Leshan Words Tone Experimental Study

The tone change in Chinese is one of the important research topics in Phonetics and Dialectology. According to related researches by some experts and professors, the simplification and mergence of tones is the main trend of the tone changes in Chinese dialect. With the development of Experimental Phonetics recently, we study Chinese Dialectology with more methods and our research results become more impersonal, accurate and reliable. This article will adopt some experimental methods in Acoustic Phonetics and Perceptual Phonetics to make acoustic and perceptual descriptions of five tones in Leshan dialect, especially compare the acoustic performance and perceptual distance between the Yangping tone and Shangsheng tone. At the same time, we will pay attention to the differences between Yangping tone and Shangsheng tone among different people at different ages by some Sociolinguistics methods and then arrive at a rough conclusion that these two tones are in the course of "Near-Merger". The similarity in tone pattern and approximation in tone pitch are the main reasons for "Near-Merger", which may be also caused by the influence of Merger by Expansion.This article is divided into five parts as below:1. IntroductionThis part will tell the readers why the topic has been studied and what is meaning for. Then research methods and steps used in the article will be listed. Then there is a literature review of related researches.2. Leshan Phonetic SystemThis part is a general introduction about Leshan’s history, geography, culture and the phonetic system of Leshan dialect which is mainly about the initials, finals and tones of Leshan dialect.3. Acoustic Phonetics Study of Leshan TonesThis part will specify the detailed methods and steps to make the acoustics analysis of Leshan tones. To be specific, we use some instruments to record speakers’voice, and then make some computations and analysis of our original recordings, at last we get a relatively accurate conclusion about the Leshan tones. In addition, we calculate the main distributions and limiting distributions about these five tones. Also, we do minimal pairs comparison which is frequently used in Phonetics between Yangping and Shangsheng tones.4. Perceptual Phonetics Study of Leshan TonesThis part will adopt the methods in Keith Johnson’s study in perceptual experiments as well as methods from Sociolinguistics to devise four different but related experiments to observe the perceptual distances between Leshan tones, especially the perceptual difference between Yangping and Shangsheng tones. These four experiments are perceptual similarity experiment, discrimination experiment between Yangping and Shangsheng tones, single-syllable word identification experiment between Yangping and Shangsheng tones and two-syllable word identification experiment between Yangping and Shangsheng tones.5. ConclusionCombining Labov’s "Near-Merger" theory and the results from acoustic and perceptual experiments, we arrive at a rough conclusion that Yangping and Shangsheng are in the progress of "Near-Merger" and explain that the similarity in tone pattern and approximation in tone pitch are the main reasons for "Near-Merger".