Speaker: Michael Kenstowicz (MIT) & Sixing Cui (Central China Normal University, Wuhan)
Title: The replacement of Beijing Mandarin neutral tones in AABB reduplications: part 2
Time: Monday, April 14th, 5pm – 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Abstract: Earlier research (Cui 2012, 2021) suggests that when Mandarin disyllabic adjectives of the form AB such as [dàfang] 大方 ’generous’ are reduplicated to AABB [dàdà-fāngfāng] 大大方方, the B syllable is placed in a stressed position. Mandarin neutral tones (T0) are banned from stressed syllables (as well as the initial syllable of a word or phrase). What tone is assigned to a T0 syllable when a disyllabic AB base with a final neutral tone is reduplicated to AABB? We present the results of a study that poses this question for six Beijing Mandarin native speakers. Our results indicate that the tone that is associated with the T0 character/morpheme helps the speaker choose among the four possible substitutes for the T0: specifically when the original tone of the B morpheme is T3 or T4 the speaker is significantly more like to substitute T3 or T4 while original T2 is more likely to change to T1. We see this as a conflict between faithfulness to the original (remote) base and a markedness preference for a H tone in a stressed syllable. We then investigate whether there are traces of the original tone in the acoustic properties of the neutral tone of the AB base form. Finally, we consider possible phonetic correlates of the underlying metrical structure of the AB and AABB words.