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Article published In: Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 4:2 (2018) ► pp.197–230

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A large-scale smartphone-based sociophonetic study of Taiwan Mandarin

 | Dartmouth College
Published online: 6 February 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.18005.kuo
Abstract
This study aims to (i) identify patterns of sociophonetic variation in Taiwan Mandarin, and (ii) evaluate smartphone technologies as a tool for crowdsourcing sociophonetic data. Specifically, this study examines both phonological variables found in prior literature to be highly salient (deretroflexion, labiovelar glide deletion), and variables that are less likely to index social properties (merging of final /n, ŋ/, changes to Tones 2 and 3). Unlike past studies which have primarily relied on smaller sample sizes, I utilize a smartphone application to crowdsource audio recordings across Taiwan; subsequent Rbrul analysis of 292 recordings revealed robust patterns of sociolinguistic variation. Deretroflexion correlates strongly with gender and age, while glide deletion correlates with gender. Nasal final merging and tonal change exhibit less socio-indexical variation, but provide evidence of potential change in progress. These findings suggest that smartphone-based crowdsourcing can complement traditional sociolinguistic fieldwork, and reveal new knowledge about large-scale variation.
抽象
本研究以社會語音學觀點探討台灣華語的共時性變異，並同時評估如何運用群眾外包 (crowdsourcing) 的手機程式 (APP) 來進行語音資料的收集。本研究針對台灣華語中的四個特徵：(1) 捲舌嘶音 ([tʂʰ], [tʂ], [ʂ]) 的齒音化， (2) 雙唇滑音 [w] [被刪除的情形，(3) 音節末鼻音 (/n/,/ŋ/) 合併現象， (4) 陽平與上聲聲調的變異。過去關於台灣華語社會語言學的研究，多數有於樣本量 (samplesize) 偏少的限制。相對的，本研究採用群眾外包的手機 APP，收集了大量的錄音，而採用 Rbrul 軟件對 292 個錄音進行分析。量化資料清楚的說明，齒音化和雙唇滑音的刪除與社會因素(性別和年齡)息息相關，男性及老年人比較可能用齒音話及雙唇滑音被刪除的變式。音節末鼻音合併現象和聲調的變異與社會因素之間的關聯較弱，不過也能作為台灣華語正在變化的證據。本研究的發現指出群眾外包的手機 APP 能夠輔助傳統社會語音學的田野研究，並對於語音變異的了解有所貢獻。
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Taiwan Mandarin
    • 1.2Variationist studies of TM
    • 1.3Crowdsourcing data for sociolinguistics
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1App structure and technical development
    • 2.2Lexical-items quiz
    • 2.3Sentence-reading task
    • 2.4Collecting demographic information
      • 2.4.1First language
      • 2.4.2Geographic distribution
      • 2.4.3Age
    • 2.5Manual checking of each recorded sentence
    • 2.6Auditory analysis
    • 2.7Acoustic analysis
    • 2.8Multivariate analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Deretroflexion
    • 3.2Labiovelar glide deletion
    • 3.3Nasal final merging
      • 3.3.1/əŋ/ → [ən] merger
      • 3.3.2/in/ → [iŋ] merger
      • 3.3.3/iŋ/ → [in] merger
    • 3.4Tonal change
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Deretroflexion
    • 4.2Labiovelar glide deletion
    • 4.3Nasal final merging
    • 4.4Tone change
    • 4.5Hypercorrection
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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