John Benjamins Publishing Company
Tone realization in younger versus older speakers of Nanjing dialect
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Abstract
This article investigates differences of tone realizations and representations between younger and older speakers of Nanjing dialect, spoken in the city of Nanjing, China. We recorded thirty native speakers, divided into two groups according to their ages, reading monosyllabic and disyllabic words. After segmenting the vowels and extracting F0 (fundamental frequency) points, we performed statistical analyses on the slopes and mean values of tones to explore age differences. The results show phonetic and phonological differences for monotones and disyllabic tones. The results also demonstrate the loss of one tone sandhi process in the younger group, a loss which may be due to the influence of standard Mandarin.
Abstract
This article investigates differences of tone realizations and representations between younger and older speakers of Nanjing dialect, spoken in the city of Nanjing, China. We recorded thirty native speakers, divided into two groups according to their ages, reading monosyllabic and disyllabic words. After segmenting the vowels and extracting F0 (fundamental frequency) points, we performed statistical analyses on the slopes and mean values of tones to explore age differences. The results show phonetic and phonological differences for monotones and disyllabic tones. The results also demonstrate the loss of one tone sandhi process in the younger group, a loss which may be due to the influence of standard Mandarin.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction 1
- Subjecthood in Chinese 23
- Characteristic syntactic patterns of Mandarin Chinese 49
- The origins of Sinitic 73
- Classifier choices in discourse across the seven main Chinese dialects 101
- The painted word 127
- Tone realization in younger versus older speakers of Nanjing dialect 147
- Evaluating the emergence of [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin 171
- The semantic constraints on the verb + zhe nouns in Mandarin Chinese 189
- The semantic type system of event nouns 205
- Semantic reanalysis in grammaticalization in Chinese 223
- How linear distance and structural distance affect the processing of gap-filler dependencies in head-final relative clauses 247
- Variation in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi 271
- The role of instruction in developing pragmatic competence in L2 Chinese 293
- Author index 309
- Subject index 311
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction 1
- Subjecthood in Chinese 23
- Characteristic syntactic patterns of Mandarin Chinese 49
- The origins of Sinitic 73
- Classifier choices in discourse across the seven main Chinese dialects 101
- The painted word 127
- Tone realization in younger versus older speakers of Nanjing dialect 147
- Evaluating the emergence of [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin 171
- The semantic constraints on the verb + zhe nouns in Mandarin Chinese 189
- The semantic type system of event nouns 205
- Semantic reanalysis in grammaticalization in Chinese 223
- How linear distance and structural distance affect the processing of gap-filler dependencies in head-final relative clauses 247
- Variation in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi 271
- The role of instruction in developing pragmatic competence in L2 Chinese 293
- Author index 309
- Subject index 311
