View Chapters

Book: Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory

Chapter: 9. Revisiting Tone Sandhi Domains in Xiamen Chinese: MATCH vs ALIGN with Strict Layering

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.44016

Blurb:

Unlike Align constraints, Match constraints cannot be satisfied by a non-recursive prosodic parse of a recursive syntactic input. As a consequence, when the candidate set is limited to non-recursive, strictly layered structures, or when a constraint on NONRECURSIVITY is undominated, Match will always be violated at least once, and can select some surprising candidates. This chapter explores the interaction of Match constraints with strictly layered candidate sets, and compares this interaction to the behavior of Align and Wrap constraints in the same context. A case study of Xiamen Chinese tone sandhi domains demonstrates that Match constraints can select superficially mismatching optima, even without the intervention of prosodic well-formedness constraints, and that neither Align nor Match constraints can capture the Xiamen Chinese pattern unless combined with prosodic subcategorization.

Chapter Contributors

  • Yaqing Cao ([email protected] - ycao) 'Ph.D. student, Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz'
  • Richard Bibbs ([email protected] - rbibbs) 'PhD student, University of California, Santa Cruz '
  • Jennifer Bellik ([email protected] - jbellik) 'University of California, Santa Cruz '