Exploration Of Potential Causes Of The Evolution Of The Initial Affricative Consonants In Shandong Dialects

From Middle Classical to Modern Chinese,the absolute number of consonant consonants has decreased significantly,which shows that merging is the evolutionary trend.From a macroscopic point of view,there may be socio-cultural factors influencing the evolution of phonological merging,and internally,there may be underlying motives of functional burden due to "economy" and "labor-saving" of pronunciation,but from a local or However,the combined evolution of speech sounds is always related to their phonological mechanisms,i.e.,similarity in articulation or similarity in hearing and perception.And articulation and perception are two sides of the same phonological mechanism,which are in fact identical.As we all know,the phonetic system of Shandong dialect is a special part,mainly because of its many phonetic values and the complex relationship between ancient and modern phonetic categories.The main reason for this phenomenon is that the three groups of vowels of "Zhi Zhuang Zhang" have been combined into one in modern Chinese,but in many dialects of Shandong,two different groups of vowels are still retained,and the vowels of the "Jing See" group and the "Zhi Zhuang Zhang" group have been combined into one.In addition,the vowels of the "jingmei" group and the "zhuangzhang" group have a complex mix.In contrast to the physical continuity of vowels and tones,the affricative consonants are discrete,showing the complexity of articulation sites and methods,and therefore little is known about the mechanism of affricative merger.In this paper,we try to explore the mechanisms and potential motives that influence the evolution of affricative merger by examining the acoustic and perceptual behaviors of affricative sounds in Shandong dialect.This paper examines the differences in the acoustic and perceptual behaviors of affricative fricatives in Shandong dialect.Acoustic experiments were conducted in Jiaozhou and Junan dialects with five groups of affricative tones,Yiyuan and Linqu dialects with four groups of affricative tones,and Changle,Boshan and Zhoucun dialects with three groups of affricative tones;perceptual experiments were conducted in Junan dialect with five groups of affricative tones,Linqu dialect with four groups of affricative tones,and Changle dialect with three groups of affricative tones,in order to investigate the effects of different affricative systems on acoustic and perceptual behaviors.We mainly came up with the following results:The results of the acoustic experiments show that,firstly,the position of the same affricative tone on the acoustic space of different speech systems varies,as influenced by the speech system.Secondly,the clarity of different affricative tones opposing each other in the acoustic space is inversely proportional to the number of groups of affricative tones.Again,the area of acoustic space generally follows the principle that the larger the number of corked tone groups,the larger the acoustic space.The results of the perceptual experiments showed that,firstly,the perceptual performance of affricative tones was not consistent among dialect points and within each dialect point,mainly in terms of the difference in mutual confusion.Secondly,affricative sounds,which were recorded as the same value in different dialect points,actually differed significantly in the auditory system of native speakers of each dialect.Again,the perceptual experiments with differentiated age groups showed that Mandarin had some influence on affricative evolution,which may predict the tendency of affricative merger in Shandong dialects.Comparing the results of the acoustic and perceptual experiments,we can see that,first,the affricative consonants with higher confusion in the perceptual experiment may be closer in distance in the acoustic pattern diagram,which means that the acoustic properties are closer.This proves that the similarity of acoustic properties is one of the motivations driving the evolution of affricative tones.Secondly,affricative tones that are less correct in perceptual experiments and easily confused by other tones may have a more dispersed distribution in the acoustic pattern diagram,which means that the acoustic properties are less stable.The acoustic and perceptual behaviors of the affricative tones provide a useful way to investigate the potential motives for the evolution of the affricative tones and the possible future directions of their evolution.In conclusion,from the above experimental results,we can see that the position of affricative consonants in acoustic space is influenced by their respective phonological systems,so that they show inconsistent acoustic and perceptual results among and within each dialectal point.However,this inconsistency is not a simple linear relationship,but has a more complex internal connection.