Everything about Tone Sandhi totally explained
Tone sandhi is the change of
tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase. It is a type of
sandhi, or fusional change, from the
Sanskrit word for "joining".
For example,
Mandarin Chinese has a sandhi rule whereby a low-tone becomes a rising tone when it's followed by another low tone. Thus the greeting written
nǐhǎo in
pinyin, composed of the low-tone words
nǐ (你) "you" and
hǎo (好) "well", is pronounced
níhǎo and is indistinguishable from a word which inherently has those tones. That is, tone sandhi is a
phonemic and not just phonetic change in tone.
Languages with tone sandhi
Not all tone languages have tone sandhi. Sandhi rules are found in many of the
Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico.
Cherokee has a robust tonal system in which tones may be combined in various ways, following subtle and complex tonal rules that vary from community to community.
Virtually all Chinese languages have tone sandhi, some of it quite complex. While Mandarin sandhi is simple,
Amoy Min has a more complex system, with every one of its tones changing into a different tone when it occurs before another, and which tone it turns into depends on the final consonant of the syllable that bears it.
Amoy has five tones, which are reduced to two in syllables which end in a
stop consonant. (These are numbered 4 and 8 in the diagram above.) Within a
phonological word, all syllables but the last one change tone. Among unstopped syllables (that is, those which don't end in a stop), tone 1 becomes 7, tone 7 becomes 3, tone 3 becomes 2, and tone 2 becomes 1. Tone 5 becomes 7 or 3, depending on dialect. Stopped syllables ending in /p/, /t/, or /k/ take the opposite tone (phonetically, a high tone becomes low, and a low tone becomes high), whereas syllables ending in a
glottal stop (written
h in the diagram above) drop their final consonant to become tones 2 or 3.
The seven or eight tones of
Hmong demonstrate several instances of tone sandhi. In fact the contested distinction between the seventh and eighth tones surrounds the very issue of tone sandhi (between glottal stop (-m) and low rising (-d) tones). High and high-falling tones (marked by -b and -j in the
RPA orthography, respectively) trigger sandhi in subsequent words bearing particular tones. A frequent example can be found in the combination for numbering objects (ordinal number + classifier + noun): ib (one) + tus (classifier) + dev (dog) => ib tu
g dev (note tone change on the classifier from -s to -g).
What is and isn't tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is compulsory as long as the environmental conditions which trigger it are met. It isn't to be confused with tone changes that are due to
derivational or
inflectional morphology. For example, in
Cantonese, the word "sugar" (糖) is pronounced
tòhng (/tʰɔːŋ˨˩/), whereas the derived word "candy" (also written 糖) is pronounced
tóng (/tʰɔːŋ˧˥/). This has nothing to due with the phonological environment of the tone, and therefore isn't sandhi.
In
Taiwanese, the words
kiaⁿ (high tone, meaning "afraid") and
lâng (curving upward tone, meaning "person") combine to form two different compound words with different tones. When combined via sandhi rules, kiaⁿ is spoken in basic tone and lâng in original tone (written in
POJ as kiaⁿ-lâng). This means "frightfully dirty" or "filthy". This follows the basic tone sandhi rules. However, when kiaⁿ is spoken in original high tone, and lâng rendered in low tone (written kiaⁿ--lâng), it means "frightful". This derivational process is distinct from the semantically empty change of tone that automatically occurs when
kiaⁿ is followed by
lâng, and so isn't tone sandhi.
Tones may also affect each other phonetically without becoming different phonemes. This is the case, for example, in the
tone terracing of languages such as
Twi. As the changes are not phonemic, this isn't considered to be tone sandhi.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tone Sandhi'.
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