An Acoustic Study of the Stop Consonants in Wu Dialects: Evidence From Tongdong Dialect

This paper presents key findings from an acoustic study on the stop consonants in Tongdong dialect, a language variety in Wu dialects. The research was conducted through voice recording and analysis of data collected from Tongdong native speakers. Recordings of 3240 overall tokens were collected and analyzed using Praat phonetic software. The mean VOT values, vowel lengths, vowel pitches and vowel intensities obtained from Chinese words with both prevocalic stops and intervocalic stops were compared and statistically tested using One-way ANOVA. The research findings show that in Tongdong dialect first, the prevocalic voiced stop has a positive VOT; the voicing begins just after the release of the stop followed by a strong voiced aspiration; the adjacent vowel is significantly longer in length and lower in pitch, which makes the stop sound voiced; and the stop is actually a voiceless stop followed by a voiced aspiration. Second, the intervocalic stop has a negative VOT; the voicing begins before the release of the stop, making a voicing lead in the spectrogram and followed by a less strong voiced aspiration; the adjacent vowel is significantly longer in length and lower in pitch; and the stop is a voiced stop followed by a voiced aspiration. The research presents proof that as a border region in Wu dialects, Tongdong dialect is relatively faster in its voiced stops devoicing. Meanwhile it still keeps the three grades of stops: voiceless unaspirated; voiceless aspirated and voiced aspirated, which is a distinctive feature of Wu dialects.