An Experimental Study On The Tones Of Chinese Dialects In Rongxian County

Rongxian dialect belongs to the Renfu仁富sub-cluster,Guanchi灌赤cluster of Southwest Mandarin.In previous studies,Rongxian Yinping and Qusheng tones were mostly"similar but not confused",with the tonal type being ascending and the difference being mainly based on the tonal value.Recently,however,we have discovered through listening and perception that the Yinping and Qusheng characters in Rongxian,which have the least contrastive metatonic relationship,are very close in tonal value to each other,and some of them have begun to be confused.This suggests that Rongxian Yinping and Qusheng may be in a dynamic stage of tonal merging.To further explore this phenomenon,we conducted an acoustic and perceptual experiment on the four tones of Rongxian—specifically the Yinsheng and Qusheng tones—by manipulating independent variables such as age,gender,and education level to observe the differences.Based on William Labov’s definition of"Near-Mergers"and the results of the acoustic and perceptual experiments,we conclude that the Rongxian Yinping and Qusheng tones are in the process of"Near-Mergers".The similarity of tonal patterns and the convergence of tonal values are the main reasons for the"Near-Mergers".Judging from the frequency of use,the use of words with higher frequency in daily life is also more likely to merge towards Yinping/Qusheng.In terms of social factors,there is some intergenerational variation in the approximate merging of the feminine and declensional tones,with the merging process varying by age,but the merging trend is generally consistent.The merging process is fastest in adolescence and youth,followed by middle age and last in old age.Gender did not have a significant effect on the merging process.In addition,the subjects’ education,occupation and home language environment also had an impact on the merging results.In the case of the youth group,the "bachelor’s degree or above" subjects were different from the other subjects in terms of "near-merging",as they tended to differentiate between the two tonal categories due to the influence of Mandarin.Judging from the merger situation,the "Near-Mergers" between the two tones of Yinping and Qusheng is asymmetric,that is,in terms of perception,more subjects tend to recognise decocoustic as Yinping.This shows that Yinping has higher pronunciation stability than Qusheng,and Qusheng is in the trend of confluence to Yinping.The discovery of the "Near-Mergers" of the Rongxian Yinping-Qusheng also provides a new theoretical model for understanding the causes of some historically complex sound changes,such as the complex assignment of the Qing Rusheng in Beijing dialect.