This study examined the nasality of pre-nasal vowels /a, o, e/ in Wenzhou—a dialect of Wu contacting with Mandarin and Min, and pre-nasal vowels /ɔ, ə/ and nasal vowels /a, e, ʊ, i/ in Rugao—a dialect of Mandarin contacting with Wu. Three age groups of native speakers were recruited as the talkers for each dialect. The acoustic parameter A1-P0, i.e., the differential between A1 (the amplitude of the first formant) and P0 (the extra peak below the first formant) was measured to evaluate the nasality for non-high vowels, and A1-P1, i.e., the differential between A1 and P1 (the extra peak between the first two formants) for high vowels. The statistical results reveal that the degree of nasalization varied across age group, vowel type, and point of vowel duration. Younger speakers produced overall more nasalization than the middle-aged and older speakers in Wenzhou /o/ and Rugao /ə, e, ʊ, i/. The midpoint of vowel showed less nasalization than the start and end points in non-high vowels in both Wenzhou and Rugao dialects. These results suggest different effects of language contact on sound change in Chinese dialects.
Cite as: Li, Y., Chen, Y., Zhang, X., Chen, Y., Wang, J. (2022) Effects of Language Contact on Vowel Nasalization in Wenzhou and Rugao Dialects. Proc. Interspeech 2022, 5263-5267, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2022-10591
@inproceedings{li22u_interspeech,
author={Yan Li and Ying Chen and Xinya Zhang and Yanyang Chen and Jiazheng Wang},
title={{Effects of Language Contact on Vowel Nasalization in Wenzhou and Rugao Dialects}},
year=2022,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2022},
pages={5263--5267},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2022-10591}
}