Timing specification of Chinese tones

Abstract

Previous research has long been divided on the issues of Chinese tone bearing unit and lexical stress. To help address these issues, the present study proposes a tonal timing framework based on two types of timing units, specified μ and unspecified X. It uses Mandarin third tone sandhi and Shanghai Wu tone split and spread processes to illustrate that the proposed framework can provide a unified account of different tone sandhi processes from the temporal dimension. It also discusses the implications of the framework for the TBU size, default tone type, tonal prominence, tonal foot, word-level prominence, and tone-syllable association.