Readers 读者
The Phonology of Incomplete Tone Merger in Dalian
大连话的声调融合音韵研究
Te-hsin Liu 刘德馨
Abstract 摘要
The thesis of tone merger in northern Chinese dialects was first proposed by Wang (1982), and further developed by Lien (1986), the migration of IIb (Yangshang) into III (Qu) being a common characteristic. The present work aims to provide an update on the current state of tone merger in northern Chinese, with a special focus on Dalian, which is a less well-known Mandarin dialect spoken in Liaoning province in Northeast China.
According to Song (1963), four lexical tones are observed in citation form, i.e. 312, 34, 213 and 53 (henceforth Old Dalian). Our first-hand data obtained from a young female speaker of Dalian (henceforth Modern Dalian) suggest an inventory of three lexical tones, i.e. 51, 35 and 213. The lexical tone 312 in Old Dalian, derived from Ia (Yinping), is merging with 51, derived from III (Qu), in the modern system. This variation across decades is consistent with dialects spoken in the neighboring Shandong province, where a reduced tonal inventory of three tones is becoming more and more frequent.
However, the tone merger in Modern Dalian is incomplete on two grounds. On the one hand, a slight phonetic difference is observed between these two falling tones: both of them have similar F0 values, but the falling contour derived from Ia (Yinping) has a longer duration compared with the falling contour derived from III (Qu). Nevertheless, the speaker judges the contours to be the same. On the other hand, the underlying contrasts of these two contours surface in tone sandhi contexts, such that the lexical tone 312 of Old Dalian emerges in combination forms in Modern Dalian. The above facts attest that sound change is not lexically abrupt, and could take a long period of time to complete its course (Wang 1969).
北方方言的声调融合论最早由王士元提出。根据连金发于1986年针对四百八十个北方方言声调特征的地理分布研究显示，阳上归入去声乃北方方言的共同特征。本文以大连话为基石，针对目前北方方言声调融合的现状作一剖析。 根据宋学早期的文献，老大连话有四个单字调。我们收集的第一手资料显示新大连话只有三个声调，阴平调有归入去声调的趋势。此发现与邻近山东省许多方言近年来渐渐从四个声调演变成三个声调的趋势一致。 进一步的语音分析发现新大连话的声调融合呈现不完整的状态。阴平和去声虽然皆读作降调，但两者的基频有些微的不同。再者，阴平和去声的底层差异也在两字组连读变调出现，呈现不同的变调型态。以上两个发现佐证王士元针对语音流变提出的词汇扩散论。
Subject Keywords 關鍵詞
Tone merger 声调融合 Near merger 近似融合 Tone sandhi 连续变调 Optimality Theory 优选理论