Let’s negotiate: A principle of balancing non-alternation and alternation in tonal metres

Wang, Yuxuan Melody. 2026. Let's negotiate: A principle of balancing non-alternation and alternation in tonal metres. In Proceedings of the 2025 Annual Meetings on Phonology 2(1). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Abstract: This paper shows how the metre of Middle Chinese regulated verse requires a new principle of simultaneous alternation and non-alternation of tones in each line. In contrast to most syllabic, accentual, quantitative and even tonal metres previously studied, regulated verse mandates that the tonal categories to which the characters in each line belong alternate, but not too vigorously. A rule named ‘No Lone Even’ is also analysed in order to demonstrate that it results from the interaction of alternation and non-alternation. In addition to enriching the typology of metres, I also show that the metrical templates for regulated verse reflect the general tonal preferences of Chinese and of tonal languages crosslinguistically.