13 

35-13 *! * 

53-13 *! * 

31-13 *! 

(77) 53-13 —> 53-13 


✿ 53-13 

35-13 *! * * 

13-13 *! * * 

31-13 *! * 

(78) 53-35 —> 53-35 


✿ 53-35 

35-35 *! * 

31-35 *! * * 

13-35 * * * 

(The last candidate loses because it violates the undominated 

constraint Num(Inf)≥1). 

Two sandhi forms are still left unaccounted for: 13-35 —> 31-35 and 

35-35 —> 31-35. The tableaux in (79) and (80) show that the above 

constraints and ranking give us incorrect sandhi forms—35-35 in both 

cases. 

(79) 13-35 —> 35-35 (incorrect winner) 


✿ 35-35 * 

53-35 *! * 

31-35 *! * 

13-35




(80) 35-35 —> 35-35 (incorrect winner) 


✿ 35-35 

53-35 *! 

31-35 *! * * 

13-35 * 



To derive the actual winner 31-35 in both cases, we need the 

following constraint from the Register constraint family: 

(81) Reg(2) H: no adjacent high registers. 

This is a variation of the general constraint Reg(2) proposed in 

Section 2.3 such that it only bans two adjacent high registers. It is 

only natural that we should have a Reg(2) L constraint which bans two 

adjacent low registers in the grammar as well. But in this case, this 

constraint is lowly ranked in the hierarchy and it does not play any role 

in selecting the actual winners of the sandhi forms. 

The constraint Reg(2) H has to be ranked above the syllable 

boundary constraint Dur(B) to guarantee that 31-35 wins over 35-35 

and 53-35 for the base forms 13-35 and 35-35, and it has to be ranked 

below Pres(53) to make sure that the correct realization of 53-35 is 

still 53-35. As for the sandhi form 35-423, I do not consider the second 

syllable to have a strictly high register, thus this constraint is not 

relevant. 

So far, I have given all the relevant constraints for the predicateobject/subject-predicate 

disyllabic word tone sandhi in Pingyao. The 

ranking of these constraints is summarized in (82).


(82) Pres(σ2, T), WFR, Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥≥1 

⇓ 

Pres(53) 

⇓ 

Reg(2) H 

⇓ 

Dur(B), Pres(σ 1, C) 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 1, R) 

Tableaux (83)-(84) illustrate how 31-35 is derived from the base 

forms 13-35 and 35-35. Undominated constraints are not listed in the 

tableaux and only candidates which do not violate the undominated 

constraints are entertained. 

(83) 13-35 —> 31-35 

13-35 Pres(53) Reg(2) H Dur(B) Pres 

(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 31-35 * * 

35-35 *! * 

53-35 *! * * 

(84) 35-35 —> 31-35 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 31-35 * * * 

35-35 *! 

53-35 *! * 

Adding the last constraint Reg(2) H does not affect the analysis we 

give to the other sandhi behavior. The derivation of the other seven 

sandhi forms is given again in the full-fledged tableaux which include 

all the violable constraints in (85)-(91). Only the candidates which do 

not violate the undominated constraints are considered. 

(85) 13-13 —> 13-13 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 13-13 

35-13 *! * 

53-13 *! * 

31-13 *!


(86) 35-13 —> 13-13 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 13-13 * 

35-13 *! 

53-13 *! 

31-13 *! * 

(87) 53-13 —> 53-13 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 53-13 

35-13 *! * * 

13-13 *! * * 

31-13 *! * 

(88) 53-35 —> 53-35 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 53-35 * 

35-35 *! * * 

31-35 *! * * 

(89) 13-53 —> 35-423 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 35-423 * 

13-423 *! 

(90) 35-53 —> 35-423 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 35-423 

13-423 *! * 

(91) 53-53 —> 35-423 


(σ 1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, R) 

✿ 35-423 * * 

13-423 * * *! *


Up to now, the non-ru-tone sandhi behavior for the predicateobject/subject-predicate 

disyllabic words in Pinyao has been accounted 

for. To account for the corresponding ru-tone sandhi behavior, we need 

to rank the Dur(R)fk constraint posited in (51a) as undominated. 

