Meixian and Bangkok Hakka Tone Sandhi: An Optimality Theory Analysis

• Main Authors: Johnny, 李平周
• Other Authors: Yuchau E. Hsiao
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/07464113686642203640

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 語言學研究所 === 102 === The grammar of Meixian and Bangkok Hakka tone sandhi has been analyzed from a rule based approach. Nevertheless, there are some questions and details that could not be solved by the analysis, such as the status of tones that do not undergo sandhi, triggers of the tone sandhi, and the structural relation between citation tones and their sandhi counterparts. Thus, the purpose of this study is to re-analyze the tone sandhi in Meixian and Bangkok Hakka under the constraint based framework, Optimality Theory (OT). There are two mechanisms of tonal alternations in the two dialects’ tone sandhi: assimilation, and dissimilation. So in order to capture the tonal alternations, the current analysis applies the concepts of the Obligatory Contour Principle, and the No-Jumping Principle. The constraints generated according to these principles work well with the application of the Constraint Conjunction approach. The conjoined constraints are needed since the tone alternations are highly marked, and depend a lot on the head/right syllable tone. Furthermore, this thesis also posits several faithfulness constraints that rank higher than the tone sandhi markedness constraint. The high ranked faithfulness constraints govern the preservation of several tones from any alternation, and preservation of some structures of the citation tones when they become sandhi tones (i.e. register and initial target). In conclusion, the positing of tone sandhi markedness constraints and undominated identity constraints presents a better input-output correspondence relation of the tone sandhi phenomena in Meixian and Bangkok Hakka. To conclude the thesis, a brief summary of the study and possible further issues are presented.