An Analysis Of Tones In Hefei Dialect

The thesis is concerned with the study of tones in Hefei dialect within the framework of Optimality Theory.Chapter I first gives brief introduction of Hefei dialect and then reviews the previous studies relevant to the topic.Chapter II provides the experiment results. My acoustic study shows that the inventory of Hefei dialect consists of five citation tones: T1 (21 or 212), T2 (55), T3(24), T4 (53) and T5 (5(?)). Tonel has two variants: 212 in Old Hefei , 21 in NewHefei. Concerning tone sandhi, there are two sandhi rules: T1@T3/- (T1, T4), T5@L/- (T2, T3, T5) . As regard to the neutral tones, they involve phonological changes in disyllabic sequences and trisyllabic sequences. In disyllabic sequences, the neutral tone has an identical tonal feature with the final toneme of the preceding syllable. In trisyllabic sequences, the pitch value of the intermediate neutral tone is determined by the tonal category of the following syllable. Therefore, the neutral tones present to us a complicated picture in that they are influenced both by the preceding syllable and the following syllable.Chapter III gives an analysis of tone sandhi and the neutral tone in Hefei dialect. Through the interaction between five faithfulness constraints and two Markedness constraints, tone sandhi can be explained elegantly. Adopting five constraints I render a unified account of the neutral tones in Hefei dialect. In the analysis of neutral tone in disyllabic sequence, a new constraint IDENT-OO(tone) is put forward for the rendering of tone spreading phenomenon. My analysis also reveals that the Markedness constraint "*L.XL" holds true both in the tone sandhi and in the neutral tone of trisyllabic sequence, which supports my hypothesis that the neutral tone is closely linked with the tone sandhi in Hefei dialect.Chapter IV is the conclusion of the whole thesis.