Site red 5: Fènghuà 奉化 (sub-subgroup: Taihu-Yongjiang) Verb-Object Tones.
This page describes t ones in verb-object constructions from an old male speaker recorded by Phil Rose in 1977. The top panel shows the mean acoustics from a large corpus of his tones when they occur on morphemes in object position in so-called verb-object constructions like {买 buy} + {书 book} buy books, {辱 curse} + {人 person} swear at someone, {息 rest} + {hand 手} close up shop at night. {□ wash} + {肉 meat} take a bath. In these constructions, the tone on the object morpheme typically does not undergo any tonological changes, and shows a full complement of tone contrasts. Click on buttons on right to listen to some examples. For each button you will hear four disyllabic verb-object constructions ending in the tone indidcated. Note how the pitch on the first syllable is generally low and level, but there are differences in duration and voice quality. For example, in the lower-mid rise tone examples you can hear the minimal pair [ʨɪu ˨ ȵɪŋ ˨˦] {救 save} + {人person) to save a person and [ʥ̥ɪ͍u͍ ˩ ȵɪŋ ˨˦]{求 ask} + {人 person} to entreat someone. The latter has breathy voice on the first syllable.
- This speaker distinguishes reflexes of all eight Middle Chinese tones. Of interest is the contrast between two very similar pitch shapes: the low rising reflex of MC IIb (brown) and the lower-mid rising reflex of MC Ib (blue). These have the same peak pitch, but the low rising tone starts lower and its rise is slightly delayed. In citatation form his lower-mid rising tone has a final level component. You can listen to his citation tones here. They have interestingly different realsiations from the tones on object morphemes demonstrated on this page.
In verb-object constructions in the Yongjiang varieties, tones on the first syllable (the verbal morpheme) typically undergo considerable tonological changes to level-pitched tones. The upper register tones - high fall, high level, high rise and short stopped high - become lower mid level; the lower register tones - mid fall, low rise, lower-mid rise and short stopped mid rise - are neutalised to low level. (For example the two words {买 buy} and {卖 sell} have different tones in isolation - low rise and mid fall - but they are both neutralised to a low level pitch before the second-syllable, so that e.g. buy books and sell books are not distinguished.)
The lower panel shows the mean acoustics for both syllables aligned at the onset of the second-syllable Rhyme, so that you can see the acoustics corresponding to these first-syllable patterns. Dotted lines indicate voicing on the intervocalic segment, which is voiced before the low register tones. Before each second-syllable tone, you can see four different F0 shapes in the lower half of the F0 range, two long & two short, corresponding to the neutralised tones. There is no obvious conditioning of the second-syllable F0 by the different first-syllable patterns, although it looks as if the slightly rising F0 of the high level tone is an assimilation to the low values of the first syllable. The thicker black line for the second-syllable F0 indicates the overall mean values which are reproduced in the top panel.
