Directionality of Disyllabic Tone Sandhi across Chinese Dialects is Conditioned by Phonetically-Grounded Structural Simplicity

Despite various work which aimed to identify the phonetic and structural underpinning of tone sandhi directionality, underlying mechanism that governs remains unknown. We note two widely discussed properties sandhi, their grounds correspond types cognitive biases investigated in segmental phonology, namely substantive bias respectively. This study examines simplicity naturalness patterns across seventeen Chinese varieties. Based on a structure-based analysis, we show are overwhelmingly uni-directional (i.e. structurally simple) either throughout system or within each grammatical category. Crucially, uni-directionality is largely right-dominant, could be attributed its grounding. argue grounded substance better captures asymmetries such phonetically-grounded reflected directionality.