Right-Prominent Trisyllabic Tone Sandhi in Taifeng Chinese

Previous studies on tone sandhi in the Wu dialect of Taifeng have revealed distinct patterns for verb-object (VO) and modifier-noun (MN) structures in right-prominent disyllabic prosodic words. VO sandhi shows tonal neutralization in the initial syllable and preservation in the final syllable, while MN sandhi involves tonal alternation on both syllables. This study further investigates tone sandhi in trisyllabic words from the perspective of their temporal structure and pitch contours. Results indicates that trisyllabic words, regardless of their metrical and morpho syntactic structures, exhibit a rightward prominence, with final syllables having markedly greater duration and broad pitch excursions than non-final syllables, being dominantly featured in a neutralize mid (M) tone across the first two syllables. However, distinct patterns emerge in the I + 2 metrical structure when the latter disyllables undergo either disyllabic VO or MN tone sandhi, depending on their internal composition. When the disyllabic MN tone sandhi occurs, the middle syllable is lengthened to accommodate the altered tonal contour. Similar variations are exhibited in the 2 + 1 metrical structure when disyllabic premodifiers vary in tone sandhi patterns. Trisyllable tone sandhi in Taifeng Chinese showcases complex interactions of lexical tone sandhi and higher-level prosodic constraints. Generation factor is considered but no significant divergence is observed compared to disyllabic tone sandhi.