An Optimality Theoretic Analysis Of Tone And Tone Sandhi In Xiangtan Dialect

This thesis attempts to give a detailed phonological study of tones in Xiangtan dialect based on acoustic data.There are four parts in this study. First, I give a brief introduction to the initials and finals of Xiangtan dialect and review the previous studies on the tones of Xiangtan dialectIn the second part, with the help of MiniSpeechLab software I analyze the experimental data on tone sandhi in Xiangtan dialect and make a phonological analysis. The experiment is carried out in three aspects: tones in citation form, tone sandhi in disyllabic sequences and the neutral tone in disyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic sequences In Old Xiangtan dialect, there are six citation tones: Tl(33), T2(12), T3(42), T4(45), T5(21), T6(24). while there are five in New Xiangtan dialect in which T2 andT6 merges into one with the pitch of 12 in citation form But T2 and T6 are distinctive in disyllabic sequences in New Xiangtang dialect The tone sandhi phenomenon is represented as follows:T3-T-T4+TAs for the neutral tone, the experiment shows that the pitch value of the starting point of neutral tone is in coarticulation with the ending point of the preceding tone. The ending point of neutral tone mainly has the pitch value of 3 or 2, that is, M in Xiangtan tone system. There is also tone sandhi for T3 preceding neutral tone, presented as follows: T3+N-T4+NIn the third part, I analyze tone sandhi in Xiangtan dialect within the framework of Optimality Theory It shows that OT can provide a simple and correct analysis of tone sandhi in Xiangtan dialectThe last part of the thesis is a conclusion.