The Phonemic Boundary Between Rising Tones And Falling-rising Tones In Chinese

From the perspective of phonology,there is a clear distinction between rising and falling-rising tones.In acoustics,however,this two kinds of tones often show certain similarities.With the development of large-scale dialect investigations,the problem of discriminating between rising and falling-rising tones has also caused controversy among phoneticians.In addition,the language facts about rising and falling-rising tones in Chinese are in contradiction with the current distinctive feature theory.Through the methods of acoustics and perception,the present study summarizes the distinctive features of rising and falling-rising tones.Based on the results of the perceptual experiments,the perceptual mechanism model from rising to falling-rising tones is established.This paper is mainly divided into four parts:Chapter one is introduction.The main content is to summarize the discussion on Chinese rising and falling-rising tones,put forward the controversy in discriminating this two kinds of tones in the process of field investigation,and the contradiction between the language facts and the current distinctive feature theory.Based on the above research background,the research objectives and research contents are proposed,and the research significance is briefly explained.Chapter two is mainly about the acoustic performance of rising and falling tones in different dialects.The acoustic tone space of the selected 12 dialects are shown through the method of acoustic measurement,and the performances of rising and falling-rising tones in their respective tone systems are analyzed.Five acoustic parameters which are closely related to tones are selected as reference standards,that is,the pitch values of the pre-falling portion,the pitch values of the post-rising portion,the position of the turning point,the duration of the tone,and the register.Through the comparison of these five parameters of each rising and falling-rising tone,commonality within the two categories of tones and the differences between the categories are summarized.The third chapter conducts on the perception of rising and falling-rising tones.Based on the research objectives,two types of perceptual experiments are designed to investigate the effects of tone system and different acoustic parameters on the perception of rising and falling-rising tones respectively.The experimental results affirmed the effect of the tonal contrasts on tone discrimination,and according to the experimental results,a perceptual mechanism model is established from rising to falling-rising tones,which explained the different roles of various acoustic parameters in perception.The experimental results also verify the role of language experience in tonal perception.Chapter four is conclusion and discussion.According to the results of the experiments,the question of the phonemic boundary of the rising and falling-rising tones is answered,and there is no absolute phonetic boundary between this two kinds of tones.It is meaningless to discuss the contour shapes of tones simply out of the specific language environment,because the perception and recognition of rising and falling-rising tones will be affected by the contrasting ways in their tone systems.The contrasting of tones can be achieved not only by means of pitch and contours,but also by means of different contour features,and these distinguishing methods may not have priority/inferiority.Based on the different features of tonal contrast,it is further proposed that the tone description method should be improved on the basis of the traditional five-degree method.