Example (51) is repeated as (92). 

(92) a. Dur(R)fk: a pitch contour x is licensed by a rime whose 

sonorant duration is at least fk(x). 

b. 148ms


(93) Pres(Dur): preserve the duration characteristic of the 

syllable. 

(94) Final ranking: 

Dur(R)fk, Pres(σ 2, T), WFR, Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥1 

⇓ 

Pres(Dur) 

⇓ 

Pres(53) 

⇓ 

Reg(2) H 

⇓ 

Dur(B), Pres(σ 1, C) 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 1, R) 

Suppose f k(423)148ms (again recall that the average duration 

for the sonorant portion of the rime of a checked syllable is about 

148ms), when 423 has to be realized on a sandhi form due to the 

inviolability of Pres(σ 2, T) (when σ 2=53) and Word Final Rise, 

Pres(Dur) is sacrificed and the syllable is lengthened. But this is the 

only context in which Pres(Dur) is sacrificed because it is only 

dominated by these undominated constraints. 

This section has given an OT analysis of the predicate-object/subjectpredicate 

disyllabic word tone sandhi of Pingyao, appealing to 

constraints motivated in Section 2 or their variants. The analysis 

seems to be more complicated than the rule-based one, but the 

constraints are more clearly motivated than the rules Bao and Chen’s 

analyses appeal to, both by reference to other tone sandhi systems and 

by reference to articulatory and perceptual principles, and the advantages 

of the OT mechanism have been generally accepted. Moreover, neither 

Bao and Chen’s analysis can be readily adapted to account for the tone 

sandhi behavior of other categories of Pingyao words. As a matter of 

fact, no attempt has been made in their papers. In the following 

section, I show that the other major type of disyllabic Pingyao tone 

sandhi can be accounted for by constraints similar to the ones proposed 

here, but with minimally different ranking.


3.3.4. An OT Analysis for Tone Sandhi of Disyllabic Words with 

Other Syntactic Configurations 

Disyllabic words with syntactic configurations other than predicateobject 

or subject-predicate have different tone sandhi behavior than that 

we discussed in section 3.3.3. Some of these syntactic configurations 

are: modifier-noun, verb-verb or noun-noun concatenation and 

predicate-adjunct. Hou (1980) documents this type of disyllabic tone 

sandhi as Type B sandhi while he refers to the sandhi behavior of 

predicate-object or subject-predicate disyllabic words as Type A sandhi. 

Due to complexity of the data as well as the analysis, the 

organization of this section is slightly different from the previous 

section. After introducing the data, I give all the relevant constraints 

and their ranking for the OT account. The differences in constraint 

composition and ranking between Type A and Type B sandhi are 

discussed afterwards. How the constraint ranking is established is given 

with the aid of full-fledged tableaux which render the correct sandhi 

forms. 

The table in (95) summarizes the Type B sandhi pattern of Pingyao. 

(95) σ 1\σ 2 13 23 35 53 54 

13 (yang) 13-13 13- 23 31-35 35-423 35- 423 

13 (yin) 31-35 31- 45 13-13 31-53 31- 54 

23 32 -35 32 - 45 23 -13 32 -53 32 - 54 

35 35-53 35- 54 35-53 35-53 35- 54 

53 53-13 53- 23 53-35 53-53 53- 54 

54 54 -13 54 - 23 54 -35 45 -53 54 - 54 

Several things are worth noticing in the table. First, when in σ 1 

position, the sandhi behavior of 13 tone is divided into two—yin and 

yang. According to historical documents of Chinese phonology, yin 

and yang are tonal registers developed in the languages due to the loss 

of voicing constrasts in obstruents in the onset position. Yin register 

is associated with the originally voiceless onset obstruents and usually 

is higher in pitch, while yang register is associated with the originally 

voiced ones and often lower in pitch. In Pingyao, although lexically, 

yin ping 7 and yang ping are both realized as 13, in Type B tone sandhi, 

they behave differently, cueing their different origins. Second, in σ 1 

position, 23 is a short tone counterpart of the yin ping tone 13 since 

they have the same sandhi behavior; yang ping 13 has exactly the same 

7 Ping is the tonal category that the 13 tone in Pingyao belongs to in traditional 

Chinese terms.


sandhi behavior as the 13 tone in Type A sandhi (cf. (37)). Third, the 

boxed case is the only data in which the ru tone does not have the same 

sandhi as it non-ru counterpart. I consulted J.-Y. Hou--the author of the 

original documents. He assured me that it was not a mistake in the 

documentation and he was puzzled by this case as well. I thus take this 

case as an anomaly and leave it unaccounted for. 

