Phonetic and phonological properties of tones in Shanghai Chinese

Abstract

This study investigates the relations between tone, voicing, and voice quality in modern Shanghai Chinese. In low tone syllables, word-initial obstruent onsets are traditionally described as voiceless and breathy, and sonorant onsets as voiced and breathy.Our study is based on acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) data from speakers of two age groups (20–30 vs. 60–80 years). Our results are globally in line with previous studies, but with notable differences. In low tone syllables, while word-initial stops are phonetically voiceless most of the time, fricatives are quite often phonetically voiced. While low tone obstruent onsets are followed by breathier vowels than high tone onsets, this pattern is not clear-cut for nasal onsets. Furthermore, our transversal data show that low tone breathiness is more systematically produced by elderly – especially male – speakers, rather than young speakers, suggesting an on-going change towards the loss of breathiness.

The phonetic properties of the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese

“…As noted by a number of previous studies (e.g., Chao, 1928;Cao & Maddieson, 1992;Chen & Gussenhoven, 2015, to cite a few), the upper vs. lower register contrast is phonologically associated with the voicing contrast of the onset consonants, with phonologically voiced onsets associated with the lower register and phonologically voiceless onsets associated with the upper register. However, 'true voicing' (i.e., as indicated by negative Voice Onset Time (VOT)) is only realized in the intersonorant word-medial position (Cao & Maddieson, 1992;Chen, 2010;Chen, 2011;Gao & Hallé, 2017), and the word-initial voiced obstruents of the lower register syllables are actually voiceless (Cao & Maddieson, 1992;Chen, 2010; the exception of some fricatives was reported by Gao & Hallé, 2017). The 'voicing' contrast for word-initial onsets is mainly realized by pitch and contrastive phonation on the following vowels.…”

“…Our understanding of phonation contrasts, along with the tools for extensive voice analysis, have greatly advanced during the last decade. Recently, the phonetic properties of the Shanghainese register contrast have been revisited in several studies (Gao, 2016;Tian & Kuang, 2016;Gao & Hallé, 2017;Zhang & Yan, 2018) with mostly younger speakers (born after 1980).…”

“…In any event, older speakers' production should be examined in order to understand the phonetic properties of the Shanghainese phonation contrast. (2012) Less tension in the entire vocal tract; less amount of change in tension than breathy voice Follow Laver (1980) Follow Laver (1980 Moreover, although existing studies of older speakers' production (including more recently Tian &Gao &Hallé, 2017) suggest that the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese is generally breathier (i.e., produced with relatively less glottal constriction), it remains unclear whether this breathier voice in Shanghainese is similar to or different from the breathier voices in other languages. As noted by Catford (1977), Laver (1980) and Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996), there is substantial cross-linguistic variation for so-called 'breathier voice.…”

F0 perturbation in a "pitch-accent" language

“…Shanghai Chinese is traditionally analyzed as a tone language, including a tonal height contrast co-occurring with a voicing contrast. "b,d,g" are analyzed as [+voice] in this approach [25]. Other features including [+slack] [26] and [+murmur] [27] have also been proposed.…”

An acoustic study of Iu-Mien tones with a special focus on the role of laryngealization

“…While some studies were based on corrected or normalized measures of the first and second harmonics (e.g. Keating and Esposito 2007, Esposito 2012, Kuang and Keating 2012, Garellek, Keating, Esposito, and Kreiman 2013, other studies used uncorrected measures of the two harmonics (e.g., Blankenship 1997, Andruski and Ratliff 2000, DiCanio 2009, Esposito 2010, Gao and Hallé 2017. The present study shows that in Iu-Mien, the uncorrected measures of the first two harmonics successfully distinguish the two phonation types, modal and laryngealized.…”