Duration in Zhangzhou Southern Min: Variation, correlation, and constraint

Yishan Huang

Poster presentation (paper to appear in proceedings)

Abstract

This study explores the status of duration in Zhangzhou Southern Min with rich tonal contrasts across three different linguistic contexts. Several innovative findings have gone beyond conventional assumptions and advanced our knowledge of how suprasegmentals (F0 and duration), segments (coda types), and linguistic contexts (citation, phrase-initial, phrase-final) interact to shape dynamic realisations of duration in the tonal phonology and morphosyntax of Zhangzhou speech. It is hoped to contribute valuable empirical data to the typology of tonal studies in Asia and shed important light on how humans encode and decode duration in their cognitive grammar.