Haian Dialect Softly Modal Experimental Research

Hai’an dialect, a subdivision of Tai-Ru dialect (or Tong-Tai dialect) of Jiang-Huai Mandarin,is geographically distributed over the edging area between Mandarin and Wu dialects. Therehave been few inquiries into this dialect to date, and conclusions of different dialectologistsappear to contradict one another and thus need verification and rectification. This paper is anacoustic probe into the neutral-tone sandhi patterns of Hai’an, aiming for objective empiricalfindings that help resolve the contradictions in traditional dialectology.This paper is organized as follows:The first is the introductory and stage-setting chapter, which first gives a summary of earlierunderstandings about the phonological attribute of neutral tone. Then it continues to introduceprevious research findings on acoustic properties of neutral tone and provide an overview ofearlier investigations into the neutral tone sandhi in Hai’an. After that, it presents a theoreticalillustration on such key aspects concerning experimental research of tone as the tone-bearingsegment, the recognition of tones, and the normalization of fundamental frequency. Finally, itdescribes the objective, methodology and procedures of this empirical research.Chapter2is devoted to the empirical research into Hai’an citation tones, centered around thedescription of their pitches and tone duration. The first step is to extract F0statistics from therecordings, then the logarithmic Z-score transform for F0normalization (hereinafter referredto as LZ method) is employed to deal with the statistics so as to obtain the LZ values, whichare further transformed into the familiar tone digits, a five-point vertical scale representation.Finally, a comparison is made between the results of this paper and earlier knowledge in allthe literature available. Our empirical findings show that the Rising tone in Hai’an is not adipping (falling-rising) tone traditionally represented with the pitch values212or213, but anessentially low-rising tone, whose empirical pitch values are113and223for male and femalerespectively. As for the duration of Hai’an citation tones, among the smooth tones, the Risingtone is the longest of all, yang Level tone and the Departing tone in the middle, and yin Leveltone the shortest, while the checked tone yin Entering tone is of longer duration than the otherchecked tone yang Entering tone.Chapters3and4together constitute an acoustic investigation of Hai’an neutral-tone sandhipatterns. Two types of syllable sequences are sampled respectively. One is a non-neutral-tonedsyllable followed by a neutral-toned syllable, whose sandhi pattern is presented as T+T0. The other has two neutral-toned syllables following behind, whose sandhi pattern is represented asT+T0+T0. Alike that of Chapter2, the investigation focuses on the depiction of the pitch andduration of the sandhi patterns. The approaches also remain unchanged. First, extract statisticsfrom the sample recordings, next, normalize F0using the LZ method to obtain the LZ values,then, further transform the LZ values into digits of a five-point vertical scale to get the sandhirules. Lastly, the empirical results are compared with earlier perceptions of the matter.It is found that the pitch movement of a Hai’an neutral tone sandhi pattern is consistent withthat of the citation tone of the non-neutral-toned syllable. That is to say, the sandhi pattern canbe considered as a word-borne tone if the syllable sequence is treated as a prosodic word. Thestarting and ending pitches of the word-borne tone phonologically coincide with those of thecitation tone of the non-neutral-toned syllable, with the pitches in between subject to the pitchcontour of the word-borne tone, thus having no fixed pitch height at a certain point. Besides,we also discover that when the citation tone of the non-neutral-toned syllable is a legato one,the neutral tone(s) generally lasts shorter than the non-neutral tone, and the interval betweenthe non-neutral tone and the neutral tone is short. Contrarily, when it is staccato, the neutraltone(s) becomes longer than the non-neutral tone, and the gap between the non-neutral toneand the neutral tone is generally wide.The last chapter is a conclusion of all research findings of the paper.