Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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The current study is an acoustic investigation of the three-way obstruent contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated and voiced stops in the medial position of tone sandhi domains...Show moreThe current study is an acoustic investigation of the three-way obstruent contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated and voiced stops in the medial position of tone sandhi domains in Lili Wu Chinese, a language that has an aspiration-induced tonal split in lexical tones. The main focus of the thesis was to examine the acoustic realizations of the three-way stop contrast. By analyzing acoustic data from twenty old-generation Lili Wu native speakers, we found that f0 perturbation was employed by speakers to contrast phonological voicing: voiced stops introduced lower f0 contours to the following vowels than the voiceless ones. Durational data on consonant release (c/v ratio) and difference in phonation types (H1*-H2*) were adopted as two cues to contrast aspiration: voiceless aspirated stops tend to be associated with greater c/v ratio and H1*-H2* differences than voiceless unaspirated ones.Show less
