A study of Ru tone laxation tendency on Jiangsu Tongzhou dialects in China

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K00596
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Kindai University
• Principal Investigator: ONHSHI HIROKO 近畿大学, 経済学部, 教授 (60351574)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 江蘇省 / 通州方言 / 入声 / 舒声化 / 呉語 / 江淮官話

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In Chinese, there was a tone called Ru. However, in modern Chinese, it has already disappeared except for some dialects. Tongzhou is located in Nantong city, Jiangsu province. Its dialects are distributed in the area where the “Wu” dialect (it belongs to southern dialect in China) and Jianghuai mandarin dialect (it belongs to northern dialect in China ) intersect，and we can observe a phase in which the Ru tone is disappearing.
This study takes "the tendency of Ru tone relaxation" as the theme and clarifies the distribution and pattern of Ru tone relaxation through the acoustic phonetic analysis of the recorded data investigated by the local dialect. The results show that the lengthening of the Ru syllables is the biggest reason to make the Ru tone close to the non-Ru tone. However, there are geographical and age differences in the progress of variable length syllables. The clarification of the main reasons for promoting length syllables has become a next subject.

Free Research Field

中国語方言学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

入声舒声化に関する研究は、北方官話方言の中で唯一入声という声調を保持している江淮官話の研究者の中で盛んに行われてきた。本研究が対象とする通州方言は、呉語と江淮官話とが交接する地域に分布するため、周辺の江淮官話で発生している舒声化ほど進化していないものの、すでにその傾向は十分に観察できる。本研究において、舒声化傾向（つまり舒声化の初期段階）の発生パターンや発生メカニズムが明らかになったことで、江淮官話における入声舒声化の発生要因を裏付けるデータが提供できた。このことにより、官話方言（現代中国語）における入声のより早期の姿が再構築でき、入声がなぜ消滅したのか、その謎に一歩迫ることができたと考える。