本論文旨在探討閩南語的三種變調: (1)形容詞重疊變調 , (2) -a後綴變調,和 (3) 輕聲變調. 形容詞重疊變調是在 McCarthy & Prince (1986, 1990) 等人所發展出來的韻律構詞學( Prosodic Morphology) 理論框架下重新分析. 作者認為形容詞三疊是由抑揚格音步前綴而來, 而不是江文瑜教授(1992)所說的音節後綴; 此外,聲調扮演了構詞功能的角色. -a 後綴變調則是運用字構音韻學( Lexical Phonology)理論來分析的. 根據黃宣範教授(1988) 和連金發先生(1995)對-a後綴構詞特性的分類, 作者將-a後綴重新分為六類. 再觀察它們與音韻規則的互動關係, 主張-a後綴構應分屬於三個字構層次中, 此理論的層級排列( Level Ordering) 和嚴格循環論( Strict Cyclicity)也在本章獲得證實. 輕聲變調是採用韻律音韻學(Prosodic Phonology) 來分析的. 作者認為輕聲有兩個規律: 浮游低調展延和原調展延, 且運作於一個(強起)( left-leaded)的音韻片語中, 如此一來,簡化了煩雜的青聲句法結構. 兩個輕聲規律的不同展現於展延節點,方向,屬性,音節數目等方面. 本章的分析技巧也支持了韻律體係在語言系統中的必要性 / This thesis explores three kinds of special tone sandhi in Southern Min: (i) reduplicated adjective tone sandhi, (ii) -a suffix tone sandhi, and (iii)neutral tone sandhi. Reduplicated adjective tone sandhi is analyzed within the framework of prosodic morphology (McCarthy and Prince 1986, 1990). Unlike Chiang's (1992)suffix syllable template, the author argues that AAA is reduplicated by theprefixation of an iambic template.Following Yip (1980), tone may play a morphological role. -a suffix is discussed from the perspective of lehor argues that AAxical phonology. According to the morphological functions figured from Lien (1995) and Huang (1988), six categories of the suffix -a are distinguished. Through the interactions of morphological and phonological rules, the concepts of levelordering and strict cyclicity in lexical phonology are proved necessary in this language. Neutral tone sandhi is investigated in terms of prosodic phonology. Theauthor argues that the domain of neutral tone sandhi is a left-headed phonological phrase, which is more economical than previous syntactic approaches (Cheng 1968; Hong 1995). There are two neutral tone rules: thefloting low tone spreading and the base tone spreading. They are differentin spreading node, direction, order and so on. The analysis supports Yip'stwo-tiered tonal geometry andcallsfor the need of prosodic Hierachy in thelinguistic system.