1 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
Lishui Chinese - 丽⽔话 David Xie Linguistics 110 University of California Berkeley
1. Consultant
The consultant is a Lishui Chinese speaker born and raised in Laowuji, a small rural village known afectionately by locals as “Xiaoxi,” or Little Stream. This village is situated a couple miles north of the city of Lishui, in the southern end of Zhejiang province.
The dialect family predominant in this region of China is Wu Chinese, encompassing Shanghai in the east, Suzhou in the north, and Zhejiang in the heart.
While typically, Suzhou Wu is considered the most “typical” version of Wu Chinese, the
Wu dialect family is unique in that even within itself, there is very little mutual intelligibility between Wu varieties. Lishui Chinese is one such variety, spoken in the
Chuqu region around the city (Steed 1999). Wu Chinese is widely spoken nearing 100 million native speakers (Grimes), but the variation and scattering of regional variants such as the consultant’s in difcult-to-reach areas means there are very small pockets of unique, understudied language all throughout these provinces.
The consultant grew up in a solely Lishui Chinese speaking home, and his parents are monolingual Lishui Chinese speakers. Mandarin and English were studied in high school and college. Today, he speaks English to coworkers, Mandarin Chinese to friends and family in America, and Lishui Chinese when communicating with friends family back in Lishui. 2 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
2. Vowels
Lishui Chinese has, according to my current corpus, the following vowels:
Front Mid Back
Close i y ɨ u
Mid ɛ ə ɤ ɔ
Open a
Lishui Hua
i ɨ y 400 u 500
F1 ɔ ɤ
600 ɛ ə 700
a 800
2500 2000 1500 1000
F2 3 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
From my observations, monopthongs do not occur as often as dipthongs. These are a set of examples for monopthongs with some minimal pairings:
[kɛ] 和 ‘and’ [kɤ] 狗 ‘dog’
[haʔ] 吓 ‘fear’ [hɔʔ] 喝 ‘drink’
[lu] 路 ‘road’ [lə] ⽼ ‘old’
[ny] ⼥ ‘woman’ [ti] 地 ‘ground’
Nearly all dipthongs are formed with an initial high vowel, either [u] or [i] attaching to any other vowel in the Lishui vowel space.
/ui/̯ : [hui̯ʔ] 灰 ‘ashes’ /iu̯/ : [titʑ͡ iu̯] 地球 ‘earth’
/uɤ̯/ : [muɤ̯ʔ] 咬 ‘bite’ /iɤ̯/ : [liɤ̯ʔ] 绿 ‘green’
/uə/̯ : [tʑ͡ uə]̯ 抓 ‘claw’ /iə̯/ : [ɕiə] ⼩ ‘small’
/uɛ/̯ : [ts͡ ʰuɛ]̯ ⼨ ‘inch’ /iɛ̯/ : [piɛ̯] 边 ‘side’
/uɔ̯/ : [ʃɹ̩kuɔ̯] ⻓笛 ‘fute’ /iɔ̯/ : [tiɔ̯ma] ⽻⽑ ‘feather’
/ua/̯ : [huak̯ ɛʔ] 活着 ‘alive’ /ia/̯ : [tɕ͡ iak̯ u] 唱歌 ‘sing’
There are only two other diphthongs that this speaker uses that do not conform to the [u] or [i] + other vowel pattern:
/ɛi/̯ : [nɛis̯ ɔŋ] 内障 ‘guts’ /uɛ̯i/̯ : [kuɛ̯i]̯ ⻤ ‘demon’
The high-mid vowel [ɨ] only occurs following coronal fricatives.
[sɨ] 死 ‘die’ [ɕits͡ ʰɨ] 吸⽓ ‘breathe’ [tz͡ ɨmɛi]̯ 姐妹 ‘sisters’ 4 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
3. Consonants
labial labio alveolar post palatal velar glottal dental alveolar plosive pʰ p tʰ t kʰ k ʔ nasal m n ŋ fricative f s ʃ ɕ x h lapprox l africate ts͡ ʰ tz͡ tɕ͡ ʰ tʑ͡
There are diferent accounts of whether Lishui dialect would have two or three classes of airfow for each obstruent location. Popular analyses of many Wu dialects claim that there are three classes of obstruents: voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated (tenuis), and voiced unaspirated, for example in Wenzhounese or
Hangzhounese (Simmons 1999). However, analyses argue that this tripartite separation does not exist in the Chuqu family of dialects, of which Lishui is one; instead, there is only a contrast between two series of stops — aspirated and unaspirated (Chao 1928).
