An Experimental Study On Disyllabic Neutral Tone Words In Shandong Dialect

Chinese is a syllable tone language,in which disyllabic words have an absolute advantage.In some disyllabic words,neutralizational tone sandhi occurs in the post-syllables,that is,different tone types lose their tonal opposition in the last syllable position.This kind of neutralizational tone sandhi is called neutral tone words.The academic circle has been paying more attention to the tone sandhi of the pre-syllables and the characteristics of the post-syllables.But so far,the research on neutral tone is more focused on Putonghua,less attention has been paid to the phenomenon of neutral tone in Chinese dialects,and experimental studies are even rarer.Therefore,this paper tries to use the method of acoustic experiment and perceptual experiment to study the prosyllabic tone sandhi and postsyllabic tone characteristics of disyllabic words in Shandong dialect.The main contents of each chapter are as follows:The first chapter summarizes the research status of disyllabic neutral tone words in Putonghua and dialect by traditional phonology and experimental phonetics,and finds that there are great differences in the neutral tone words between dialect and Putonghua.The neutral tone of Shandong dialect is also very different from putonghua.Therefore,this paper selects six dialects of Dezhou,Jinan,Heze,Rongcheng,Jimo and Yantai in Shandong Province for experimental study.The second chapter investigates the pre-syllable tone sandhi of neutral tone words in six dialects of Shandong from the aspects of pitch and duration.In the aspect of pitch,the whole tone of some dialects changes,and some dialects changed part of that.It is observed that the results of the tone sandhi reveal that some tones are the same as the tone of another original mono-character after the tone sandhi;some tones are different from all of the original mono-character tones after the tonal sandhi.Some tones remain the same before the neutral tone.In the aspect of duration,comparing the same tonal category or the same tonal type of the pre-character with the single word,it is found that the shortening of duration mostly occurs in the rising and flat tones;the increasing of duration mostly occurs in the falling tone type;and when the tone’duration varies from person to person,the tone of single words is a downtoning type.In the third chapter,we investigates the post-syllable of neutral tone of Dezhou,Jinan and Jimo dialects from the aspects of pitch,duration and intensity.In terms of pitch,the results of acoustic experiments show that there are two kinds of tone types:flat tone and falling tone.In terms of duration,the average duration of post-syllables is shorter than the pre-syllables of disyllabic words,but the ratio is different.In the aspect of intensity,the intensity of some post-syllables is weaker than that of the preceding syllables or the stressed syllables;some neutral tones have three situations in the comparison:weaker,stronger or equivalent.In the sense of listening,some neutral tone are light and short,some are not;whether the neutral tone is light and short is related to the tone type,and also related to the starting point and duration of the neutral tone height;the overall perception of the neutral tone height is related to the ending pitch of the preceding syllable.In the fourth chapter,based on the summary of the acoustic and perceptual experimental results,we compare the neutral tone words in Shandong Dialect and Putonghua.In the aspect of tone sandhi of the pre-syllables,there are three kinds of tone sandhi:no tone sandhi,another original single tone sandhi and new tone sandhi,and some tone sandhi changes are similar to that of Putonghua.The difference is that the phenomenon of tone sandhi is more common and the types are more diverse in Shandong dialect.In terms of the characteristics of neutral tone,some dialects have the same neutral tone type as Putonghua,only flat tone and falling tone;the ratio of some neutral tones to the length of the preceding words is close to Putonghua;the intensity of some neutral tones is the same as Putonghua,not necessarily weaker than the preceding words or the stressed syllables of homophony;some neutral tones are as light and short as Putonghua.The difference lies in that there is only one tone type and only two pitches in some dialects;the ratio of the duration of some tones to that of the preceding words is more than 50%;the intensity of some tones is weaker;and some tones are neither light nor short in the sense of hearing.The acoustic and perceptual experiments of disyllabic neutral tone words in Shandong dialect make us have a richer and deeper understanding of Chinese neutral tone phenomenon.This is of great significance for us to grasp the synchronic differences and diachronic evolution of Chinese neutral tone phenomenon.