Mechanism Of Sound Change In Tianjin Dialect

Tianjin is a city with a long history. Along with the development of the society, Tianjin dialect has experienced great changes under the influence of Chinese Mandarin during these years. As one of the features of Tianjin dialect, tone sandhi must be also affected. Aiming to find the current situation of trisyllabic tone sandhi, this sociolinguistic research on trisyllabic tone sandhi involving only one operation in Tianjin dialect is carried out.After analyzing the data made by fifty-six interviewees in the wordlist reading in Hedong district, we get the findings that tone sandhi is still a feature of Tianjin dialect since none of the interviewees disobey the sandhi rules completely. Yet tone sandhi in the first two syllables in trisyllabic sequences changes a lot, for almost 77% informants cast off tone sandhi in the first two syllables at least in the form of wordlist reading. Furthermore, the fourth rule (F→H/_L) in trisyllabic tone sandhi can. be generated in the first two syllables. Although the number of people operating this rule is not pretty large under the influence of Chinese Mandarin, it still demonstrates that FL does change to HL in the first two syllables in trisyllabic sequences when the tonal condition of FL is met.From sociolinguistic point of view, the development of a language change cannot be understood apart from the social life of the community in which it occurs. The change of trisyllabic tone sandhi is related with four social factors-age, gender, occupation and education in this research. The apparent-time research shows that the younger the interviewee is, the less operation of tone sandhi there is in his or her...