Projects & Findings
Figure 1. Location of Huangyan (Modified from Huang et al., 2024)
Figure 2. Tonal inventory: Slope feature [±smooth] for tonal distinction
Tone systems & processing
Tone alternations: Sandhi systems in contact
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Field work: Huangyan, an understudied Sinitic Wu dialect, shows mixed patterns for tone alternations/sandhi. The final tone remains intact and the initial tone changes for most disyllabic words (50%), but there are exceptions.[abstract]
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Praat & Tone distribution: (1) The realization of a tone in Huangyan is conditioned on both the position of the tone (relative to the tonal sequence) and the properties of its preceding tone. (2) Contour slope (smooth vs. sharp) predicts tonal behavior. Smoothness is targeted by sandhi rules and also conditions sandhi rules. [manuscript] [poster]
Online processing of tones & tonal rules
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Word recognition (in prep): Do speakers use slope (smooth vs. sharp) of tonal contours to recognize monosyllabic words in real time?
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Wug test (in prep): Are the rules for these tonal variations psychologically real among speakers? Do speakers memorize lexical items case by case or make generalizations based on abstract tonal categories?
Figure 3. Contours are lost for smooth tones (A/C), not sharp tones (B/D); Falling tones (A/B) are sensitive to adjacent tones, non-falling tones (C/D) are not
One fun fact about Huangyan Wu
You can produce a string of five syllabic nasals for a sentence (no vowels).
[n31 n̤21 ŋ13 m13 n̤21]
It means 'your son's fish doesn't have a son'.