Sibilant Contrast: Perception, Production, and Sound Change by © 2017 Mingxing Li
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Sibilant Contrast: Perception, Production, and Sound Change By © 2017 Mingxing Li M.Phil., The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012 M.A., Tianjin Normal University, 2004 B.A., Tianjin Normal University, 2001 Submitted to the graduate degree program in Linguistics and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Chair: Dr. Jie Zhang Dr. Allard Jongman Dr. Joan Sereno Dr. Annie Tremblay Dr. Crispin Williams Date Defended: June 20, 2017 i The dissertation committee for Mingxing Li certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Sibilant Contrast: Perception, Production, and Sound Change Chair: Dr. Jie Zhang Date Approved: July 19, 2017 ii Sibilant Contrast: Perception, Production, and Sound Change Abstract This study examines sibilant place contrast in the [_i] context in terms of its typology across Chinese dialects and its role in the historical development of Mandarin sibilants. The typology across 170 Chinese dialects reveals that (i) for dialects that have sibilants at three places (dental, palatal, and retroflex), place contrasts in the [_i] context are generally avoided, e.g., */si-ɕi-.i/; (ii) for dialects that have sibilants at two places, mostly dental vs. palatal, place contrasts in the [_i] context also tend to be avoided, e.g., */si-ɕi/; (iii) for dialects that do have contrastive dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context, the place contrast of affricates implies that of fricatives. The first two patterns are mirrored in the sound changes of Mandarin in that contrastive dental and palatal sibilants in the [_i] context that emerged from independent processes have always been enhanced or avoided. In addition, the sound changes also showed an avoidance of contrastive dental vs. palatal in the [_i] context with the shift of palatal sibilants into retroflex sibilants from the 11th to the 14th century. The connection between the synchronic typology and the diachronic changes raises a number of research questions: (i) Does the vowel context affect the perceptual distinctiveness of sibilant place contrasts, e.g., is [si-ɕi] less distinct than [sa-ɕa]? (ii) Do place contrasts differ in perceptual distinctiveness, e.g., is [si-ɕi] less distinct than [si-.i]? (iii) Do different manners of articulation differ in perceptual distinctiveness, e.g., is [tsi-tɕi] less distinct than [si-ɕi]? These issues were investigated through a speeded AX-discrimination experiment, which has been iii shown to be able to evaluate the relative perceptual distinctiveness of sound pairs independent of the listener’s native phonology. Twenty-nine listeners were put under time pressure to judge if a CV pair is the same or not, where the sibilant onsets of the CV pairs contrast in place (e.g., [si-ɕi]) and the vowels were [i] vs. other vowels (e.g., [si-ɕi] vs. [sa-ɕa] vs. [sɹ̩ -ɕi]). Assuming that a longer response time indicates less perceptual distinctiveness, the results showed that (i) the [_i] context reduces the perceptual distinctiveness of the place contrasts of dental vs. palatal sibilants; (ii) the introduction of the apical vowel enhances the perceptual distinctiveness between the contrastive sound pairs; (iii) the dental vs. retroflex contrasts are more distinct than the dental vs. palatal contrasts. These findings match the observations in the cross-linguistic typology and the historical development of Mandarin and support the claim that perceptual distinctiveness regulates the phonological system. The reduced distinctiveness of dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context suggests that contrastive dental vs. palatal sibilants are unstable and are likely to be avoided in sound change. A phonetic study was conducted on the sibilants in Xiangtan, a Chinese dialect reported to have the same sound system as 18th century Mandarin (i.e., [sɹ̩ si i .ɻ̩ ]) with fully contrastive dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context. It is predicted that in Xiangtan, the pre-[i] dentals in /si tsi tsʰi/ may show signs of being palatalized and thus neutralized with the palatals. Natural productions of /si tsi tsʰi/, /ɕi tɕi tɕʰi/, and /sɹ̩ tsɹ̩ tsʰɹ̩ / syllables with matched tones were recorded from 11 native female speakers of Xiangtan. Center of gravity, energy dispersion, intensity, and duration were extracted for three types of sibilants: Canonical dentals as in /sɹ̩ /, canonical palatals as in /ɕi/, and pre-[i] dentals as in /si/. A discriminant analysis was performed by first iv training a classifier on the canonical dentals and canonical palatals and then using the classifier to predict the place (dental vs. palatal) of the pre-[i] dentals. Native Mandarin listeners were also recruited to identify the isolated first half of the pre-[i] dental sibilants as being dental