Figure 4.3 F0 contours in LZ Score of four tones of inpidual speaker

by gender in Weifang Dialect in actual duration (ms) 21

Figure 4.4 F0 contours in LZ Score of four tones by gender in Weifang

Dialect in actual duration (ms) 24

Figure 4.5 F0 contours in LZ Score combining gender of four tones

with pitch scale in Weifang Dialect in actual duration (ms) 25

Figure 5.1 Tone Patterns in Standard Mandarin cited from Xu (1999) 27

List of Abbreviations

SD Standard Deviation

F0 Fundamental frequency

LZ Log-Z scores

1 Introduction

This study attempts to investigate pitch contours and pitch heights of tones in Weifang Dialect. It analyzes the speech production acoustic data of F0 (fundamental frequency) and duration, which are extracted from the recordings of middle-aged Weifang natives by Praat.

1.1 Research Background

Tone is a phonological category in language to distinguish two words or utterances (Yip, 2002, p. 5). A tone language is a language in which variations in tone distinguish words or phrases of different meaning that otherwise would sound alike (Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2003: 1034). Lexical tones are pitch patterns that serve to provide contrasts in word meaning. Asia and the neighboring Pacific regions are rich in tone languages, including as in the Chinese language family, Tibeto-Burman, Vietnamese etc., as well as register-based languages and accentual languages like Japanese. The best-studied tone languages of this region are, not surprisingly, the urban languages of China, including Mandarin, Shanghai Dialect, Cantonese and Taiwanese, etc. No textbook on tone would be complete without a survey of the main characteristics of these systems, which between them illustrate both the commonalities and the persity of the region (Yip, 2002, p. 179). Mandarin Chinese phonemically distinguishes four tones: Tone 1 with high-level pitch, Tone 2 with high-rising pitch, Tone 3 with low-dipping pitch, and Tone 4 with high-falling pitch (Chao, 1948). Studies on tones have been raising wide concern both in domestic and international academia. However, compared with foreign studies on tones of different tone languages, domestic studies, especially those on tones of dialects in China remain scarce.

1.2 Significance and Research Questions

This study will be able to provide not only fundamental data for the acoustic modeling, but also reference for correcting pronunciation of Standard Mandarin. Moreover, the statistics results in the study will offer acoustic information to speech technology in Mandarin dialects. So, this study has its significance.

This study aims to find out the tone patterns of Weifang Dialect by analyzing the experimental data. We are especially interested in three research questions.

1. How many tone types are there in Weifang Dialect? How are they corresponded to the tones in Standard Mandarin?

2. What do contours look like in each tone type? What are the relative pitch values of each tone type in Weifang Dialect?

3. Are there any duration differences between two tones in Weifang Dialect?

1.3 Structure of the Thesis

This thesis consists of five sections: introduction, literature review, methods, results and discussion. The first section is the introduction part, presenting the research background, significance and research questions of the study and the overall structure of the paper. The second section serves as literature review, in which the related studies and theories concerning this study are presented. The third section is the methodology, describing the participants, the stimuli, the recording procedure as well as methods of data analysis of the experiment. The fourth section presents the results and section five discusses the findings. The thesis is closed with a conclusion part.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Mandarin and Its Dialects

Standard Chinese is a variation of Mandarin and its pronunciation is based on the Beijing Dialect (Duanmu, 1990). Although Mandarin Chinese is the official language in China, local dialects still play important roles in people’s daily life. In the sphere of studying dialects, the traditional way is to let experienced phoneticians listen to people’s accent and figure out their tone contours according to phoneticians’ own experience (Shi, 1990). However, with the development of speech technology, people have realized the shortcomings of that method. Therefore, experimental phonetics has been introduced into the study of dialects. To guarantee the accuracy of the study, phoneticians try to use professional recording devices and software to record and analyze the different sounds.