Trisyllabic Tone Sandhi in Tianjin Mandarin

Tianjin Mandarin is known for its complex tone sandhi patterns over bisyllabic constituents and the conflicting directionality as well as the possible iterative application of sandhi rules over trisyllabic constituents. Previous studies on Tianjin tone sandhi, especially those on sandhi in trisyllabic sequences, have been mainly based on impressionistic descriptions. In this paper, we argue that tone sandhi in Tianjin Mandarin is much simpler than what the literature suggests. First, only three bisyllabic tonal combinations in Tianjin introduce sandhi changes: T1+T1, T4+T1, and T3+T3. Furthermore, tone sandhi in Tianjin Mandarin does not involve the change of one lexical tone into another. Second, in trisyllabic sequences, these bisyllabic sandhi rules do not apply consistently, as claimed in the literature. Specifically, T1+T1 and T4+T1 only introduce sandhi changes when they are right-aligned. Iterative sandhi application was only observed over T3+T3+T3 sequence where sandhi must have been applied from the left edge. Conjointly, we argue that there is no experimental evidence to support the so-called “paradox” in Tianjin tone sandhi (Chen, 2000).