LingLunch : Xiaoliang Luo

Xiaoliang Luo (LCAO/Université Paris Cité)
Abstract: Intervocalic lenition in Mandarin : a morphophonological account

Due to the Chinese philological tradition, Chinese phonology often focuses on the stable phonological structures of monosyllables. However, when these monosyllables are concatenated to form plurisyllabic words, it gives rise to various phonotactic phenomena such as syllable weight change, tone sandhi, and intervocalic consonant lenition, also known as "consonant reduction." The intervocalic lenition has few mentions in the literature (Chao 1968; Xu 1980; Duanmu 2007) and has been considered so far as a phonetic phenomenon of connected speech. In this presentation, I will argue that, on the contrary, it is a phonological phenomenon that is conditioned both by morphological boundary and (debated) stress.