An Experimental Study On The Tones Of Nantong Jinsha Dialect

Jinsha(town)is located in Nantong City in the southeast of Jiangsu Province and is the seat of Tongzhou District Government.Jinsha dialect is located at the junction of Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu dialect,and it has strong transitional characteristics.There are certain disputes in the academic circles about the ownership and division of the dialect.In the past,the research on Jinsha dialect's tones was mainly based on traditional dialectological methods.This article uses experimental phonetics research methods to analyze the tonal characteristics of Jinsha dialect from both acoustic and physiological aspects,and reveals the tones feature of Jinsha dialect comprehensively and deeply.This article mainly includes three parts.Firstly,this article comprehensively describes and analyzes the mono-syllable tones characteristics of Jinsha dialect from the perspective of pitch,duration,and voice types.And the intergenerational differences in the tone pattern of the Jinsha dialect were investigated in three different age groups: old,middle,and young.Secondly,this article analyzes and summarizes the two-syllable tone sandhi pattern,the law of tone sandhi and the types of tone sandhi in Jinsha dialect from the perspectives of pitch and duration.Thirdly,this article discusses the two special phenomena in Jinsha dialect: the evolution of Rusheng and voiceless consonants with voiced flow.The results of the experimental research on the mono-syllable tone of Jinsha dialect are as follows.1.Pitch: There are seven tones in Jinsha dialect,includes Yinping,Yangping,Shangsheng,Yinqu,Yangqu,Yinru and Yangru.Yinping is a slightly rising tone 34.Yangping is a front concave tone 324.Shangsheng is a middle-ping tone 44.Yinqu is a high falling tone 52.Yangqu is a low falling tone 31.Yinru is a high falling tone 54.Yangru is a slightly rising tone 34.Among them,the descending and rising tone(Yinping,Yangping,and Yangru)of three generations of old,middle,and young show a gradual backward shift in intergenerational differences.And the Yangqu tone's pitch of young speakers(42)is higher than that of middle-aged and old speakers(31).2.Voice types: Based on the EGG signal,this paper discusses the voice types of Jinsha dialect.By analyzing and comparing the voice parameters such as the opening quotient and speed quotient of speakers of different ages,it reveals the seven tone types of Jinsha dialect.The voice types of the seven tones in Jinsha dialect show certain intergenerational differences in the three different ages of old,middle,and young.At the same time,they also show common characteristics,that is the yin tones are basically normal voices,while the yang tones have different degrees of characteristics.There are two special voice types in the single tones of Jinsha dialect: creaky voice and breathy voice.The creaky voice mainly appears in Yangping,and the breathy voice mainly appears in Yangqu and Yangru.The creaky voice and breathy voice define the low range of the Jinsha dialect's tones,so the Jinsha dialect's tones belong to the dual-range and seven-tone system.3.Duration: There are two types of duration patterns of single-character tones in Jinsha dialect.The tone duration pattern of the elderly and middle-aged speakers is‘Yangping>Yinping>Shangsheng>Yangqu>Yinqu>Yangru>Yinru'.The tone duration pattern of young speakers is ‘Yangping>Yinping>Shangsheng>Yangru>Yangqu>Yinqu>Yinru'.The difference is that the Yangru duration of young speakers is longer than the shortest Shusheng.The experimental research results of two-syllable tone in Jinsha dialect are as follows.1.Pitch: The seven tones of Jinsha dialect have a tone sandhi to some extent in the two-syllable tone.There are four types of tone sandhi: primitive,interchangeable,assimilated,and tonal.The law of tone sandhi as follows:(1)Tone sandhi mainly occurs in two-syllable tones combinations with Yinping,Yangping,and Yangru as the preceding syllable,that is,tones with rising tones in the preceding character are prone to tone sandhi.(2)In the combination of the two falling tones of Yinqu and Yangqu and the former syllable,the latter syllable is prone to soft tone sandhi.(3)The tone sandhi mainly occurs in the former syllable.2.Duration: The seven tones of Jinsha dialect basically show the characteristic that the duration of the first syllable is shorter than the duration of the second syllable in the two-syllable words,and they have strong consistency.In all tone combinations,the first syllable duration is shorter than the single-syllable tone duration,and the latter syllable duration is longer or shorter than the single-syllable tone duration.The research results of the evolution of Rusheng and voiceless consonants with voiced flow phenomena in Jinsha dialect are as follows.In Jinsha dialect,the glottal stops of Yinru gradually weakens between the old,middle and young generations,but its duration is still short.The glottal stops of the Yangru tone falls off,and the duration has become longer than Shusheng.Yinru and Yangru are respectively in the first and second stages of the evolution of Rusheng.The voice types of Yangqu and Yangru have different degrees of breathy voice characteristics,it is the voiceless consonants with voiced flow.And it move towards the devotion of voiced sounds.