A Description And Analysis Of The Neutral Tone In Xiuwu Dialect

The neutral tone exists in many Chinese dialects and is a complex phenomenon.The syllables with a neutral tone cannot stand alone,and is often pronounced with a shorter length and weaker intensity.It generally has no fixed pitch value.Instead,the pitch value of the neutral tone is generally determined by the tone of the preceding syllable in a word,or other relevant factors.The neutral tone is intertwined with phonetics and grammar,and even has the function of distinguishing semantic meanings.This paper surveys,describes and analyses the neutral tone phenomenon of the Xiuwu Jin dialect.It begins with a field investigation,collecting data of the neutral tone in Xiuwu.Then a phonetic experiment is conducted on the collected data to extrapolate the pitch values of the citation tones and the neutral tone.From the perspectives of grammar and words,the distribution of the neutral tone is described.Finally,the phonetics and the distribution are formally analyzed in the framework of generative phonology.We find that the neutral tone of Xiuwu dialect is a low and weak tone.Its pitch value is not affected by the underlying tone,but somehow is influenced by the preceding tone.It is relatively high when the preceding syllable is Yin-ping,Qu-sheng,or Ru-sheng,and it is relatively low following Yang-ping or Shang-sheng.In Xiuwu,the stress always falls on the preceding syllable of the disyllabic words.For the structural types of words,the neutral tone appears more in the following structure:reduplicate words,suffix words and modifier-head compound words.Different tone combinations and the frequency of word use also influence the distribution of neutral tone words in Xiuwu.The formal analysis reveals that the neutral tone of Xiuwu first loses the features of tone register and toneme in the underlying representation,and subsequently gains a low register and a low toneme through the process of feature assignment and the rule of toneme spreading.Through the description and analysis of Xiuwu dialect,this thesis pushes further the study on the neutral tone phenomenon in Chinese,enhances the understanding of the neutral tone,and reaches a more comprehensive knowledge of the Xiuwu dialect.