Experimental Study On Huanggang Dialect

Huanggang City is located in the eastern part of Hubei Province, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River north shore. Hanggang dialect belongs to Huang-Xiao area of Jianghuai Mandarin.Firstly, this article analyses and generalizes the types of rhotacized finals and the variation law in the rhotacized process from the perspective of phonology. And it reveals the status of independent rhotacized finals according to the statistical data. Then from motion curves on the Acoustic vowel chart, rhotacized ways and formant patterns of the rhotacized finals to start acoustic research. The main conclusions are as follows:Types of rhotacized finals: Huanggang dialect finals are merged into five categories by rhotacized variation, which are ar,(?)r,aur,(?)ur,or. They belong to combination rhotacized finals and independent ones.Variation law in the rhotacized process: 1) rhotacize final directly; 2) final's structure remains the same, the main vowel changes to a; 3) the original nuclei becomes head vowel, add .as the new nuclei; 4) terminals of i,n,? are lost, the main vowel may be unchanged or centralized or nasalized; 5)take the final or terminal of the root morpheme's syllable which the "(?)r" attached to as head vowel or inatial of the syllable "(?)r".Motion curves on the acoustic vowel chart: rhotacized finals that belong to one category have the same motion curves and they gether in the same frequency range finally. With positioning vowel triangle being taken as a background on the Acoustic vowel chart, rhotacized finals in ar category mainly gather in it's lower part, (?)r category is located in the right lower part outside of it,and aur,aur,or categories are all in back and lower part of it,but different in motion curves. 5 categories of the rhotacized finals can be further merged into ar, (?)r, ur three categories in accoustics based on the the same frequency range.Rhotacized ways: the pieced model of which finals are rhotacized gradually is the main type.The number of finals that belong to the mixed model,rhotacized fully from the beginning ,is relatively small. The mixed model includes (?)r of the youth and the old, and (?)r,u(?)r,or(only in neutral tone)in combination rhotacized finals of the youth. The pieced model has a tendency to turn into the mixed model.Formant patterns of the rhotacized finals: compared with it's original form, the vowel of the rhotacized finals changes in a different degree in the formant pattern. Firstly,the changes of u, o are the most obvious and common, and the formant patterns of them compared with the original forms are overall upward in the rhotacized finals. Secondely, as for a of most rhotacized finals, F2 is reduced and F1 rises in value. F2 of head vowel i in some rhotacized finals gets lower. However,the rhotacized finals don't not show a further trend of merging in category.