Taking the fact that yang ping 13 has the same sandhi behavior as 13 

in Type A sandhi to be an idiosyncracy of Pingyao and ignoring the 

anomaly, the table in (95) can thus be simplified as (96), which 

includes only the sandhi behavior of non-ru tones. The sandhi of their 

ru tone counterparts can be similarly accounted for as it is done in Type 

A sandhi. 

(96) σ1\σ2 13 35 53 

13 (yin) 31-35 13-13 31-53 

35 35-53 35-53 35-53 

53 53-13 53-35 53-53 

Observe that in (96), the sandhi form of yin ping 13 is realized as a 

falling tone except in the boxed case (we may also observe in (95) that 

most sandhi forms of yang ping 13 are realized as rising tones). 

Considering that the yin ping tone resulted from an originally voiceless 

onset while the yang ping tone from an originally voiced onset, the 

pattern is only phonetically natural. Hombert (1975, 1978) 

experimented on the fundamental frequency values following American 

English and Yoruba stops and found that voiceless stops gave rise to a 

higher pitch and a falling contour to the following vowel, while a lower 

pitch and a rising contour resulted after voiced stops. The phenomenon 

can be attributed to various accounts, e.g., aerodynamic effects, vocal 

fold tension, and larynx height. Thus in the case of Pingyao, we can 

make the following assumption regarding its historical changes in tone: 

the historical voiceless onsets caused the syllable to have a falling tone, 

and the historical voiced onsets caused the syllable to have a rising 

tone. A further assumption we have to make is that in present-day 

Pingyao, this yin/yang distinction has been preserved in the sandhi 

tones, but is lost in the citation tones. Given that the fact that sandhi 

tones are more conservative in preserving historical lexical contrasts has 

been observed in many other Chinese dialects (Hou and Wen 1993, Wen 

1985, Yue-Hashimoto 1987, Zhang 1997), this assumption is at least 

factually well-grounded. To capture this effect, we may posit different 

underlying representations for the sandhi tones and achieve the 

neutralization effect in the citation forms by constraint ranking. In the 

following analysis, I opt to posit a constraint Yin/Yang 

Preservation to ensure the splitting of the base 13 into two different


sets of behavior in sandhi, simply because we have been operating with 

the practice of deriving the sandhi tone from the base tone. But I would 

like the readers to deem this as a notational variant of the canonical 

practice of considering the tonal contrast to be neutralized in the citation 

form, as this constraint is only posited for the reason of simplicity and 

consistency with the rest of the sandhi account, and no claim such as 

the historical facts are directly reflected in the synchronic grammar has 

been made. 

• Yin/Yang Preservation: in sandhi forms, yin tones are falling 

and yang tones are rising. 

If we consider the boxed sandhi form in (89) to be an anomaly, the 

above constraint should be ranked as an undominated constraint. The 

other constraints that are relevant to the account of Type B disyllabic 

sandhi in Pingyao are listed below: 

From the Duration family: 

• Dur(W)gk/gk(2)=2: a word cannot have more than two tonal 

inflection points. (Num(Inf)≤≤2 hereafter) 

• Dur(W)gj/gj(2)=1: a word cannot have more than one tonal 

inflection points. (Num(Inf)≤1 hereafter) 

• Dur(W) Min(Inf): a word must have at least one tonal inflection 

points. 

(Num(Inf)≥1 hereafter) 

• Dur(B)rise0 ∧ Dur(B)fall3: no pitch rise or pronounced pitch 

fall across a syllable boundary. (Dur(B) hereafter) 

From the Faithfulness family: 

• Pres(σ 1, C): preserve the tonal contour of the first syllable. 

• Pres(σ 1, R): preserve the tonal register of the first syllable. 

