San Duanmu's second edition of The Phonology of Standard Chinese is a thorough update of the first edition of the book published seven years earlier, in 2000. The book presents a comprehensive survey of the phonology of Standard Chinese (Mandarin), from its segmental inventory and syllable structure to its prosodic properties in stress and tone and the interaction between prosody and other aspects of the grammar. The new edition maintains the strengths of the first edition in striking a balance between descriptive coverage and theoretical sophistication, but has updated many aspects of the phonological analysis and added a chapter on rhythm in poetry. As with the first edition, the book's targeted readership is anyone with an interest in the synchronic or diachronic phonology of Chinese. Due to the technical nature of the topic, the book is likely to be best appreciated by readers with some basic knowledge of linguistics and the Chinese language. But the author has clearly strived to avoid being overly technical and has written the book in a down-to-earth and free-flowing fashion so that an intelligent layperson without formal training in linguistics or Chinese will find it informative as well. The book consists of fourteen chapters. I briefly summarize each chapter in turn.

Chapter 1 briefly reviews the historical development of the Chinese language, its dialectal differences, the establishment of Standard Chinese (henceforth SC), and the development of the phonological literature on SC.

Chapter 2 provides a theoretical analysis of the sound inventory of SC. For readers not familiar with generative phonemic analysis, the basic theoretical concepts such as minimal pairs, complementary distribution, and phonemic economy are first introduced. The author then proposes that there are three levels of representation in the analysis of SC sounds: underlying, syllabic, and phonetic. There are 19 consonants (p, pʰ, f, m, t, tʰ, t s, t sʰ, s, n, l, ʈʂ, ʈʂʰ, ʂ, ʐ, k, kʰ, x, ŋ) and six vowels (i, y, u, ə, a, ɚ) underlyingly in SC; three glides (j, w, ɥ), 29 CG combinations, and two syllabic consonants ( , ) are derived on the syllabic level to satisfy the syllable template CVX, and additional allophones, e.g. the various renditions of the mid vowel [o, e, ə, ɤ], can be derived on the phonetic level by environments. The author also discusses the detailed featural representations of the sounds at both the underlying and phonetic levels and how his treatment of the place features allows him to treat the palatal consonants [tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ] in SC as dental+j sequences.

Chapter 3 focuses on the description and analysis of the co-occurrence restrictions and allophonic variations of SC sounds. The author starts by observing that of all the possible 9,200 syllables, only about 400 actually occur. He then proposes an analysis that accounts for the majority of the missing GVX forms by referring to a rhyme harmony constraint and two procedural constraints, one merges adjacent identical features and one spreads a high nuclear vowel into the onset C. The allophonic variations of the vowels are accounted for by GV and VX harmony constraints.

Chapter 4 provides additional discussion on the syllable structure in SC. The author proposes that there are two types of syllables in SC: full syllables, which have the structure (C)VX and are always heavy, and weak syllables, which have the structure (C)V and are always light. The position that the prenuclear glide docks onto the onset slot as secondary articulation due to the syllable template is reiterated, and traditional language games that manipulate components of the syllable are analyzed in light of the (C)VX syllable structure.

Chapter 5 discusses wordhood in SC – a historically contentious issue in Chinese morphology. The author starts by reviewing a host of criteria for wordhood that have been previously proposed in the literature and advocates the adoption of a subset of them: Conjunction Reduction, Adverbial Modification, XP Substitution, and Productivity. The tests Freedom of Parts, Semantic Composition, and Exocentric Structure, the author argues, should be adopted with limitations as structures that pass these tests may still be compounds. Consequently, a modifier–noun [M N] without the relativizing particle ‘de’ is always a compound, so are its derivatives [M [M N]], [[M N] N], [[M N] [M N]], etc.

