Behind tones : a syntactic analysis of tonal reassociation in Lijiang Naxi

Abstract

A description and analysis of the Naxi tonal reassociation process is given to account for the mismatch between the boundaries of syntactic constituents and tonal reassociation domains. Based on both pre-existing and first-hand data collected by fieldwork, a detailed account of the inventory of tones and the phonological process of tonal reassociation is given to show that all lexical tones of Naxi are based on levels, that phonetic contours may be allotones of the level tones or reflections of phonological contours, and that phonological contours are the consequence of lexical rising tones or tonal reassociation. This is followed by a proposal that the tonal reassociation domain in Naxi can be identified with the Phonological Phrase (φ), based on the analysis carried out within the framework of Minimalist syntax and Distributed Morphology, adopting the Mapping and Pruning (MaP) model proposed by Perry (2023). Word