• Pres(σ 2, C): preserve the tonal contour of the second syllable. 

• Pres(σ 2, R): preserve the tonal register of the second syllable. 

From the Register family: 

• Reg(2) L: two adjacent low registers is disallowed. 

Other constraints: 

• Pres(53): preserve the property of a base high falling tone in the 

sandhi form. 

• *Non-Lexical Tone: a tone not in the lexical inventory is not 

allowed in the sandhi form. 

The ranking of the constraints is shown in (97).


(97) Yin/Yang Preservation, Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥1 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 1, C), Pres(σ 1, R), Pres(53) 

⇓ 

Num(Inf)≤1, Reg(2) L 

⇓ 

Dur(B), *Non-Lexical Tone, Pres(σ 2, C) 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 2, R) 

There are the following differences in the constraints and ranking 

from those of the Type A sandhi. 

First, while in Type A sandhi, σ 2 is the “prominent” syllable and the 

preservation of its tonal property is highly ranked in the grammar, in 

Type B sandhi, σ 1 plays the “prominent” role and its tones are more 

faithfully retained in the sandhi forms. The phonetic measurement of 

the two syllables in a Type B word did not reveal significant differences 

in their duration and energy. But we might again hope that the mystery 

of prominence will be unveiled by historical study or more advanced 

phonetic measurement. 8 Also notice that Pres(σ 1, C) and Pres(σ 1, 

R) are not undominated as their counterpart Pres(σ 2) in Type A 

sandhi. But it is only dominated by the Yin/Yang Preservation 

constraint. 

Second, Word Final Rise is not a relevant constraint in Type B 

tone sandhi. This might have to do with the “non-prominence” of the 

second syllable in Type B words. 

Third, *Non-Lexical Tone is a constraint which does not play 

any role in selecting the actual winners of Type A sandhi. But this 

does not necessarily mean that it is not in the tonal grammar of Type A 

at all. It could be because the effect of the constraint is covered by the 

8 The difference in prominence position with regard to syntactic configuration of the 

word is not idiosyncratic to Pingyao. Yue-Hashimoto (1987) documents that two 

northern Wu dialects--Tangxi and Shaoxing, display both first-syllable dominant type 

and last-syllable dominant type tone sandhi. A direct quote from Yue-Hashimoto 

(1987) is given below: 

“In fact, in Tangxi, when the domain of tone sandhi is a compound or a phrase with 

stress on the first syllable, the first-syllable dominant type of sandhi occurs, ..., but when 

the domain is Verb-Object type of Verb Phrase with stress on the last syllale, naturally 

the last-syllable dominant type occurs; while in Shaoxing the first-syllable dominant type 

is found in compounds of two or three syllables and in the reduplication of classifiers 

and verbs but the last-syllable dominant type is found in disyllabic phrases and 

trisyllabic numeral combination.”


effects of other constraints. In fact, ranking this constraint on the same 

tier with Dur(B) and Pres(σ 1, C) in Type A tonal grammar (cf. 

(82)), as it is ranked on the same tier with Dur(B) and Pres(σσ 2, C ) 

in Type B grammar, does not alter any of the its winning sandhi forms 

(Readers may try to insert this constraint by ranking it on a par with 

Dur(B) and Pres(σ 1, C) in tableaux (83)-(91), and will see that the 

actual winners are sustained upon insertion of this constraint). The 

motivation for this constraint is the simplicity of tonal inventory in 

sandhi forms. 

Fourth, Num(Inf)≤1 is not discussed in the tonal grammar of Type 

A words either. But if it is, it should be ranked as indicated below: 

(98) Dur(B), Pres(σ 1, C) 

⇓ 

Num(Inf)≤≤≤≤1 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 1, R) 

Thus the difference between Type A and Type B tonal grammar with 

respect to this particular constraint is that it ranks higher in Type B 

than in Type A. The fact that it ranks lower than Num(Inf)≤2 in 

both grammars reflects the generalization made in Section 2: if g k>g j, 

then Dur(W)gk ≥≥ Dur(W)gj (recall that Num(Inf)≤2 is the 

shorthand name for Dur(W)gk/gk(2)=2 and Num(Inf)≤1 is the 

shorthand name for Dur(W)gj/gj(2)=1). 

