An Analysis Of Tones In Jinghai Dialect

Based on acoustic data, this thesis tries to provide a detailed phonetic description and a phonological analysis of the tones in Jinghai Dialect (JHD for short).The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is chapter one. It concludes a brief introduction of Jinghai County and its dialect as well as the aims and the design of the research. The thesis mainly focuses on the study of tone sandhi and the neutral tone in disyllabic sequences of Jinghai Dialect.The second part shows the detailed process and result of the phonetic experiment, which is done by PRAAT. There are four citation tones in Jinghai Dialect, namely, Tl 33, T2 55, T3 14, T4 31. As for tone sandhi, it is not mentioned in any literature and this thesis discovers the following tone sandhi patterns: T1+T1→T3+T1 T3+T3→T2+T3 T4+T1→T2+T1 T4+T4→T1+T4The neutral tone (NT for short) in disyllabic sequences is determined by both phonetics and phonology. In disyllabic sequences, the starting point of the neutral tone co-articulates with the end point of the proceeding stressed tone, while the end point acquires a default value LThe third part provides a phonological analysis of tone sandhi and the neutral tone in disyllabic sequences, which is accomplished by OT. This thesis proves that OT can give a correct analysis of them. The last part ends with concluding remarks.