Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

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Tone Sandhi
(1,740 words)

1. Introduction

All modern Chinese dialects have lexical tone, although they vary considerably in the size and behavior of their tone inventories. When tones occur in a compound or phrase, they may undergo change. This phenomenon is known as tone sandhi (liándú biàndiào 連讀變調) and is found in many, though not all, varieties of Chinese. In the Chinese linguistics literature, the term citation tone refers to tones that are…

Cite this page
Zhiming BAO, “Tone Sandhi”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 22 March 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000426>
First published online: 2015



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