An Experimental Study In Wujiang Citation Tones

This is an acoustic analysis of the citation tones on the monosyllables fromthe native Wujiang District speakers.There are four basic tones in Chinesedialects, pingsheng, shangsheng, qusheng and rusheng. The tone division ofChinese dialects is much related to the voiced initial consonants and voicelessinitial consonants. Wujiang district is the same. The most notable feature inWujiang District, which differs from most of the Chinese dialects, is that theinitial consonants of aspirated or unaspirated have influence on the tones, forexample yinshang and aspirated yinshang are different in Shengze (Zhao,1928,76). Seven towns in Wujiang District were researched including Songling,Pingwnag, Lili, Shengze, Luxu, Zhenze and Taoyuan. Aspirated tones werefound in every town, but every town has its own characters. Aspirated tone ischanging and not stable. Aspirated tone tends to merge into yang tone and yintone. First, aspirated yinping tone always merges into yinping tone. Only onenative speaker in Songling has aspirated yinping not merging in yinping andyangping. Second, spirated yinping merged into yinping, but aspirated tone inShang, qu and ru tones merged in to yang tones in Songling, Pingwang, Lili andShengze, which are in the middle and east of Wujiang District.Third, aspiratedtones in ping tone and qu tone merged in to yin tones, while the aspirated tonesstill exist in shang tone and ru tone. Last, the aspirated tones in Taoyuan andZhenze all merges into yin tone. However, only one native speaker in Taoyuanwas different.