Lastly, unlike Type A sandhi in which Reg(2) H is highly ranked in 

the grammar while Reg(2) L does not play any role in determining the 

sandhi behavior, in the case of Type B sandhi, the situation is the 

opposite: Reg(2) L is ranked high and Reg(2) H falls out of the 

picture. 

How the constraint ranking in (97) is determined is a long and dreary 

process. But the undominated constraints can be easily sifted out. In 

(96), Yin/Yang Preservation, Num(Inf)≤2, and Num(Inf)≥≥1 

are simply never violated in the sandhi forms (except in the case boxed 

in (96), which I consider to be an anomaly). Thus it is reasonable to 

rank these constraints at the top of the hierarchy. Although Pres(53) 

is also never violated in the sandhi forms, to be consistent with its 

ranking in the grammar for Type A sandhi, I still consider it to be 

dominated only by constraints in the top tier of the hierarchy. The base 

tone on σ 1 is always preserved except when it is yin ping, indicating


that the faithfulness requirements on the first syllable—Pres(σ 1, C ) 

and Pres(σ 1, R), are only outranked by the Yin/Yang 

Preservation constraint. Since Num(Inf)≤2, and Num(Inf)≥1 

are on a par with Yin/Yang Preservation in the constraint 

hierarchy, Pres(σ 1, C) and Pres(σ 1, R) are dominated by these 

constraints too. 

How the rest of the constraint ranking is determined is not nearly as 

straight-forward. To spare the readers excruciating details, the ranking 

is illustrated in the following way: tableaux (99)—(106) illustrate how 

the sandhi forms in (96) are derived from their base tones; after each 

tableau, its contribution on the constraint composition and ranking (if 

any) is discussed. In these tableaux, the undominated constraints are 

not listed, and only the candidates which do not violate the undominated 

constraints are entertained. 

(99) 13(yin)-13 —> 31-35 

13-13 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ1, R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 31-35 * * * * 

31-13 * *! * 

31-53 * *! * * * * 

31-31 * *! * * * * 

53-13 * *! 

53-35 * *! * 

53-53 * *! * * * * 

This tableau makes the following contribution to the constraint 

composition and ranking: The winning of 31-35 over 31-13 illustrates 

that Reg(2) L is a relevant constraint and Reg(2) L >> Dur(B), 

Pres(σ 2, R). The loss of 53-13 indicates that Pres(σ 1, C) and 

Pres(σ 1, R) should indeed be counted as two different constraints, and 

Pres(σσ 1, R) >> Dur(B), *Non-Lex, Pres(σ 2, R).


(100) 13(yin)-53 —> 31-53 

13-53 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ1, R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 31-53 * * * * 

31-13 * *! * * * * 

31-35 * *! * * * 

31-31 * *! * * * * 

53-53 * *! * * 

53-35 * *! * 

53-13 * *! * * 

(101) 35-13 —> 35-53 

35-13 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ1, R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 35-53 * * 

35-31 * *! 

35-35 *! * 

35-13 *! * 

Due to the loss of 35-31 to 35-53, *Non-Lex is a relevant 

constraint here and should outrank Pres(σ 2,R). Also, that 35-53 is 

more harmonic than 35-35 indicates that Num(Inf)≤1 is active and it 

outranks Pres(σ 2,C). The loss of the most faithful candidate 35-13 

illustrates that at least one of Num(Inf)≤1 and Dur(B) should 

outrank both Pres(σ 2,C) and Pres(σ 2,R). 

(102) 35-35 —> 35-53 

35-35 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ1, R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 35-53 * 

35-31 * *! * 

35-35 *! 

35-13 *! * * 

The loss of the most faithful form 35-35 to 35-53 in this tableau 

further illustrates that Num(Inf)≤1 outranks Pres(σ 2,C).


(103) 35-53 —> 35-53 

35-53 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, 

R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 35-53 

35-31 *! * * 

35-35 *! * * 

35-13 *! * * * * 

(104) 53-13 —> 53-13 

53-13 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, 

R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 53-13 

53-35 *! 