I fnd that my speaker does not contrast between tenuis and voiceless unaspirated initial obstruents. When eliciting aspirated consonants, his aspiration is very obvious, with a VOT of around 0.12 seconds for monosyllabic words. All other obstruents have VOTs of about 0.01, with no regular pre-voicing nor signifcant and regular short VOT to suggest any further classifcation. Thus, I have transcribed them in pairs with aspiration contrast: [pʰ, p], [tʰ, t], [kʰ, k]. 5 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
[pʰɔŋ] 碰 ‘bump’ with a VOT of 0.11 seconds
[pɔŋ] 帮 ‘help’ with a period of light voicing after the stop burst of 0.01 seconds
A more comprehensive list of VOT alternations are here:
[pʰiɛ̯nɛi]̯ 骗⼈ ‘to lie’ — 0.097s VOT [pɔʔ] ⼋ ‘eight’ — 0.013s VOT
[tʰiŋ] 听 ‘hear’ — 0.065s VOT [tiŋ] ⻓ ‘long’ — 0s VOT
[kʰɤʔ] 给 ‘give’ — 0.095s VOT [kɤ] 狗 ‘dog’ — 0s VOT 6 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
All of the consonants above can be a syllable onset. However, the only consonants that can end a syllable are nasals and the glottal stop. In the case of [ʔ], it is used to end words with short vowel segments, such as [ts͡ ʰɤ] 草 ‘grass’ versus [ts͡ ʰɤʔ]
七 ‘seven’, whose spectrograms are listed below. Vowels stopped by glottal stop are less than half the length of those without.
There are three nasals in the consonant inventory that can be syllable initials or fnals, [m, n, ŋ]. However, there are only two nasals which can be syllabic in Lishui
Chinese, being [m] and [ŋ].
[m̩] 舞 ‘dance’ [ŋ̩] 武 ‘martial’
There is a generous set of fricatives and accompanying africates as well.
[fu] 腹 ‘foat’ [su] 坐 ‘sit’ [ʃuə̯] 蛇 ‘snake’ [ɕi] 呼 ‘inhale’
[ts͡ ʰɨ] ⽓ ‘air’ [tz͡ uo̯] 茶 ‘tea’ [tɕ͡ ʰiɤ̯] 笑 ‘laugh’ [tz͡ iu] 酒 ‘wine’
[xuo̯] ‘fower’ [haʔ] 吓 ‘fear’ 7 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
4. Prosody
As a member of the Wu Chinese dialect, Lishui Chinese has a wealth of tones to its disposal. Historical Middle Chinese tone systems have been analysed as using eight diferent tones, spread along two registers, somewhat dependent on the phonetics of the word itself (Bao 1999). The yin register pertain to words which begin with unvoiced consonants, and the yang register pertain to words which begin with voiced consonants. Within each register, there are four tones - exit “ru” tone, for words ending in the glottal stop, and fat “ping”, leave “qu”, rise “shang” tones for words ending in other segments (Cao 2001).
Steed 2009 lists seven unique tones in his analysis of Lishui Chinese, which correspond correctly with my fndings. However, because Lishui Chinese contrasts aspirated-unaspirated obstruents instead of voiced-voiceless obstruents, the yin and yang registers do not map exactly. All voiceless aspirated consonant inital words still belong to the yin register, but I have found the tenuis-initial words can be either yin or yang register, with no contrastive alternation in VOT at all. Each word carries one lexically-assigned tone when pronounced by itself.
