An Experimental Study of Tone and Tone Sandhi in Baoding Dialect

Abstract

This paper analyzes the tone and tone sandhi of Baoding dialect by means of experimental phonetics. So far, only Li Zihe has conducted typological research on the tone sandhi of Baoding dialect in 2008. By using statistical methods, his paper summarizes the common characteristics of tone types and tone sandhi in northern dialects, and then investigates the two-character tone sandhi in Baoding dialect from the perspective of typology. This paper uses Praat to analyze the tone and tone sandhi of Baoding dialect and tries to give an objective description. In this paper, we obtain the data from the pronunciation of the native speakers of Baoding dialect. The data were collected from the native speakers of Baoding dialect by recording their pronunciation of the citation syllables and disyllabic sequence. The collected data were given a careful and detailed acoustic analysis by Praat. This study is the first attempt to analyze the tone and tone sandhi in Baoding dialect using the Praat. Comparing the present study with the previous study of Mandarin in terms of citation tones, it is found that T2 (43) is different in both pitch values and tonal shape; T1 and T4 are different in pitch values but not tonal shapes; T3 is the same in both pitch values and tonal shape. In terms of tone sandhi, the third tone T3 changed significantly in disyllabic sequence.