Complete and incomplete neutralisation in Fuzhou tone sandhi

This is a study of incomplete neutralisation using Fuzhou tone sandhi as a test case. In Fuzhou Min, Tone 44 and Tone 232 undergo putative neutralisation into Tone 53 preceding a set of low tones, while T44 and T53 are neutralised into T44 preceding T53. Data from 10 Fuzhou speakers show the former neutralisation to be acoustically incomplete, with the sandhi tone of underlying Tone 44 having a higher pitch onset, while the latter appears to be acoustically complete. This result expands the typology of incomplete neutralisation by showing that two distinct phonological objects can incompletely neutralise (A / B → C) into a third object, as previous studies predominantly feature neutralisation of one object into another: A / B → B, e.g. Beijing tone sandhi T2/T3 → T2 / __ T3. It is argued that a hybrid model with both abstract categories and stored exemplars can best account for the data (Pierrehumbert, 2002 & 2006).