Readers 读者
Tone sandhi in the Suzhou dialect: Synchronic and diachronic perspectives
苏州方言连读变调的共时层面和历史层次
Xiaofan Li 李小凡
Abstract 摘要
There are two kinds of Tone Sandhi phenomena in the Suzhou dialect: (a) a phonetic Tone Sandhi operating with the last syllable as the base, and (b) a phonetic and semantic Tone Sandhi with the first syllable as the base. As the last syllable in (b) is highly neutralized in tone, the prevalence of the phenomenon results in change in tone classes, involving sandhi rules that are completely different from those of the phonetic type. These two types of Tone Sandhi belong to different synchronic levels and they happened in historical strata of different periods. The phonetic sandhi belonged to the main layer in the early period, and the phonetic/semantic sandhi represented an innovative layer, a derivation from the phonetic layer. The phonetic/semantic sandhi initially affected syntactic units such as the aspectual, the reduplicative and the quantifier expressions. The change then spread its influence to other syntactic and lexical units. At present, the change has become the main layer, with the phonetic sandhi remaining as a variant form. The process of derivation from the phonetic/semantic sandhi resembles that of lexical grammaticalization.
Subject Keywords 关键词
Suzhou dialect 苏州方言 Tone Sandhi 连读变调 Base character 基字 Drift 漂移 Synchronic level 共时层面 Diachronic strata 历史层次 Syntax diffusion 语法扩散 Grammaticalization 语法化