| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 語言與文化研究所 === 93 === Same as segmental errors, tone errors which also present external evidence to language inspire in-depth explorations into the psychological reality, the processing paths, and/or the articulatory mechanisms involved in the construction of abstract linguistic units and structures. The current study based on an errors corpus not only makes several observations which echo the universals of tone, but also points out relevant theoretical implications.
Stress serves as the organizer in a tone group in English, and hence that a stressed syllable often triggers anticipation assimilation in speech errors is not surprising. In addition, syllable metathesis within a word prefers the interchange between a stressed syllable and an unstressed syllable. While the presence or absence of stress is a long-standing issue in Taiwanese, the focused syllable which mostly carries a high tone presents a frequent trigger of tone assimilation in speech errors in Taiwanese Southern Min, very much like the case in English.
Three important tonal issues explored in this thesis include the autosegmental representation of tone, the nature of the mid level tone, and the psychological reality of tone sandhi. A wide array of evidence from assimilation, tonal stability, to metathesis indicates that tone presents an autosegment in Taiwanese. Evidence from assimilation also manifests the underlying representation [L, h], i.e. a low-registered high tone, for the mid level. Finally, that underapplication of sandhi rules outnumbers overapplication indirectly bespeaks the derivational approach to tone processing in Taiwanese.
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