Allophony in Luzhou Mandarin High Vowels James C. Wamsley, Indiana University Bloomington [email protected]

Allophony in Luzhou Mandarin High Vowels James C. Wamsley, Indiana University Bloomington [email protected]

Southwestern Mandarin is a little-studied sub-branch of Mandarin Chinese. Although there is more research these days on dialects beyond Standard Mandarin, most of it still focuses on variants from major urban areas. In the case of Southwestern Mandarin, most research is done on the dialect spoken in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. This presentation describes ongoing research on the southwestern Mandarin variety spoken in the city of Luzhou in southeast Sichuan province. In particular, this study investigates an allophonic variation of the high back vowel /u/. This allophony has been noted in other Southwestern Mandarin dialects such as in Chengdu (Carden 2016), but no recent data has been reported for Luzhou. Pilot data from a female native speaker of Luzhou Mandarin indicate that there is more widespread variation of this allophonic variant than has been reported for other dialects.

Carden (2016) reports that in Chengdu Mandarin, CV syllables with a high back vowel /u/ generally surface with minimal change in vowel quality. However, in syllables with a labiodental fricative /f/ onset and zero onset (in which there is an epenthetic labiodental glide /ʋ/), the high back vowel surfaces as a more centralized vowel, [ʊ]. Carden (2016) postulates that the variant is triggered either by the lack of a rounding feature of these labiodental onsets or ease of articulation. While the Chengdu dialect exhibits this allophonic variant in labiodental onset syllables, data from a speaker of Luzhou Mandarin shows that the variant is able to appear in syllables with other onsets. This is shown in Examples (a-i) below. Chengdu Mandarin Luzhou Mandarin a. [mu] [mu] b. [tu] [tu] c. [su] [su] d. [fʊ] [fʊ] e. [ʋʊ] [ʋʊ] f. [pu] [pʊ] g. [pʰu] [pʰʊ] h. [tʰu] [tʰʊ] i. [nu] [nʊ] Examples (a-c) show surface forms in both Chengdu and Luzhou Mandarin which contain the high back vowel [u]. Examples (d-e) show the allophonic variant with labiodental onsets as reported by Carden in both dialects. Examples (f-i) show the difference between the two dialects, in which Luzhou Mandarin surfaces with the centralized variant. The differences in high back vowel production in Luzhou Mandarin are corroborated with instrumental acoustic analysis showing higher F1 values for syllables with these onsets. This indicates that while Chengdu Mandarin restricts this allophonic variant to syllables with labiodental onsets, Luzhou Mandarin allows this variant to appear with coronals as well, thus hinting at a phonological shift caused by the presence of this variant. The next steps in this study are to investigate syllables in stressed and unstressed position, and in different tonal contexts. This exploratory research illustrates further variation within the Southwestern Mandarin sub-branch.

References

Carden, K. A. (2016) Vowel-consonant interaction in two dialects of Mandarin. PhD thesis, University of Iowa, 2016.

Duanmu, S. (2000). The Phonology of Standard Chinese. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Hu, H., & Zhang, Y. (2018). Path of Vowel Raising in Chengdu Dialect of Mandarin.

Li, G. (1997). Sichuan Luzhou fang yan yan jiu. Chu ban. Taibei Shi: Zhonghua fa zhan ji jin guan li wei yuan hui.

Ma, C., & Tan, L. (2014). Comparative Study on the Supre-Segmental Phonemes between English and Sichuan Dialect. International Letters Of Social And Humanistic Sciences (ILSHS), 51.