A Sociolinguistic Study On Phonetic And Tone Variation Of Lan-Yin Mandarin In Northern Xinjiang

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regionis a typical immigrantProvince. HanChinese dialect in Xinjiang is formed based on dialects of the immigrants. There arethree major dialects areas in the Province,central China mandarin in SouthernXinjiang, Lan-Yin mandarin in Northern Xinjiang and Peking Mandarin in NorthernXinjiang. The thesis aims to find:(1) the major features and the overall trend ofphonetic and tone variations of Lan-Yin mandarin by Han Chinese in NorthernXinjiang;(2) the relationship between phonetic&tone variations and age;(3) therelationship between phonetic&tone variations and gender. The thesis selected a HanChinese family which has been living in Barkol for more than six generations assampling participants. In the light of language variation theories and filedinvestigation method of sociolinguistic and combined with methodology ofexperimental phonetics, recordingdata from the participants collected from bothcareful readings about selected characters and causal reading about the special readingmaterial were analyzed by phonetic analyses program, Praat5334_win32.Analysis shows that:(there doesexist variations in terms of phonetics and tones ofLan-Yin mandarin in northern Xinjiang and the overall trend of the variations isapproaching Mandarin Chinese. Some back nasal syllable rimes in Lan-Yin mandarinare becoming front nasal syllable rimes; some initial consonants of tongue tip affricatein Lan-Yin mandarinare becoming initial consonants of tongue blade; there appear tobe Four tones instead of Three and the values of the tones are approaching those ofMandarin’s;(2) The variations dimmed as age gets older;(3) The variations is moreobvious with females compared with those of males’.