This article extends Optimality Theoretic studies to the research on second language tone phonology. Specifically, this work analyses the acquisition of identical tone sequences in Mandarin Chinese by adult speakers of three non-tonal languages: English, Japanese and Korean. This study finds that the learners prefer not to use identical lexical…

Karbi is a Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken by half a million people in the Karbi Anglong district in Assam, Northeast India, and surrounding areas in the extended Brahmaputra Valley area. It is an agglutinating, verb-final language. This dissertation offers a description of the dialect spoken in the hills of the Karbi Anglong district. It is…

This paper outlines a method of auditory and acoustic analysis for determining the tonemes of a language starting from scratch, drawing on the author's experience of recording and analyzing tone languages of north-east India. The methodology is applied to a preliminary analysis of tone in the Thang dialect of Khiamniungan, a virtually undocumented…

This dissertation examines floating tones and tone gesture deactivation in Sierra Juarez Zapotec (SJZ), and provides an Optimality Theoretic account of tonal spreading and placement using insights from Articulatory Phonology. While the data portion of the dissertation is drawn from SJZ, the approach has broader implications for theories of tonal…

THIS STUDY OF THE CANTONESE PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM IS A CASE STUDY OF THE PHONOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF A GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. ATTEMPTS ARE MADE IN CHAPTER III TO SOLVE SOME OLD PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE ANALYSIS OF CANTONESE WITHIN THIS NEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK. MOST OF THE PROBLEMS ARE PSEUDO-PROBLEMS, IN THE SENSE THAT THEY POSE DIFFICULTIES ONLY…

This document describes the Shanghai dialect of Chinese. An introduction to the paper provides information on previous research on the dialect. Items covered in the phonological description include syllable structure, initials, finals, tones, tone change, and differences in initials and finals in the colloquial and literary forms. The morphemes of…

This document describes the Wen-ch'ang and Ting-an dialects of Chinese. Items covered in the phonological description of Wen-ch'ang include syllable structure, initials, finals, tones, tone change, and differences in the initials and finals in colloquial and literary forms. Initials, finals, and tones in the Ting-an dialect are also discussed. The…

This document provides a description of the Teng-xian dialect of Chinese. In the introduction, the author discusses the geographical location of the dialect and its relationship to other Chinese dialects; a map is provided. Items covered in the phonological description include syllable structure, initials, finals, tones, tone sandhi, combinations…

This document provides a description of the Foochow dialect of Chinese. Introductory remarks concern the geographical area of the dialect and previous analysis. The phonological description includes statements on syllable structure, initial consonants, finals, tones, changed tones, combinations of initials, finals, and tones, and syllables in…

This document provides a description of the Tai-shan dialect of Chinese. Maps illustrate the area where the dialect is spoken, and introductory remarks concern previous study of the dialect, sources of current information, and relationship to other dialects. The phonological description provides information on syllable structure, initials, finals,…

This document provides a description of the Chien-yang dialect of Chinese along with a comparative description of the Chien-ou dialect and a discussion of the entire Min dialect family. The Min dialects are considered with respect to geography (including maps), internal subgrouping, numbers of speakers, and mutual intelligibility. The main part of…

Six working papers on phonology, primarily concerning less commonly taught languages, are presented are in this volume. Titles include: "Non-Uniqueness Condition and the Segmentation of the Chinese Syllable" (Benjamin Ao); "Theoretical Consequences of Metathesis in Maltese" (Elizabeth Hume); "Cs and Vs or Moras: The Case…

The chief purposes of this book are the illustration of an analytical approach to tone languages, a methodology based upon recent linguistic advance, and the presentation of firsthand data on Mixteco and Mazateco, languages which represent two very different structural arrangements of linguistic tone. Part 1 describes some of the types of…

Papers in phonology, psycholinguistics, and syntax include: "Discriminating between Syntactic and Semantic Processing: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials" (Kim Ainsworth-Darnell); "The Syntactic Structure of Chinese Formal Focus" (Qian Gao); "Employing a Multimodal Logic in an Approach to German Pronoun Fronting"…