The tones in the Wujiang dialect
吴江方言的声调
Zhongwei Shen 沈钟伟

Abstract 摘要
This study is an acoustic examination of the tonal system of the famous Wújiāng dialect. In comparison with other Wu dialects, a striking tonal characteristic of the Wújiāng dialect is that syllables with voiceless aspirated obstruents can have distinctively lower tones than syllables with voiceless unaspirated obstruents, and form the so-called "aspirated tones". Thus, three MC tone II words, [ti] “bottom”, [t'i] “body” and [di] “younger brother” have three distinctive tonal contours in Wújiāng. To better understand this unusual phenomenon, the tonal system of the most studied sub-dialect of Wújiāng, Lílǐ, is acoustically analyzed. According to the measurements of fundamental frequency, I show that the unusually high number of tonal categories of the Wújiāng dialect were the result of false analyses. The so-called aspirated tones actually are the same as the tones of words with voiced consonants. Therefore, the reason that Wújiāng dialect is tonally bizarre is the very unusual tonal alignment of the syllables with aspirated initials rather than an extra aseries of the aspirated tones. A review of the previous studies on the related phenomena shows that the so-called aspirated tones might not exist in any tonal categories of any Wu dialects reported.

吴江方言以其特有的声调系统而著名。和其它吴语相比，吴江方言送气清声母字的声调可以明显地低于不送气清声母字的声调，形成所谓的“送气调”。这样，三个中古的上声字“底、体、弟”有三个不同的声调表现。为了更好地认识这一不寻常的声调现象，本文对黎里的吴江方言的声调系统作了分析研究。对基频测量的结果表明：吴江方言的声调并不多于其它的吴语方言。由送气清声母字形成的所谓“送气调”和浊声母字的阳调在基频上基本相同。吴江方言声调系统之奇不在于其特有的“送气调”，而是其罕见的送气清声母字和浊声母字同调的现象。本文还对吴语中有相类似现象的方言作了分析。分析的结果进一步支持了上述结论。而因，所谓的“送气调”现象可能不存在任何已知的吴语方言之中。

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