A Production and Perception Study on Tonal Neutralization in Nanchang

A Production and Perception Study on Tonal Neutralization in Nanchang Chinese

In a production study of tonal contrasts in lexically stressed but grammatically stressless syllables vs. lexically stressless syllables in Nanchang, a Gan dialect spoken in the city of Nanchang, Jiangxi province, we found that tonal neutralization only occurred in lexically stressless syllables. We argue that the main phonetic ground for such a tonal contrast distribution lies in the rime dura...

Production and Perception of a Tonal Neutralization Case in Taiwan Southern Min

This study explored the tonal neutralization of context tones 55 and 24 in Taiwan Southern Min, which are said to be realized both as sandhi tone 33 on surface when occurring in the context positions according to the Tone Circle. A production experiment with a reading task was conducted and the speech samples produced by speakers of two different age groups, old and young generations, were exam...

The Use of Perception Tests in Studying the Tonal System of Prinmi Dialects: A Speaker-centered Approach to Descriptive Linguistics

Contrary to previous description based on the Mandarin model of syllable-tone system, Xinyingpan, a dialect of Prinmi (a Tibeto-Burman language of China), has been discovered to possess a melody-tone system (or “pitch-accent” system) akin to that of Japanese. Targeting the crux of the unusual characteristics of this melody-tone system, where neutralization of two tonal categories in citation fo...

Durational Properties of Lexical Stress and Grammatical Stress in Nanchang Chinese and Their Implications for Tonal Contrasts

Production Experiments on Two Cases of Tonal Neutralization in Taiwan Southern Min

This study explored two cases of tonal neutralization in Taiwan Southern Min: 1) context tones 55 and 24 which are both realized as sandhi tone 33 on surface when occurring in context positions, and 2) context tone 21 and context checked tone 21 with a glottal stop coda are said to be realized the same in context positions as a high falling sandhi tone 51. Speakers of two age groups, younger an...