A Phonetic And Phonological Analysis Of The Tone System In Shaoyang Dialect

This thesis aims at providing a phonetic description of the tone system and a phonological analysis from the perspective of Autosegmental Phonology of the related phenomena as tonal sandhi, neutral tone and reduced tone etc in Shaoyang Dialect.Shaoyang Dialect(SD) is a sub-dialect of Xiang Dialect(Hunan Dialect). Up to now, there is no specific and scientific description about this dialect based on experiment and data analysis, let alone the analysis of its tone sandhi and neutral tone phenomena. Therefore, it is the first time to employ experimental tools in Phonetics and Phonology to describe the acoustic features of the tone system in Shaoyang Dialect and to analyze the related tone phenomena such as tone sandhi and neutral tone etc. The main purposes of this thesis is to build up the surface tone inventory of SD, to describe tone sandhi and neutral tone phenomenon, and finally to give a proper phonological analysis and explanation to them within the framework of Autosegmental phonology.Acoustic recordings were made from 6 native speakers who have never been out of the city. All of them are required to read a word-list prepared by the researcher.Their recordings are collected by special software for further calculation and analysis.Generally speaking, the word-list is an extensive investigation including over 2500 colloquial words in total, which can be divided into the glossary for the citation tone,the glossary for the tone sandhi and the glossary for the neutral tone. The glossary for the citation tone includes 150 syllables that are combined by covering the main consonants and vowels in Shaoyang Dialect; the glossary for the tone sandhi is composed of 700 disyllabic words, which are arranged according to the combination of the six tones and further sub-categorized into words considering morph-syntactic relations such as modifier-head, subject-predicate, verb-object, verb-complement and co-ordination. And the glossary for the neutral tone, in the meantime, is arranged according to the preceding tones of all the thirteen toneless suffixes and particles, all together 200 disyllabic words with the exception of trisyllabic words.The recording was made by using the software Cool Edit Pro 2.0 in a quite room in April 2014. All of the data gathered were demonstrated and analyzed by virtue of Praat 4.2.29, by which parameters like fundamental frequency(F0), rimal duration,amplitude of the vowels and energy had been gathered. The F0 and duration data were subsequently input into the SPSS to be analyzed here.There are 6 main results in this thesis and they are summarized as follows:(1) In Shaoyang Dialect, there are 6 citation tones: yinping(55), yangping(12),shangsheng(42), yinqu(35), yangqu(24), rusheng(22).(2) In Shaoyang Dialect, the voicing and voiced initial consonant will affect the tone register of the following neutral tone. A voicing consonant will produce a high register; on the contrary, a voiced consonant produces a low register.(3) Through analyzing the acoustic data, there is no obvious tone sandhi in Shaoyang Dialect, which is consistent with the conclusion of the traditional auditory fieldwork.(4) In disyllabic expressions in SD, when the second syllable is tonally neutralized or reduced, no matter what the preceding tone is, the surface pitch value of the neutral tone is a mid level tone, whose transcription is 33 and 22.(5) The register of preceding tones have some effect on the following neutral tone. The neutral after T1(yin) obtains a high register whose pitch value is higher than that following T2(yang); and the same goes well on T4 and T5, neutral tone after T4 has a higher pitch value. Therefore, neutral tone after T2 and T5 is transcribed as22, while after the other four tones as 33. The neutral tone in Shaoyang Dialect derives its surface tone from defaulting rule first, and then through spreading the register from the preceding tones.(6) The experimental items include the fundamental frequency(F0), the rime duration, the amplitude and the formants. The duration of neutral-toned second syllable is shorter than that of the full-toned second syllable, 50-60% to be exact,which is in accordance with the conclusion drawn from many neutral tone studies in Mandarin and across its dialects. The amplitude of the reduced and neutral toned syllable is slightly different with the identical syllable in the same position, and the energy is less than that of the full toned syllable due to the weakened amplitude and shortened duration. While the difference in formants between the identical vowel occurring to the neutral toned syllable and full toned syllable isn't obvious, which means that formant difference is not a significant phonological factor in SD. The neutral tone being always shorter than the full tone in duration can be the proof that the shortness in duration is an essential property of the neutral tone.To sum up, the systematic phonetic description and phonological analysis of thetone and the neutral tone in Shaoyang Dialect contribute significantly to the research of Chinese phonology, especially the tonal phonology. The phonological analysis has proved that Halle & Stevens' [stiff vocal cord] and [slack vocal cord] hypothesis is helpful to account for the phenomenon that the voicing of initial consonant in Shaoyang Dialect has an influence on the register of its tone and the following neutral tone. And the theory of Autosegmental Phonology can give a simple and proper explanation and analysis to the neutral tone in Shaoyang Dialect.