53-53 *! * * * 

(105) 53-35 —> 53-35 

53-35 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ 1, 

R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 53-35 

53-13 *! 

53-53 *! * * 

(106) 53-53 —> 53-53 

53-53 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ1, R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 53-53 * * 

53-13 *! * * 

53-35 *! * 

Since from tableaux (101) and (102), we know that Num(Inf)≤≤1 

>> Pres(σσ 2,C), the winning of 53-53 over 53-35 in this tableau 

illustrates that Pres(53) >> Num(Inf)≤≤1. 

The definite constraint ranking that can be derived through candidate 

comparison can thus be summarized as follows: 

(107) • Pres(σ 1, R) >> Dur(B), *Non-Lex, Pres(σ 2, R)


• Pres(53) >> Num(Inf)≤1 

• Num(Inf)≤1 >> Pres(σ 2,C) 

• Reg(2) L >> Dur(B), Pres(σ 2, R) 

• *Non-Lex >> Pres(σ 2,R) 

Aside from the constraint rankings revealed by candidate comparison 

as done in tableaux (99)—(106), some other ranking relations are 

determined by the principle that the tonal grammars for Type A sandhi 

and Type B sandhi should be minimally different. Thus the constraint 

ranking in Type A sandhi grammar, if not driven by contradictory data, 

should not be changed in Type B sandhi grammar. Consider Pres(σ 1, 

T) in Type B sandhi corresponds with Pres(σσ 2, T) in Type A sandhi 

as the requirement to preserve the tonal property of the prominent 

syllable, and consider Pres(σ 2, T) in Type B sandhi corresponds with 

Pres(σ 1, T) in Type A sandhi as the requirement to preserve the tonal 

property of the non-prominent syllable, the following ranking relations 

for Type B sandhi can be added (cf. (82)): 

(108) • Dur(B) >> Pres(σ 2, R) 

• Pres(σ 2, C) >> Pres(σ 2, R) 

The following constraint ranking directly results from (107), (108) 

and the discussion before (99). 

(109) Yin/Yang Preservation, Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥1 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 1, C), Pres(σ 1, R), Pres(53) 

⇓ 

Num(Inf)≤1 

⇓ 

Dur(B), *Non-Lexical Tone, Pres(σ 2, C) 

⇓ 

Pres(σ 2, R) 

The ranking of *Non-Lex and Reg(2) L in the hierarchy has some 

degree of freedom. As discussed before, since ranking *Non-Lex on a 

par with Dur(B) and Pres(σ 1, C) gives us the correct sandhi pattern 

of Type A words, ranking this constraint in the corresponding place in 

Type B sandhi, namely, on the same tier with Dur(B) and Pres(σ 1, 

C), seems to be a reasonable choice. Since the register dissimilation 

constraint Reg(2) H in Type A sandhi grammar is dominated by


Pres(53), it is natural to consider that the register dissimilation 

constraint Reg(2) L in Type B sandhi grammar is also dominated by 

this constraint. Then since Reg(2) L outranks Dur(B), it should be 

in the same tier with Num(Inf)≤1. Thus the complete constraint 

ranking in (97) is established. 

The boxed form in (96) cannot be derived from this analysis. The 

sandhi output of the grammar for the base form 13(yin)-35 is 31-35, 

and the attested form 13-13 loses because it violates the undominated 

constraint Yin/Yang Preservation. We consider this case to be an 

anomaly. The tableau is shown in (110). 

(110) 13(yin)-35 —> ? 

13-35 Pres 

(σ1, C) 

Pres 

(σ1, R) 

Pres 

(53) 

No. 

(Inf) 

≤1 

Reg 

(2) L 

Dur 

(B) 

*N- 

Lex 

Pres 

(σ2, 

C) 

Pres 

(σ2, 

R) 

✿ 31-35 * * * 

31-13 * *! * * 

31-53 * *! * * * 

31-31 * *! * * * * * 

53-13 * *! * 

53-35 * *! 

