A cross-dialect comparison of vowel dispersion and vowel variability

Abstract

The study is a cross-dialect comparison of the vowel systems of different inventories across five Chinese dialects in terms of vowel dispersion and vowel variability. The dialects include Meixian Kejia or Hakka with 5 vowels, Hong Kong Cantonese with 7 vowels, Fuzhou with 8 vowels, Ningbo with 10 vowels, and Wenling with 11 vowels. Formant frequencies were obtained through spectral analysis of speech data from 10 male and 10 female speakers of each dialect. The findings of this study do not support the vowel dispersion theory which predicts that (i) the larger the vowel inventory is, the more expanded vowel space will be in the F1F2 plane, and (ii) variability in vowel formants is inversely related to vowel inventory size.