ABSTRACT
When speech sounds form words or utterances, they sometimes behave like chameleons and change their appearances. This can happen to consonants, vowels, tones or stress. Under the right conditions, a sound can weaken, disappear or become a different sound. Nantong Chinese is rich in sound changes involving consonants and vowels, known as phonological or morphophonemic alterations. It is also rich in sound changes involving tones, known as tone sandhi. It even has sound changes that involve both segmental and suprasegmental features, which is very rare in other languages. This chapter offers a detailed description of all these sound changes, especially the very intricate system of tone sandhi. It then examines the underlying causes of these alterations and their relationship to the tempo and rhythmic structure of speech.
