Mandarin Neutral Tone as a Phonologically Low Tone

o 轻声有本调,其调值为低调; o 轻声的低调用林华”调素论”理论来表示则为(L); (用传统的赵元任五度标调法为 (1)) o 轻声直接出现在三声后面产生低调序列,由于“低调制约规则”则会出现异化变调,

Neutral Tone in Mandarin: Representation and Interaction with Utterance-level Prosody

In Standard Mandarin, there are syllables that do not carry any of the four citation tones (T1: High-level tone, T2: Mid-rising tone, T3: Low-convex tone and T4: High-falling tone), and they are said to have a neutral tone (NT). These syllables are usually shorter, lighter, prosodically grouped with the preceding CT-bearing syllables. These characteristics of NT have led to a prevailing view that it has no underlying phonological specification. However, research has focused more on how the surface pitch variations of NT are realized rather than the underlying representation of NT. In contrast, morphological, sociolinguistic and diachronic work on NT has suggested that NT may not be a homogeneous entity. In this thesis, I provide acoustic and psycholinguistic evidence that there are two types of NT, Intrinsic NT and Derived NT. Intrinsic NT refers to morphemes that were lexicalized as tone-deleted, unstressed syllables even before the formation of the four CTs of modern Mandarin. Derived NT refers to morphemes derived from the CTs via stress-related tone-deletion. In Part A, the phonological representation of Intrinsic and Derived NT is explored through two production and two processing experiments. The results show that Intrinsic NT is likely to have an underspecified tonal target while Derived NTs are underlyingly CTs. In addition, both subtypes of NT are metrically light, unlike heavy CTs. Part B explores the interaction between NTs and utterance-level prosody in production and perception experiments. NT-bearing syllables have lengthening patterns under focus similar to CT-bearing syllables, in contrast to the realization of unstressed syllables in English. In perception, the identification of intonation (Statement vs. Question) on Intrinsic NT was similar to Derived NT. When compared to CTs, the NTs elicit less bias towards question than T4, and higher accuracy than T2, which may result from their simpler surface representations.CHINA Scholarship COUNCIL (CSC) and Cambridge Trus

Erwerb der lexikalischen Töne im Standardchinesischen durch deutsche Lerner

Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit dem Problem deutscher Lerner beim Erwerb der lexikalischen Töne im Standardchinesischen. Der Fokus der Arbeit liegt auf der Gewinnung empirischer Erkenntnisse in der L2-Phonologie und ihrer Anwendung in der Aussprachedidaktik. Es wird die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass die grundlegenden Mechanismen zur phonetischen Realisierung von Tonsequenzen durch deutsche Lerner aufgrund eines ungenügenden expliziten Trainings auf verschiedenen tontragenden Domänen entscheidend von denen chinesischer Muttersprachler abweichen. In zwei empirischen Studien werden Sprachdaten zweisilbiger Wörter mit zwei vollen Tönen und einem Neutralton von 16 deutschen CHaF-Lerner (Chinesisch als Fremdsprache Lerner) erhoben und mit denen von 16 chinesischen Muttersprachlern verglichen. Die Daten werden experimentalphonetisch ausgewertet und analysiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass deutsche ChaF-Lerner aufgrund fehlender Übung von Tonsequenzen in dem Übergangsbereich zwischen zwei Tönen vorwiegend regressive dissimmilatorische tonale Koartikulation zeigen, während Muttersprachler erwartungsgemäß vorwiegend progressive assimmilatorische tonale Koartikulation zeigen. Außerdem gehen bei der Produktion der Tonsequenzen mit einem Neutralton tonale Kontraste bei den Lernern zum Teil verloren und die produzierten Konturen bei bestimmten Tonpaaren verschmelzen. Wenn beispielsweise Zielwörter in Zitierform realisiert werden, verschmelzen die Konturen der Tonpaare T2-T0 und T3-T0 miteinander. Diese Ergebnisse sind ebenfalls auf die Art des bisher praktizierten ChaF-Unterrichts zurückzuführen, was die Hypothese der Arbeit bestätigt. Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt, dass ein explizites Training der Tonsequenzen in verschieden großen Domänen weitaus effektiver wäre als ein Training, das sich nur auf die Produktion der lexikalischen Töne in Zitierform beschränkt

Investigating the tonal system of Plastic Mandarin: a cross-varietal comparison

The city of Changsha, Hunan Province, China has seen an increase in the use of Mandarin in the past decade, overshadowing the local non-Mandarin variety, Changsha. A new variety “Plastic Mandarin”, mostly spoken by millennials and younger generations, has emerged. It is defined in this thesis as a non-standard Mandarin accent that features the speech of young urban residents in Changsha and that has crystallised over the past few decades. This thesis presents a detailed phonetic investigation of the tonal system of Plastic Mandarin through a cross-varietal comparative approach, mainly divided into two streams: citation tones and neutral tones in contexts. The defining characteristic of the citation tone system for Plastic Mandarin is established first: a mid-level tone, a low to mid rising tone, a low falling tone, and a high rising tone. By comparing the citation tones of the three varieties that coexist in the city of Changsha, the thesis provides acoustic evidence that Plastic Mandarin may arise when Mandarin tones adapt the pitch pattern of some corresponding Changsha tones. In addition to citation tones, this thesis disentangles the sources of variability in the syllable duration and f0 contour of speech sequences containing neutral tone syllables, i.e. those do not have any of the four canonical lexical tones and often overlooked in prior studies of tones. The data show that f0 contours converge at the end of two consecutive neutral tone syllables at a low pitch in both Mandarin varieties. It suggests that a neutral tone or a sequence of consecutive neutral tones tends to be associated with a low pitch target, despite the varying f0 shapes largely predicted by the preceding lexical tone. The thesis proposes a probabilistic target-approaching model for Mandarin tones in connected speech, in which pitch targets may be fewer than the number of syllables. While the phonetic realisation of the four lexical tones in Plastic Mandarin is consistently different from that in Standard Mandarin, the pitch target of neutral tone syllables tends to remain constant in this process of Mandarin variation and change, which may be attributed to the stable transfer of prosodic structure