What is syllable dominance?
Throughout Chinese dialects, two kinds of syllable dominance, or accent, are found: first syllable dominance and last syllable dominance. Most speakers of Chinese are familiar with the last syllable dominance type. This kind occurs in Mandarin, Min, Southern Wu and in some cases also in Yue and Kejia dialects. The simplest type of sandhi in this type simply change tone contour when followed by another syllable that may or may not be bound grammatically. In other words, the last syllable is stronger and more dominant in that it does not undergo sandhi. This is known as left-spreading. Tone changes take effect on syllables to the left of the dominant syllable. In first syllable dominance, such as those found in Northern Wu and Jin dialects, the sandhi of each syllable in a phrase is determined by characteristics of the first syllable. This is known as right-spreading. For example, in Shanghai Wu, generally speaking if the first syllable is 1st tone (unvoiced onset consonant), then the wh
