Facilitating and Blocking Conditions of Haplology: A comparative study of Hong Kong Cantonese and Taiwan Mandarin

Facilitating and Blocking Conditions of Haplology: A comparative study of Hong Kong Cantonese and Taiwan Mandarin Sam-Yin Wong Chu-Ren Huang I-Hsuan Chen The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University samyin.wong@connect. polyu.hk churenhuang@gmail.co m ihcucb@gmail.com Abstract Haplology is the elimination of one of the two consecutive identical sounds or syllables. Sinitic languages offer an interesting and challenging example in the study of haplology. Since a syllable corresponds typically to a morpheme in Sinitic languages, hence haplology typically eliminates a full morpheme. Thus haplology in Sinitic languages have implications for the interaction of lexical forms, lexical semantics, morphology, and phonology. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to study this complex interface issue by comparing facilitating and blocking conditions for haplology in Hong Kong Cantonese and Taiwan Mandarin. In the minimal context of two identical linguistic units, very little linguistic information can be examined to tease apart contrasting conditions for haplology. By comparing two different ‘dialects’, the different conditions can be highlighted. Our study shows that tone sandhi has a stronger blocking effect in Hong Kong Cantonese, while frequency has stronger facilitating effect in Taiwan Mandarin. 45 1 Introduction Haplology is the elimination of one of the two consecutive identical sounds or syllables, as such it is often considered as primarily a phonological operation. Haplology is not uncommon across different languages although different languages differ slightly in the phonological process (Neeleman & Van, 2005; Stemberger, 1981; Szemerenyi, Cardona & Szemereneyi, 1970). (Chao 1968) argues that haplology in Mandarin Chinese is motivated by rule of economy. Hence, although it is optional, haplological forms are considered to be preferred over forms without haplology. However, what led to the less-preferred full form to occur is rarely explicated. It is important to note that a syllable typically corresponds to a morpheme in Sinitic languages, hence haplology eliminates a full morpheme. However, the elimination of a morpheme has consequences in lexical form, lexical semantics, morphology, and phonology. In fact, it is observed that in Mandarin, haplology can be observed in morpho-syntactic levels. For instance, for the two consecutive tā (3rd personal singular pronoun) in (1), Yip (1995) observed that haplology is necessary if they have the same referent (1a), yet it will be blocked if they have different referents (1b). Although the obligatory haplology should probably be described instead as a very strong tendency, Yip’s (1995) observation that a) haplology can occur across phrasal boundaries and that certain (semantic) conditions can block haplology still stands and exemplifies the complex interface issues underlining haplology in Sinitic languages. (1) 我_問_他_他_明天_來_不_來 a. wǒ wèn tā míngtiān lái-bù-lái ‘I asked himi if hei will be coming b.tomorrow.’ wǒ wèn tā tā míngtiān lái-bù-lái ‘I asked himi if hej will be coming tomorrow.’ PACLIC 32 729 32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation Hong Kong, 1-3 December 2018 Copyright 2018 by the authors Ke (2006) classifies haplology into three types: (i) necessary, (ii) optional, and (iii) impossible. (1a) and (1b) belong to the …

Content truncated to 500 words