Testing the Role of Phonetic Knowledge in

Phonological patterns often have phonetic bases. But whether phonetic substance should be encoded in synchronic phonological grammar is controversial. We aim to test the synchronic relevance of phonetics by investigating native Mandarin speakers’ applications of two exceptionless tone sandhi processes to novel words: the contour reduction 213→21/__T (T≠213), which has a clear phonetic motivation, and the perceptually neutralizing 213→35/__213, whose phonetic motivation is less clear. In two experiments, Mandarin subjects were asked to produce two individual monosyllables together as disyllabic words that are different types of novel words. Results show that speakers apply the 213→21 sandhi with a greater accuracy than the 213→35 sandhi in novel words, indicating a synchronic bias against the phonetically less motivated pattern. We also show that lexical frequency is relevant to the application of the sandhis to novel words, but it alone cannot account for the low sandhi accuracy of 213→35. Theoretically, the study supports the direct relevance of phonetics to synchronic phonology and sheds light on the nature of gradience in phonology. Methodologically, it complements existing research paradigms that test the nature of the phonology-phonetics relationship and identifies a set of languages that can serve as a rich test-bed for this relationship. When extended to other Chinese dialects, the method can also provide insight into how Chinese speakers internalize complex tone sandhi patterns.