53-53 * *! * * * 

As for the sandhi behavior of ru tones for this type of words, we still 

consider the constraint from the family Duration (Rime)—Dur(R)fk to 

be undominated and the constraint Pres(Dur) to be dominated only by 

the undominated constraints. Since the undominated constraints 

Yin/Yang Preservation, Num(Inf)≤≤2 and Num(Inf)≥1 do not 

require any obligatory concave tone to be realized on either one of the 

syllables in the sandhi form, Pres(Dur) is never violated. Thus the 

same tableaux as in (99)—(106) will give us the correct results of rutone 

sandhi for Type B disyllabic Pingyao words. 

The lack of 423 (or 423 ) tone on the Type B sandhi forms is the 

direct result of not having the constraint Word Final Rise in the 

grammar. In Type A words, the constraint Word Final Rise is 

motivated by the “right prominence” of the words. Type B words, 

characterized by the “left prominence” property, lacks this motivation. 

On the other hand, Word Initial Rise is not a natural constraint, or 

is a constraint that ranks very low in the grammar. The reasons are 

two-fold. First, since a rising tone takes a longer time to implement 

than a falling tone (Sundberg 1973), and the word-initial syllable is 

very likely to be shorter than the word-final syllable due to lack of final


lengthening, Word Initial Rise is somewhat unnatural compared to 

Word Final Rise. Second, if the rising pitch is used to facilitate the 

marking of prominence of the syllable, a rising pitch on the wordinitial 

syllable will not be nearly as salient a marker as a rising pitch 

on the word-final syllable because it could be coarticulated or masked by 

the pitch on the following syllable. Therefore, the lack on concave 

tones on the Type B sandhi forms is not an accident of the grammar, 

but has articulatory and auditory reasons. These reasons are reflected in 

the constraint organization of the tonal grammar. 

This section gives an analysis of the tone sandhi behavior of Type B 

disyllabic Pingyao words—modifier-noun compound, verb-verb or 

noun-noun concatenation and predicate-adjunct compound. The analysis 

is achieved by appealing to similar constraints to Type A sandhi and 

minimally different constraint ranking. It shows that the framework of 

analysis for Type A sandhi in Pingyao can be extended to other types of 

sandhi in Pingyao in a clear fashion. This has not been done by the 

previous rule-based analyses proposed by Bao (1990) and Chen (1996). 

As we can see from the analyses of ru tone realization and both Type A 

and Type B sandhi of Pingyao, the crucial component to an OT account 

for tonal behavior is the constraint family Duration, which includes 

three sub-families of constraints—Duration (Rime), Duration (Word) 

and Duration (Boundary). The account for ru tone realization appeals to 

the constraint Dur(R)fk—a member of the constraint family Duration 

(Rime); both the analyses of Type A and Type B sandhi appeal to the 

constraints Num(Inf)≤2, Num(Inf)≥1, Dur(B)rise0 and 

Dur(B)fall3, the first two of which are members of the constraint 

family Duration (Word), and the last two of which are members of the 

constraint family Duration (Boundary). Together with the faithfulness 

requirements of the sandhi form (or surface representation of lexical 

tone) to the base form (or underlying representation of lexical tone) and 

other traditional phonological considerations like the OCP effect of 

tonal register, a tonal grammar can be achieved to explain complicated 

sandhi patterns as well as lexical realization of tones. 

4. CONCLUSION 

In this thesis, I have discussed the possible composition of a tonal 

grammar which aims at accounting for the tone sandhi behavior as well 

as lexical realization of tones in an OT framework. Pingyao—a 

northern Chinese dialect belonging to Jin dialect group—was taken as 

an example to illustrate the construction of such a grammar. I have 

argued that phonetic duration plays a decisive role in the tonal behavior 

of a Chinese dialect. The less pronounced pitch contour on a stopclosed 

syllable is due to the insufficient sonorous rime duration of the


syllable; the limited number of tonal inflection points is partially the 

effect of the limited duration of the word; and the ubiquity of tonal 

coarticulation phenomenon is the result of limited duration between the 

end pitch of a syllable and the starting pitch of the next syllable. These 

duration considerations are all encoded as constraints in the family 

Duration in an OT grammar. Together with other traditional 

phonological considerations like faithfulness and OCP, a tonal grammar 

can be achieved to explain complicated sandhi patterns as well as lexical 

realization of tones.


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