Contrastive Hyperarticulation of Low-Rising Tones in Changsha Xiang and Plastic Mandarin
Previous studies have suggested that young speakers of Changsha Xiang (CSX) may be merging the two low-rising tones, T2 and T6. In the local Mandarin variant (evolved from Xiang-Mandarin contact) they use every day, namely, Changsha Plastic Mandarin (CPM), the low-rising surface tone encompasses CSX T2 words, CSX T6 words, and sandhi T3 words. This study investigated how CSX–CPM bilinguals realise and represent these categories through contrastive hyperarticulation in the context of tone merger, sandhi alternation, and bilingual phonology …