Chapter 6 presents an analysis of word and phrasal stress in SC in parallel with a discussion of English. The author starts with the observation that stress is harder to perceive in SC than in English and offers the explanation that this is because SC is a tone language, and tone obscures one of the main cues for stress. But the author argues that there is stress in SC, and the analysis for stress is in fact quite similar to that of English. For disyllabic compounds, the stress pattern could be 1-0 (heavy-light), 1-2 (heavy-heavy with more stress on the first syllable), or 2-1 (heavy-heavy with more stress on the second syllable), and all three patterns can be parsed by the Dual Trochee structure, which contains both the moraic trochee and syllabic trochee: 1-0 by (HL), 1-2 by (HH), and 2-1 by H(HØ), with an empty beat. Stresses in longer compounds and phrases are predicted by the Information-Stress Principle, which dictates that a word or phrase that carries more information should be stressed and typically assigns stress to syntactic nonheads.

Chapter 7 deals with a set of interesting issues regarding the length of words in SC. The author points out that despite the monosyllabicity of Chinese characters, the majority of Chinese words are disyllabic. But most disyllabic words also have monosyllabic alternatives. A common belief in the proliferation of disyllabic words in Chinese is that it is the result of ambiguity avoidance as the syllable structure became simpler diachronically. The author challenges this belief with a number of arguments, the most convincing of which are the lack of correlation between the number of homophones and the number of disyllabic words in different dialects and that the timing of the increase of the disyllabic vocabulary in fact coincided with a period of little change in Chinese phonology. Instead, the word length variation, the author argues, is motivated by the metrical need that phrase stress must fall on a disyllabic foot. This approach provides a clear analysis for a well-known word length asymmetry between [M N] compounds (*[1 2]) and [V O] phrases (*[2 1]) in SC.

Chapter 8 analyzes the word order patterns in SC compounds in light of the author's theory of SC stress. The author focuses on two types of compounds: [X Y N], where X and Y are modifiers of N, and [V-O N], where N is the logical subject of the verb. For [X Y N], the interesting observation is that when one of X and Y is disyllabic, there is a preference for the disyllabic element to appear at the beginning of the compound. For [V-O N], when V and O are both monosyllabic, [V O N] is the only possible order; but when V and O are both disyllabic, [O V N] is the only possible order. The author accounts for these patterns using the stress principles proposed earlier and two additional elements: (i) constraints banning compound-internal phrases and foot-internal clause boundaries, and (ii) Foot Shelter, which allows disyllabic constituents to form a foot regardless of its internal morphosyntactic makeup.

Chapter 9 tackles the [ɚ] suffix in SC, which has a number of interesting phonological consequences on the syllable it attaches to. For instance, it replaces some portion of the rhyme in certain cases (a i+ɚ → aɚ, a n+ɚ → aɚ), but is added to the rhyme in others (a u+ɚ → a u ^r , aŋ+ɚ → aŋ ^r ); a schwa surfaces when it attaches to a high-vowel rhyme (i+ɚ → jəɚ). The author proposes an account based on featural compatibility and a default mid vowel nucleus. The variation in [ɚ]-suffix realization in the Beijing dialect as well as its realizations in other Mandarin dialects is briefly discussed as well.

Chapter 10 lays out the basic properties of SC tones. The author argues that the representation of tone has two components – pitch and register – the former implemented by the cricothyroid and acoustically realized as f0, while the latter implemented by the vocalis muscles and realized as phonation; contour tones are level tone sequences and the tone-bearing unit is the moraic segment. The properties of the SC tonal system, from its inventory to its alternation behaviors (e.g. T3 and T2 sandhi, tones in weak syllables), are then discussed in this theoretical framework.

Chapter 11 focuses on the application of Tone 3 sandhi in longer sequences in SC, which depends on the syntactic branching, syntactic categories involved in the structure, and focus. Alternative surface forms are commonly attested, but whether the variation is speech-rate related is controversial. The author proposes an analysis using the same metrical feet in the stress analysis; variability is accounted for by whether two syllables are ‘adjacent’, as defined by the foot structure and syntactic constituency, and whether the following syllable is a T2 that came from T3. A detailed comparison with Shih's (Reference Shih1986) analysis based on stress-insensitive feet is also provided.

