Re: THEORY: Sandhi / Mandarin

>From: "Johnson, Anna" <AJohnson@...>
>Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 09:38:56 -0500
>
>
>That's how it was introduced to me in my first-year Mandarin and my
>first-year Korean class; Sandhi occurs in both languages. Yes, in Mandarin,
>there is Sandhi, although it is known as "tone Sandhi" (and spelled by
>Froshers erh freshman as 'tone-sandy') because it only appears in that
>form.
>
Tone sandhi exists in all three dialects of Chinese that I actually know
anything about and I suspect in all 7 or ten or 1000 or however many there
are today *g*.  In Cantonese it is exceedingly simple: high falling before
another high falling or a high level becomes a high level.  In Mandarin it
is simple, too: tone 3 becomes tone 2 before another tone 3 with the option
of alternating or changing all but the last in a series of 3rd tones.  Also
tone 4 followed by tone 2 gets pronounced like an extralong tone 3 covering
two syllables.

But Taiwanese ad so much tone sandi you could make a beach!  When combining
two or more syllables in a phrase 1 becomes 7, 2 becomes 1, 3becomes 2, 4
becomes 2, 5 becomes 7, 7 (yes, there is no tone 6!) becomes 3, and 8
becomes 3.  But after the syllable a2: 1 still becomes 7, and 2 still
becomes 1, but 3 and 4 also become 1, and 5, 7, and 8 all become 7 -- yes, 7
goes back to itself!  It's quite maddening, I assure you.

Adam wo wonders if other East Asian tonal langs have such insane sandhi
rules

>Anna J. Johnson
>Mystif & Scrat Inscrutable
>*************
>Somtyme one of mankynde is both man & woman & suche ... in englyssh is
>called a scrette.
>- Caxton, Trevisa's Higden (1482)

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