Right-Dominant Tones in Zhangzhou: On and Through Phonetic Surface

Right-Dominant Tones in Zhangzhou: On and Through Phonetic Surface

This study conducts a systematic acoustic exploration into the phonetic nature of rightmost tones in a right-dominant tone sandhi system based on empirical data from 21 native speakers of Zhangzhou Southern Min, which presents eight tonal contrasts at the underlying level. The results reveal that, (a) the F0 contour shape realisation of rightmost tones in Zhangzhou appears not to be categorically affected by their preceding tones. (b) Seven out of eight rightmost tones have two statistically significantly different variants in their F0 onset realisation, indicating their regressive sensitivity to the offset phonetics of preceding tones. (c) The forms of rightmost tones are not straightforward related to their counterparts in citation. Instead, two versions of the F0 system can be identified, with the unmarked forms resembling their citation values and the marked forms occurring as a consequence of the phonetic impact of their preceding tones and the F0- declining effect of utterance-final position. (d) The phonetic variation of rightmost tones reflects the across-linguistic tendency of tonal articulation in connected speech but contradicts the default principle for identifying the right dominance of tone sandhi in Sinitic languages.