Tone Sandhi Affecting Subjects in Penang Hokkien Sentences

One of the great difficulties for people learning Penang Hokkien (if they wish to pronounce correctly), is in mastering when to sandhi a word. We already know that the final morpheme of a word undergo sandhi. But that's just half the story. If you observe subjects in sentences, you will note that subjects usually hold the citation form.

Gu2 ciak3 chau4. (The cow eats grass.)
Note that the word gu2 is in citation form. This is the tone direct from dictionary, not like gu3bak3 (beef), where gu2 has changed to gu3.

Some times, the subject can comprises a number of words forming a whole phrase:
Heh1-leh1 lau33lang2-eh3 hau33snaeh1-eh3 gu2 ciak3 chau4. (The old man's son's cow eats grass.)

Even in a long phrase where you might come across morphemes that sandhi within it, you can be sure that the final morpheme of that phrase will be in citation form. In the above example, that is again gu2.

So far, I have only come across three words which sandhi as subject. Because of that, these three words allow for regular as well as emphatic sentences to be built using them. The three (if you found more, share with me please) are wah4, lu4 and lang2.

When you use wah4, lu4 and lang2 in regular sentences, you sandhi them to wah1, lu1 and lang3.

Wah1 ciak3 pnui33. I eat rice./I have a meal.
Lu1 ciak3 pnui33. You eat rice./You have a meal.
Lang3 ciak3 pnui33. People eat rice./People have a meal.

These three can be retained in citation form for emphatic sentences.

Wah4 ciak3 pnui33. I eat rice.
Lu4 ciak3 pnui33. You eat rice.
Lang2 ciak3 pnui33. People eat rice.

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Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

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