Contemporary China is an ideal sociolinguistic setting for investigating the interaction between a national standard language and regional speech varieties. In this study, I focus on a quantitative analysis of phonological variation in Nanchang Gan, a sub-topolect spoken in a provincial capital in Southern China. Three variables included in the discussion are: (1) diglossic alternation between two syllable initials: [w] and [f]; (2) rusheng tonal merger: [5] and [2] merging to [5]; (3) loss of historical breathy voice. Results reveal that the three variables I examined differ in their rates/states of change as well as their availability to doing social work: the consonant initials variable ([w] → [f]) has reached a relatively stable stage, indexing an urban-rural division; the checked tonal variable indicates a merger in process (towards the high-pitch variant), the progress of which was best predicted by age and occupation; on the other hand, voice quality does not seem to perform any social work yet, as most of the inter-speaker variation in this variable can by accounted for in terms of sexual dimorphism. In addition, a closer look at individual employment of these three variables successfully captured some subtle information that escaped the examination by institutional social factors. Therefore, I suggest that each speaker has to be treated as an individual linguistic agent; personal history must be carefully and episodically examined along with the quantitative methods. Furthermore, the analysis of the tonal merger variable reveals that older speakers are more advanced in the process of merging than the younger generation. This is probably due to the pressure of socialization in a wider society during one's adulthood.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04222010-231537 |
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| Creators | Cui, Jie |
| Contributors | Shelome A. Gooden, David R. Mortensen, Scott F. Kiesling |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04222010-231537/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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