Chapter 12 provides an account of rhythmic scansion in Chinese poetry. The author first argues that an analysis of poetic rhythm in Chinese based on a stress-insensitive prosodic structure (e.g. Chen Reference Chen1979, Reference Chen1980) does not produce a good match between the well-formedness predictions and the attested frequencies of line types, then provides an alternative analysis based on the stress principles advocated throughout the book. Crucially, there is a predictable typology of strong-weak line templates, and a principle of stress-template matching prevents stressed syllables to appear in weak positions.

Chapter 13 covers connected-speech phenomena in SC, including consonant and rhyme reduction, vowel devoicing, and syllable merger, as well as phonological processes in other Chinese dialects, such as tone sandhi in Wu and Min dialects and properties of Taiwanese accented SC.

The final Chapter 14 summarizes the theoretical implications of the book. Two of the book's most innovative theoretical positions are emphasized: the universal syllable structure is CVX, and the universal foot structure is trochaic. Typological data and data from English are brought to bear on the issues. In so doing, the author wraps up the book by situating it in the broader context of linguistic theory and cross-linguistic typology.

Overall, Duanmu's book is rich in both descriptive details and theoretical sophistication. In the nine years since its publication, it has stood by the test of time and continues to be considered one of the cornerstones in the study of Chinese phonology. In particular, I find the author's treatment of stress in SC inspired. It is well known in both the phonetics and the Chinese linguistics literature that there is no consistent acoustic correlates or speaker intuition for SC stress, and SC is often classified as having no lexical prominence. But the author convincingly shows here that there is stress headed by trochaic feet in SC, and this serves the analysis of a wide range of phenomena, from word length asymmetry and word order within compounds, to tone sandhi and poetic rhythm. There are details in the data and the analysis that one can quibble with, but to my mind, this analysis remains the one with the widest empirical coverage and greatest theoretical elegance.

If there are empirical and theoretical updates that the book can benefit from in the intervening years between its publication and the present, I believe they lie in two areas. One is that the field of phonology has gathered substantially more empirical evidence of gradience and variation and is now more equipped to deal with these phenomena analytically. As expected, many of the phenomena discussed in the book have these properties as well, e.g. rhyming judgment between syllables, the well-formedness of different types of compounds, tone sandhi variation, poetic template well-formedness, etc. Corpus and experimental studies have shed light on the nature of these phenomena and will continue to do so. The author himself, in fact, has contributed to this literature in recent years (e.g. Duanmu Reference Duanmu2012, Duanmu et al. in press). Second, the typological, phonetic, and neurolinguistic studies of tone have progressed considerably, and the results seem to argue against the binary features for level tones and the decomposition of contour tones. For instance, drawing on typological data from both African and Asian tone, Clements, Michaud & Patin (Reference Clements, Michaud, Patin, Goldsmith, Hume and Wetzels2011) argue that the two-feature level tone system does not capture natural classes well in tonal phonology; Yi Xu and colleagues’ studies on contextual tonal variation indicate that tonal realization is better accounted for by asymptotic approximations of tonal targets that include both static and dynamic targets rather than static targets alone (see Xu & Prom-on Reference Xu and Prom-on2014 and references within); and recent neurolinguistic studies indicate greater left lateralization for pitch contour processing than pitch level processing – a finding consistent with a contour feature (e.g. Wang et al. 2013, Shuai et al. in press).

Finally, there are small editorial decisions and data descriptions that I do not agree with. For instance, I wish the SC examples were marked with tones; the last syllable of the second line in the example poem in Sestion 12.1 should be pronounced ‘cui’, not ‘shuai’. But these do not prevent the book from being an invaluable resource on the study of Chinese phonology, for laypersons and experts alike.