Wuxi Dialect Tone Experimental Study

Wuxi, located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province. Wuxi dialect, as a representative dialect in Taihu dialectal area of Wu dialect, up to now, has been studied by many researchers through the traditional listening-noting method. To get a more objective conclusion, this thesis studies the tones of Wuxi dialect by means of acoustic experiments.This thesis is mainly composed of three chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the syllabary of Wuxi dialect and states the research methods and procedures of the experiments. In the experiments the acoustic analysis is firstly conducted by the sound analysis software—Praat; the acoustic data are then processed by the Praat scripts and Excel software; and finally the five degrees on tones of Wuxi dialect are figured out through F0 normalization on the basis of LZ-score.The second chapter studies the pitch and duration of the mono-syllable tone. After normalization, the LZ values will be transformed to five levels and compared with the traditional descriptions. It is found that high-plain tone and high-flat tone are coexisting in Yinping; Yangping and Yangqu has merged with each other; Yinqu, marked as ~334, is different from the traditional record. The duration pattern of mono-syllable tone is Yangping/Yinshang/Yangqu>Yangshang> Yinqu> Yinping in Shusheng, and Yangru>Yinru in Cusheng. There exists short and long distinctive feature between Rusheng and other tones, and Shusheng always longer than Cusheng.The third chapter studies the pitch and duration of the bi-syllable tone. The acoustic data of bi-syllable tone, such as F0 and duration are normalized after collected. It is discovered that the bi-syllable tone pattern concluded from the experiments is consistent with the traditional descriptions. The sandhi mode decided by the first character. The phonetic-sandhi and grammar-sandhi overlap with each other. Different grammar structure has different sandhi mode, and not all of the mode has rules. As the latter character, Yangru is the shortest one; The duration of mono-syllable tone is longer than the former or latter character's, and shorter than the whole sandhi's.