Overview

Chinese phonology has been studied for over 1700 years. Before the twentieth century the focus of such scholarship was on the rhyming categories of syllables for the purposes of composing proper literary works and of preserving what was felt to be proper Chinese. During the first half of this century phonological research was directed towards the production of a simplified, national, 'standard' Chinese sound system. The academic study of Chinese linguistics, including phonology, dates from the 1960s. This has produced substantial literature, mainly in Chinese. This is a comprehensive study of Chinese phonology. It covers several areas that are either not dealt with in previous books or only superficially touched upon, such as the large amount of missing syllable patterns (Chapter 3), stress (Chapter 6), the word length problem ( Chapter 7), and the word order problem (Chapter 8). It also offers new analyses of several traditional topics, such as the phonemic inventory (Chapter 2), allophonic variation (Chapter 3), syllable structure (Chapter 4), the [r] suffix (Chapter 9), tone (Chapter 10), and Tone 3 Sandhi (Chapter 11). The book pays attention to both factual description and theoretical analyses. In addition, efforts have been made to avoid unnecessary jargon and to introduce relevant theories in a non-technical way, so that the contents are accessible to a broader audience.

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9780198299875

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The work is a bookshelf must for any linguist interested in the sound system of Modern Chinese in the light of modern phonological theory ... Duanmu's volume breaks new ground in Mandarin phonology by casting a critical eye to accepted wisdom and incorporating new advances in metrical phonology, feature geometry and optimality theory ... the argumentation and breadth of the book surpasses that of any other work on the subject and constitutes an inestimable contribution to Chinese linguistics. Journal of the International Phonetic Association The book is written in a down-to-earth fashion and is very approachable by anyone with the slightest interest in Chinese languages or phonology but relatively little training in either area. Linguist List 12.1726 A comprehensive study of the phonology of Standard Chinese. Not only is it rich in detailed and amazingly accurate factual description, it also proposes elegant theoretical solutions to many long-standing problems in Chinese phonology. Linguist List 12.1726

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