Jixi, Taiyuan, Fuzhou Dialect Vowel Experimental Study

This paper studied the vowels of dialects of Jixi,Taiyuan and Fuzhou by voice-acoustic experiments and theoretical analysis method,including simple vowels and their variants in compound vowels, nose rhyme vowels, nasalized vowels and brock rhyme vowels; after standardized, we can make a comparative study of vowel patterns of these dialects.This paper mainly studied the vowels of single dialect,then make a comparison of these different dialects.The premise of comparison is the standardized of vowel formants, the standardized reference of this paper is the vowel system of Mandarin.First,the paper studied the vowel system of Jixi,Taiyuan,Fuzhou,then compared with the other six dialects,including Guangzhou, Meixian, Nanchang, Xi'an, Changsha,Wenzhou.The conclusions are as follow:1.The vowels system and characteristics of Jixi,Taiyuan,Fuzhou:(1)There are 11 vowel phonemes in Jixi dialect:(?),i,u,y,a,γ,θ,o,(?),e,(?);10 vowel phonemes in Taiyuan dialect:(?),i,u,y,a,γ,3,(?),(?),(?); 11 vowel phonemes in Fuzhou dialect.The same phonemes are i,u,y,a,e, but the value of the phonemes are different.(2)Taiyuan dialect have the most kinds of vowels,like simple vowel, compound vowel, nose rhyme vowel, nasalized vowel and brock rhyme vowel;there are no triple vowel and nose rhyme vowel in Jixi dialect,and there is no nasalized vowel in Fuzhou dialect.The three dialects have common brock rhyme vowel,Taiyuan and Fuzhou both have the'(?)' consonant endings.(3)These three vowels system have different characteristics in acoustics distribution;Jixi and Taiyuan have more high vowels, Fuzhou has average distribution in the high-low dimension;Fuzhou and Jixi have more back vowels,Taiyuan has average distribution in the front-back dimension.(4)The vowel stability of these three dialects are different in various voice environment.The simple vowels are stable;the divergence of the head and end rhyme is relatively high,most of the divergence are surpass 0.05, the timbre of these vowels are not stable,some divergence of 'i' and 'u' have surpassed 0.1, the timbre even show aberrance.The middle rhyme is more stable than the head and end rhyme.but the middle rhyme in triple vowels of Taiyuan and Fuzhou have changed by head and end vowels.2. Comparison of different dialects (5)The acoustics distribution range of Jixi,Taiyuan,Fuzhou and Mandarin are close to each other.Relatively,in high-low dimension,Taiyuan vowel system is at extreme point;in front-back dimension,Fuzhou is in the front,Jixi is in the back.The vowel system of Taiyuan has the biggest range in high-low dimension,Jixi has the biggest range in front-back dimension.The model of Jixi is close to Mandarin,and Taiyuan is more different from Mandarin.(6) Compared the vowels system of these nine dialects and Mandarin,we can get these conclusions:in high-low dimension,Xi'an has the biggest range;in front-back dimension,Guangzhou is in the front,and Meixian is in the back.