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A Study of Neutral-Tone Syllables in Taiwan Mandarin

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A Study of Neutral-Tone Syllables in Taiwan Mandarin A STUDY OF NEUTRAL-TONE SYLLABLES IN TAIWAN MANDARIN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS AUGUST 2012 By Karen Huang Dissertation Committee: Patricia Donegan, Chairperson Victoria Anderson Ying-che Li Kenneth Rehg David Yang © Karen Huang 2012 ii For my Mother iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am truly grateful to all the help and support I received from my teachers, friends, and families. First of all, I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor Professor Patricia Donegan. This dissertation would not have been possible without her guidance, support, and patience. I truly appreciate her expertise, assistance in so many ways, and warm kindness. Words just simply cannot describe how deep my appreciation is. I am deeply grateful to Professor Victoria Anderson, who led me into the wonderful world of phonetics. Aside from all the valuable comments and advice, her enthusiasm really kept reminding me how fun this study is. I am also truly indebted to Professors Ken Rehg, Ying-che Li, David Yang, Amy Schafer, Katie Drager, Haidan Wang, and Song Jiang, for their generous time, energy, suggestions and help. My sincere thanks also go to my friends in the department of Linguistics and EALL. I would like to thank Akiemi Glenn, Apay Tang, Nian Liu, Carl Polley, Jawee Perla, Elaine Lau, Kaori Ueki, Kanjana Thepboriruk, Diana Stojankovic, Jake Terrell, Chih-kai Lin, Cheng-chun Kuo, Tsai-Hsiu Liu, Hiroko Sato, Laura Robinson, and many others for various suggestions, discussions, and encouragement. I deeply appreciate all the 加油, がんばって, and “You can do it!” from all my friends. Furthermore, I wish to thank our guardian angels Jennifer Kanda and Nora Lum, they are the best! I would like to show my gratitude to all the people who helped me with my experiments: Rachel Chuang, Mei Xu, Tanny Tang, Shu-ling Wu, Daniel Tom, Nancy Arakawa, many students and staff from National Cheng Kung University, and many others for their generous help and kindness. I am truly thankful to my family in Taiwan, California, and Ohio. They have always believed in me and been there for me. I cannot thank them enough for their assistance and encouragement. Most of all, I would like to thank my Dad. Even though he always wanted me to finish earlier, he still patiently encouraged me and shared his wisdom with me. I deeply appreciate his trust and love. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my husband and best friend, John Kupchik, for his love, support, and encouragement. He made me believe in myself and brought smiles to my face. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation studies the realization of the rhythm of Taiwan Mandarin and focuses on the quality of its unstressed (neutral-tone) syllables. Taiwan Mandarin (TM) is often described as more syllable-timed than Standard Mandarin (SM). In TM, the unstressed syllables occur less frequently. The quality of the unstressed (neutral-tone) syllables in TM also seems to differ from those of SM. The results show that most of the neutral-tone syllables have a mid-low pitch target except in some frequent vocabulary items, or when the original lexical tone is obvious. Unlike SM, the neutral-tone syllables of TM do not undergo tone loss. The neutral tone in TM has a mid-low pitch target in disyllabic words, neutral-tone sequences and novel formations. The pitch target of the neutral-tone syllables is generally not as low as the low tone, and the carry-over effect of the preceding tone is stronger in the neutral tone than in the low tone. Also, there is no general syllable reduction in the neutral-tone syllables in TM. The durations are shorter than their full-tone counterparts only when their rimes are [ə] or [ɨ], and the duration differences are much smaller than in SM. The results suggest that these syllables are better characterized as having a lexical tone, which can be considered the fifth tone in the language. SM, in contrast, has four lexical tones. The perception tests further show that TM listeners rely on duration, pitch, and vowel/voice quality to distinguish the low tone from the innovative fifth tone. Specifically, for the pitch cues, they rely on low end pitch and fast-falling pitch contour to identify the low tone. The results also show that the perceptual distinctions made by the TM speakers between the low tone and the fifth tone were very weak. The TM listeners could only distinguish 20% of the unaltered pairs. Along with the evidence found in the production tests, this study finds that the innovative fifth tone is on the verge of merging with the low tone. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ v TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2. Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin ............................................................. 6 2.1. Standard Mandarin phonology .................................................................... 6 2.1.1. Segments and tones ............................................................................. 6 2.1.2. Rhythm ................................................................................................ 9 2.1.3. Neutral-tone syllables in Standard Mandarin ....................................11 2.2. Taiwan Mandarin ...................................................................................... 14 2.2.1. Taiwan as a linguistic area ................................................................ 14 2.2.2. Taiwan Mandarin dialect ................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 3. PRODUCTION OF NEUTRAL-TONE SYLLABLES ....................... 29 3.1. Pitch Contours of Neutral-tone Syllables in Disyllabic Words ................. 29 3.1.1. Research design ................................................................................ 29 3.1.2. Materials ........................................................................................... 31 3.1.3. Subjects ............................................................................................. 32 3.1.4. Equipment ......................................................................................... 32 3.1.5. Procedures ......................................................................................... 33 3.1.6. Data Analysis .................................................................................... 33 3.1.7. Results ............................................................................................... 35 3.1.8. Discussion ......................................................................................... 51 3.2. Neutral-tone syllables in novel occurrences ............................................. 54 3.2.1. Method .............................................................................................. 54 3.2.2. Results ............................................................................................... 56 3.2.3. Discussion ......................................................................................... 59 3.3. Consecutive neutral-tone syllables ........................................................... 63 3.3.1. Method .............................................................................................. 63 3.3.2. Results ............................................................................................... 64 vi 3.3.3. Discussion ......................................................................................... 72 3.4. Summary ................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 4. COMPARISON BETWEEN LEXICAL-TONE AND NEUTRAL-TONE SYLLABLES .................................................................................... 77 4.1. Methods..................................................................................................... 77 4.1.1. Materials ........................................................................................... 78 4.1.2. Procedures ......................................................................................... 80 4.2. Results ....................................................................................................... 81 4.2.1. Neutral-tone -men ............................................................................. 81 4.2.2. Neutral-tone -tou ............................................................................... 87 4.2.3. Neutral-tone -zi ................................................................................. 92 4.2.4. Neutral-tone syllables with /ə/ rime .................................................. 94 4.2.5. Reduplications................................................................................. 101 4.3. Discussion ..............................................................................................
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