vs. palatal. The results from both studies showed that (i) some Xiangtan speakers have palatalized the dentals in /si tsi tsʰi/, and (ii) certain speakers variably produce dental and palatal sibilants for the same lexical item. Therefore, the results support the contention that dental and palatal contrasts are perceptually less distinct in the [_i] context and the variation in the realization of the pre-[i] dentals indicates that a merger replicating the development of Mandarin is in process. In general, the perceptual experiment reveals that dental vs. palatal sibilants in the [_i] context form weak contrasts, based on the psychoacoustic similarity of the contrastive elements. The avoidance of weak contrasts is observed in cross-linguistic typology, historical sound change, and speech production. This study thus establishes an empirical connection among the perceptual distinctiveness of sibilant place contrasts, the production of these contrasts, cross-linguistic typology, and historical sound changes. v This dissertation is dedicated to: Prof. Jialing Wang (1934–2008) My first mentor in linguistics Prof. Jie Zhang My supervisor at KU and my role model Yanpeng Tang My wife and my strongest support at all times vi Acknowledgements First and foremost, I have to thank my supervisor Prof. Jie Zhang for his guidance in my Ph.D. study and in doing this dissertation. By ‘guidance’, I mean listening to me patiently when my idea on the research was by no means clear, asking me questions that challenged my thinking, providing critical comments that forced me to see the bigger picture, and encouraging me to move on when my faith was low. ‘Thank’ is such a generic word to use and it so falls short of what I mean by it to him. He is the model I should always follow as a scholar and a supervisor. I am also grateful to my other committee members, Profs. Allard Jongman, Joan Sereno, Annie Tremblay, and Crispin Williams. Their comments and suggestions have always inspired me and helped improve my research to a form I have never imagined. And I feel so fortunate to be able to work with a committee that always support me with knowledge, encouragement, and unending patience. Any errors or failings in this work remain my own and, to my committee members, I owe everything that is good. One thing I will miss for sure after I leave KU is the weekly meeting of the LING 850 group, where I learnt a lot from my fellow students’ research and got their valuable feedback on mine. Thanks to Kelly Berkson, Steve Politzer-Ahles, Hyunjung Lee, Jiang Liu, Goun Lee, Kate Coughlin, Quentin Qin, Yu-Fu Chien, Hanbo Yan, Wen-chi Yeh, Maite Martinez-Garcia, Yingjie Li, Charles Redmon, Katrina Connell, Rustle Zeng, Seulgi Shin, Kunning Yang, among others, for their advice on various parts of the research in this dissertation. It is so nice to work in such a linguistics community where everyone supports each other. vii Thanks to Mr. Bin Ma, Dr. Sang-Im Lee-Kim, Prof. Qing Fang, Prof. Huifang Kong, Prof. Yuqing Wei, Prof. Zanhui Huang, among others, for their help in stimulus preparation and data collection. I would never forget that on my fieldwork trip to Xiangtan, Prof. Fang helped me obtain all the data I needed within one day. Thanks to Ms. Corinna Johnson, our office manager at KU Linguistics, for her help in the past five years. My interest in phonology started sixteen years ago in the classroom of the late Prof. Jialing Wang (1934–2008), who was my first mentor in linguistics. I would never be here without his mentoring. His teaching has forged my interest in phonology and his expectation has been the source of power in my pursuit of linguistics in the past decade. I owe a debt of gratitude to those who have helped in my life during my Ph.D. study. Thanks to Lian Hee Wee and Winnie Cheung for their timely help when I needed it most, without which I could not have survived in a new place. To Renee and Rich Grubbs for helping me settle down and offering continuous help. To Jia He, Jinfeng Li, Jiang Liu, Yingjie Li, Juqiang Zhang, Shuangteng He, Liyang Zhao, Sha Li, Lori and Graig Miller, Ann Kihm, among others, for their help and support in various aspects. Thanks to my parents, Guoqin Zhang and Changlin Li, and in-laws, Guiru Tian and Zhiqiang Tang, for their support and patience all these years when I have been so stubborn on my way to become a linguist. And most importantly, to my wife Yanpeng Tang, who has always been with me as my strongest support through good times and bad. My daughter, Mia, was born during the last year of my Ph.D. study. I am so excited to find the happiness and strength she has brought to me. viii Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Contrast distinctiveness and vowel context ...................................................................... 1 1.2 Contrast distinctiveness and sound change ......................................................................