Grandfather effects in Laoling disyllabic tone sandhi

In Optimality Theory, grandfather effects refer to the phenomena in which a structure that already exist input is allowed surface while same derived (i.e. not input) forbidden. Most studies on this issue focus segmental processes, and only few tonal processes. This study presents data of Laoling regular disyllabic tone sandhi, demonstrates grandfathering effect where some tones are non-derived contexts but banned contexts. We propose constraint-based analysis adopting Comparative Markedness (McCarthy 2003) constraints.