| The Mandarin spoken in Shanghai differs in some aspects from the Mandarin spoken in Beijing. One of the most notable differences is a merging of the retroflex consonants with the non-retroflex ones (Zheng, Sproat, Gu, Shafran, Zhou, Su, Jurafsky, Starr, & Yoon, 2005). Based on quantitative analysis of three pairs of phonological variables [s˛] vs. [s], [ts˛ h] vs. [tsh], and [ts˛] vs. [ts], this thesis takes up the study of retroflex and non-retroflex merger in Shanghai-accented Mandarin, by using recorded interviews to explore whether such variation is correlated with social class, age, gender and task formality.;The statistical results indicate that social class, age and task formality all have a significant effect on retroflex and non-retroflex merger for Shanghainese. Gender, however, was shown not having a strong correlation with retroflex and non-retroflex merger. |
