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Evaluating the emergence of [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin

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Abstract

This sociophonetic study examines the production of the modern spoken Mandarin voiced labial-velar approximant /w/ in isolation and zero initial environments. Acoustic analyses of ten native Mandarin speakers’ productions reveal that some speakers produce /w/ as both [w] and [ʋ]. The environments in which [w] and [ʋ] appear suggest that this variation may be allophonic, conditioned by the syllable nucleus. Furthermore, our results show evidence of regional and gender variation: northern female Mandarin speakers produce [ʋ] in more contexts and more frequently than speakers from other regions.

Abstract

This sociophonetic study examines the production of the modern spoken Mandarin voiced labial-velar approximant /w/ in isolation and zero initial environments. Acoustic analyses of ten native Mandarin speakers’ productions reveal that some speakers produce /w/ as both [w] and [ʋ]. The environments in which [w] and [ʋ] appear suggest that this variation may be allophonic, conditioned by the syllable nucleus. Furthermore, our results show evidence of regional and gender variation: northern female Mandarin speakers produce [ʋ] in more contexts and more frequently than speakers from other regions.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgements ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Subjecthood in Chinese 23
  7. Characteristic syntactic patterns of Mandarin Chinese 49
  8. The origins of Sinitic 73
  9. Classifier choices in discourse across the seven main Chinese dialects 101
  10. The painted word 127
  11. Tone realization in younger versus older speakers of Nanjing dialect 147
  12. Evaluating the emergence of [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin 171
  13. The semantic constraints on the verb + zhe nouns in Mandarin Chinese 189
  14. The semantic type system of event nouns 205
  15. Semantic reanalysis in grammaticalization in Chinese 223
  16. How linear distance and structural distance affect the processing of gap-filler dependencies in head-final relative clauses 247
  17. Variation in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi 271
  18. The role of instruction in developing pragmatic competence in L2 Chinese 293
  19. Author index 309
  20. Subject index 311
Increased Empiricism
This chapter is in the book Increased Empiricism
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.2.08wie

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgements ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Subjecthood in Chinese 23
  7. Characteristic syntactic patterns of Mandarin Chinese 49
  8. The origins of Sinitic 73
  9. Classifier choices in discourse across the seven main Chinese dialects 101
  10. The painted word 127
  11. Tone realization in younger versus older speakers of Nanjing dialect 147
  12. Evaluating the emergence of [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin 171
  13. The semantic constraints on the verb + zhe nouns in Mandarin Chinese 189
  14. The semantic type system of event nouns 205
  15. Semantic reanalysis in grammaticalization in Chinese 223
  16. How linear distance and structural distance affect the processing of gap-filler dependencies in head-final relative clauses 247
  17. Variation in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi 271
  18. The role of instruction in developing pragmatic competence in L2 Chinese 293
  19. Author index 309
  20. Subject index 311
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