Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels

Abstract

Suzhounese exhibits an unusual place anteriority contrast between rounded and unrounded dorso-palatal high front vowels, postalveolar fricative vowels, and apico-alveolar apical vowels. This arrangement is vulnerable to loss under intensifying contact with Standard Mandarin. Using acoustic and tongue ultrasound data, we investigated the phonetic implementation of place in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels and the similarity of place targets with the apico-alveolar and alveolo-palatal fricative consonants /s/ and /ɕ/, and the front vowel /i/. Two age cohorts differing in their acquisition history and usage of Standard Mandarin were investigated. The younger cohort, who had earlier and likely more intense exposure to Standard Mandarin, exhibited a subphonemic shift in the fricative vowels toward less anterior, more /i/-like constrictions. Due to this shift, implementation of place targets among vowels and consonants was less uniform for the younger cohort, particularly in acoustic terms, but articulatory target uniformity among the vowels at each place was robust for both cohorts regardless of the degree of shift. We discuss possible contact-based mechanisms for the observed changes, as well as implications of the observed interactions between L1–L2 transfer and L1-internal structural cohesion.

The articulatory properties of apical vowels in Hefei Mandarin

“…2018, Hu & Ling 2019). Second, different apical vowels have their own articulatory gestures (Lee-Kim 2014, Faytak & Lin 2015, as observed in the X-ray study of the two apical vowels in Mandarin Chinese (Zhou & Wu 1963) showing that the alveolar [®] involves a more front constriction and the retroflex [" `] a more back one. Bao (1984) further noted that the articulation of the two apical vowels in Mandarin Chinese is characterized by a concavity in the tongue shape.…”

“…Third, inter-speaker variation has been observed in previous studies, in particular for the apical [®] and [" ] in Mandarin Chinese, with a wide variety of lingual adjustments such as tongue dorsum lowering, tongue blade lowering, and tongue raising, etc. (Chen 2011, Faytak & Lin 2015, Huang, Hsieh & Chang 2021.…”

On the nature of apical vowel in Jixi-Hui Chinese: Acoustic and articulatory data

“…The absence of frication noise is not consistent across all studies, however. While Lee-Kim (2014) reports no or little frication noise on apical vowels, other researchers report important interspeaker variation (Faytak & Lin 2015).…”

“…The terminology 'apical vowels' and the non-IPA symbols [ɿ ʅ] used to transcribe them date back to Karlgren (1915)'s study of Standard Chinese (SC), and have been widely used since then among researchers working on the phonetics and phonology of Chinese (R. Cheng 1966, Trubetzkoy 1969, C. Cheng 1973, Howie 1976, Svantesson 1984, Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996, Zee & Lee 2007, Faytak & Lin 2015, Shi, Peng & Liu 2015, Faytak 2018. Although these symbols are widely used in the transcription of Chinese (e.g.…”

“…There are also reasons, however, to consider these segments as fricatives. First, they contain frication noise (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996, Yu 1999, Faytak & Lin 2015. Second, they are always homorganic with the preceding sibilant consonants (Chao 1961(Chao , 1968.…”