The Changing Sandhi Rules In Tianjin Dialect

In recent years many people have noticed that Tianjin dialect has changed, and the changes are usually owed to the influence of Putonghua. However, most of the works on this issue concentrate on the consonants or vowels of Tianjin dialect. No one has mentioned whether the sandhi rules have changed under the influence. It seems to be an agreement that there are four sandhi rules in Tianjin dialect and the rules are quite stable. The hypothesis of this paper is that sandhi rules in Tianjin dialect has changed and the changes are due to the influence of Putonghua. To test this hypothesis, a sociolinguistic research, which is the first largest one on Tianjin sandhi rules, is carried out. The research yields valuable findings, which are analyzed with both phonetic and sociolinguistic method.One hundred and forty speakers were chosen from Hedong district as representatives of the whole city. Each of them received at least ten minutes' interview, when they were asked to read word lists and answer questions. The speech samples are listened to and processed by software. The followings are the findings.Firstly, LL and FL rules are unstable in trisyllabic sequences, mainly due to the effect of stress. We infer that this change is due to Putonghua influence, when we find that LL, FF and FL rules which are specific to Tianjin dialect are affected more by stress pattern than by word boundary, while RR rule which has its correspondent rule in Putonghua is only blocked to a certain extent by word boundary. The inference is strengthened when we find that the effect of stress on LL and FL application is related to education.Secondly, FF rule has become unstable in all speech styles and disappeared in the speeches of 1/4 of the sample speakers. The vulnerability of FF rule to change is shown when we compare the tonal systems of Tianjin dialect and Putonghua. Sociolinguistic analysis of FF shows that non-application of FF rule has become a prestige marker, which shows clearly class and style stratification. The change of FF rule is a result of Putonghua influence, as Putonghua provides the prestige, which is essential for a variant to be a marker and constitutes the momentum for the change.With the help of the method "study in apparent time", we find that the two changes are "change in progress".To conclude, the influence of Putonghua on sandhi rules in Tianjin dialect is shown in two ways: (1)to increase the effect of suprasegmental factors (shown by the instability of LL and FL rules) (2)to decrease the number of sandhi rules (shown by the disappearance of FF rule in many people's speech).