An Analysis of the Xiamen Tone Circle

Xiamen12 is a Southern Min language that exhibits a complex system of tone sandhi: the tone that is associated with a given word (most words being monosyllabic) varies depending on the prosodic/syntactic context in which the word is used. A monosyllabic word that appears in isolation or that appears in a prominent position in a tone group bears what has been called its citation tone. When the word is used in a non prominent position in a tone group, it bears a different tone called its sandhi tone. The definition of tone groups is itself a matter of ongoing research. Suffice it to say that tone groups are prosodic groups of words whose most prominent position is the syllable that is aligned with the right edge of the group, cf. Chen (1987) and Hsieh (2004). Tone sandhi in Southern Min languages generally takes place in non final (ie. non prominent) positions in the tone group. In Xiamen, citation tones are mapped to sandhi tones in a systematic way. Sandhi tones form a proper subset of the set of citation tones, the global mapping from citation tones to sandhi tones forming a circle, as illustrated by the following diagram: