A Sociolinguistic Study On Phonetic And Tone Variation Of Suzhou Dialect

Language variation is regarded as a common phenomenon which plays an important role during the development of human beings. Language of human begings is influenced by variable social factors such as age, gender, stratum and language contexts. In recent years, many researches has been done on language variation both in China and abroad, however, very few studies has been done on suzhou dialect of Anhui province. Most former studies are mainly focused on the whole phonology from the perspective of traditional dialect, but they only analyze the inner variation of these dialects. The outcome of this thesis will provide some useful data, which enriches the studies of Suzhou dialect to a certain extent.On the basis of language variation theories, filed investigation method of Sociolinguistic and methodology of Experimental phonetics, the thesis collected the special reading material from selected characters of participants, and analyzed phonetic formants by Praat5334_win32 software. The present study chooses a family who has been living in Dashi village for more than three generations as sampling participants and takes the influence of social variables into consideration to explore the overall situation of dialect variation.The present study combines qualitative research method and quantitative research method, and the main findings are as following: firstly, there does exist both phonetic and tone variations of suzhou dialect and the overall trend of the variations is approaching to Chinese Mandarin. In terms of phonetic, front vowel [e] and central vowel[?] respectively move to back vowel [?] and [o] gradually. Monophthong [?]and [?] are diphthongized, and they become diphthongs [ai] and[au] respectively.However, diphthongs [u?] and [i?] are becoming triphthongs [uai], [iɑu] and[ei]. In terms of tone, both suhzou dialect and Chinese Mandarin thave four kinds of tones and the tonr value of suhzou dialect are approaching that of Mandarin; secondly, the phonetic and tone variations dim with the increase of age; Thirdly, the phonetic and tone variations of females are more obvious than males; Fourthly, the ratio of decreses with the improvement of translation level.