Tone 4 Sandhi in Heze Chinese

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He Zhou
Zuoyu Tian
Trey Jagiella

Abstract

We present in this paper an acoustic study of the base tones and Tone 4 sandhi in Heze Chinese, a Mandarin dialect. By conducting two tasks, we investigate the four base tones in Heze Chinese and the Tone 4 sandhi patterns. Our results show overall similar characteristics to previous studies, but we find that Tone 2 in Heze Chinese has a short rise before a long fall, instead of a straight fall. The remaining tones are falling-rising contour tones (Tones 1 and 4) and a flat Tone (Tone 3). We argue that Tone 4 sandhi in Heze Chinese has three patterns: the Tone 4 contour changes to falling when it is followed by Tone 1 and Tone 3, the contour stays the same when it is followed by Tone 2, and the contour inflection point moves forward when it is followed by another Tone 4.

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