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Perception And Production Of Nanning Mandarin Fourth Tone, Julie Flaming

Theses and Dissertations

Local varieties of Mandarin Chinese have been underdocumented. This study focuses on Mandarin high falling fourth tone (T4), as pronounced in connected speech by four female speakers native to Nanning City and its surrounding areas, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Surface forms of T4 and the high level tone (T1) often exhibit minimal difference, most likely due to the strong Cantonese influence in the area. I compare the pronunciation of T4 in multiple environments to the predictions about Standard Mandarin T4 surface forms in those same positions. Nanning T4 is flatter overall than Standard Mandarin T4 in all positions, with …