Changzhou Dialect Tone Experimental Study

Changzhou locates in Changjiang Delta. Changzhou dialect belongs to Northern Wuyu Taihu zone, PiLing Zone. Up untill now, there has been few studies on Changzhou dialect phonetics and most of which were done by listening with ears. Nobody has done the relavent study with computer and professionl phonetic analysis software so far. I will try to do some study on the tones of Changzhou dialect in this aspect.This thesis composes of three major parts.The first chapter generalizes the current condition of Chinese dialect study, the concept of sandhi, the characteristic of Wuyu Taihu dialect zone and the phonetic system of Changzhou dialect. The thesis also introduces the aim and method of the experiment.The second chapter focuses on the first frequency and duration. It also standardize thefrequency and duration, then transfer the datum to five level. At last, these datum are compared totraditional study conclusion. The result is that: my study is basicly the same as the traditionalresult. The relationship of the duration of the seven tones is: Yang Ping > Shang Sheng > Yin Ping> Yang Qu > Yin Qu > Yang Ru > Yin Ru. The difference of Shu and Cu Tone is obvious.The third chapter focuses on the sandhi rule and the duration of Changzhou dialect two -character-words. In the thesis, I transfer the first frequency of two-character-word to five level and compare it to the traditional study result. It is found that my study is most close to Qian Nairong(1992)'s result. The domain of the tones of the two-character-word is bigger than that of the single word, and the best explanation is that in such it is more convenient to make the different sandhi tone more distinct. About the duration, mode "g" is the longest and mode "n" is the shortest. The basic characteristic of Changzhou two-character-word is ' the first character determine the whole word'.Through analysis and comparison to the tones of Shanghai dialect, it is the conclusion of the thesis that development of the tones of Changzhou dialect is the same as that of shanghai dialect. The merge of the current seven tones is happening and finally the number of tone of Changzhou dialect wil! be five.