The tones are as follows:
yin yang (unvoiced initial) (voiced initial)
ping 213 21 shang 44
qu 52 342
ru 5ʔ 23ʔ 8 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
Yin-ping tone: [ts͡ ʰu˨˩˧] 错 ‘bad’ [tɔ˨˩˧] 拉 ‘pull’ [hui̯˨˩˧] 灰 ‘ashes’
example of yin-ping tone contour in
[ts͡ ʰu˨˩˧] ‘bad’
average tone contour:
122 Hz - 115 Hz - 140 Hz
Yang-ping tone: [kɛ˨˩] 在 ‘at’ [tz͡ ɔŋ˨˩] 重 ‘heavy’ [to˨˩] 头 ‘head’
example of yang-ping tone contour in
[tz͡ ɔŋ˨˩] 重 ‘heavy’
average tone contour:
128 Hz - 80 Hz
Yin-shang tone: [hɤ˦˦˦] 好 ‘good’ [ts͡ ʰɤ˦˦˦] 草 ‘grass’ [xɔ˦˦˦] 蟹 ‘crab’
example of yin-shang tone contour in
[hɤ˦˦˦] 好 ‘good’
average tone contour:
142 Hz
Yin-qu tone: [sɨ˥˨] 四 ‘four’ [tʰu˥˨] 吐 ‘vomit’ [tʰiŋ˥˨] 听 ‘listen’
example of yin-qu tone contour in
[sɨ˥˨] 四 ‘four’
average tone contour:
180 Hz - 109 Hz 9 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
Yang-qu tone: [ŋ˧˦˨] 五 ‘fve’ [mu͡ɤ˧˦˨] ⽬ ‘eye’ [ty͡ɤ˧˦˨] 雀 ‘bird’
example of yang-qu tone contour in
[mu͡ɤ˧] ⽬ ‘eye’
average tone contour:
140 Hz - 156 Hz - 130 Hz
Yin-ru tone: [hɪʔ˥] ⿊ ‘black’ [ʃɛʔ˥] ⾎ ‘blood’ [hɔʔ˥] 喝 ‘drink’
example of yin-ru tone contour in
[ʃɛʔ˥] ⾎ ‘blood’
average tone contour:
165 Hz
Yang-ru tone: [mu͡ɤʔ˨˧] 咬 ‘bite’ [tʑ͡ yʔ˨˧] 挖 ‘dig’ [nɛʔ˨˧] 天 ‘day’
example of yang-qu tone contour in
[mu͡ɤʔ˨˧] ‘bite’
average tone contour:
132 Hz - 164Hz 10 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
5. Phonology
Like many of the Chinese dialects, Lishui Chinese has a wealth of fricatives and africates. One rule that seems to arise from my corpus is that fricatives and africates before high front vowels are always coronal: [ɕ] [tɕ͡ ʰ] [tʑ͡ ]. There are no instances of other fricatives or africates preceding high front vowels, and so phonemes like [si] or
[ʃy] can not exist in Lishui Chinese.
To exemplify:
⼭ [sa] ‘mountain’ 罪 [sɛi]̯ ‘crime’ 脚 [tɕ͡ ʰiɔʔ̯ ] ‘foot’ 墙 [ɕia] ‘wall’
雪 [ʃɛʔ] ‘snow’ 菜 [tsʰɛ] ‘vegetable’ 尖 [tʑ͡ iɛ]̯ ‘sharp’
⼨ [tsʰuɛ̯] ‘inch’ 砖 [tʑ͡ yɛ]̯ ‘brick’ 船 [ɕyɛ̯] ‘boat’
To put into formal phonological rule, we can say:
C[+cons+cont] → [+cor+dors] / ___ V[+high - back]
As we examine them closely, we can see that these palatal consonants are generally gliding from a high front tongue position to the fnal vowel, in position assimilation. 11 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
罪 [sɛi]̯ ‘crime’
尖 [tʑiɛ̯] ‘sharp’ - notice the very smooth F1 glide upwards from [i] to [ɛ]
船 [ɕyɛ̯] ‘boat’ -the formants of the unvoiced fricative are visible, and turn into the formants of the high front vowel dipthong.
This rule does not only apply to coronal fricatives and africates, as most of the above examples have been showing. It also applies to the other fricatives, [h] and [f], in that there are no examples of those being followed by a high front vowel. 12 Xie Keith Johnson, Matthew Faytak
6. References
Bao, Z. (1999). The Structure of Tone. Oxford University Press.
Cao, J. (2001). Phonetic Explanation for Initial and Tonal Evolution in Wu Dialects of
Chinese. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences Hong Kong XVII.
Chao, Y. R. (1928). Studies in the Modern Wu Dialects. Tsinghua College Research
Institute monograph no. 4.
Grimes, B. F., Grimes, J. E., Pittman, R. S., & Summer Institute of Linguistics. (1999).
Ethnologue: Languages of the world. Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Lee, W. S. & Zee, E. (2003). Standard Chinese (Beijing). Journal of the International
Phonetic Association. 33 (1): 109–112.
Simmons, R. V. (1999). Chinese Dialect Classifcation: A comparative approach to
Harngjou, Old Jintarn, and Common Northern Wu. John Benjamins Publishing.
Steed, W. & Rose, P. (1999). Same Tone, Diferent Category: Linguistic-Tonetic Variation in
the Areal Tone Acoustics of Chuqu Wu. Interspeech Brighton 1999.