Tonal Mutations I

This chapter explores tone sandhi and tonal mutations in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). Each base tone corresponds to a specific sandhi tone, resulting from smooth or checked tone chain shifts that modify either register or pitch, but not both simultaneously. Despite some studies suggesting low productivity, real-word experiments and corpus analysis show high rates of tonal alternations, indicating that productivity is the primary mechanism. Future models of TSM tone sandhi should focus on productive phonological processes, with lexical storage for exceptional cases. In diminutive suffixation, the pre- á syllable tone changes through register or pitch spreading from the - á suffix, forming a tone cluster. In neutral tone operations, spreading may lead to a default low tone. Syllable contraction creates tone clusters from various tonal melodies, simplifying while preserving tonal information, typically through edge-in association and mora addition. Trisyllabic reduplication involves an emphatic - á suffix on the leftmost syllable, with its high tone preserved as a floating tone if absent. Tetrasyllabic reduplication shows patterns of semantic emphasis. Some patterns form a single tone sandhi domain, while others split into two domains. The ABCC pattern, consisting of a subject NP and predicate VP, forms separate tonal domains.