A Study on the Tone Perception of Mandarin by Native Speakers of Shaoxing Dialect

Abstract

This article studies how native speakers of Shaoxing dialect perceive Mandarin tones, and whether there is a perceptual correspondence between the tone system of Shaoxing dialect and Mandarin tone system. Ten participants from the Shaoxing dialect area were selected to create six pairs of Mandarin tone opposition groups, with a total of 60 Mandarin perception samples. The perception experiment was conducted using E-Prime software. The subjects determine which tone in the dialect is similar to the Mandarin tone they hear, and then input the similar tone category. Finally, statistical analysis is conducted to calculate the similarity of tone classes between two tone systems and establish a tone perception model. The corresponding relationship between the perceived Mandarin tones by 10 native speakers of Shaoxing dialect and their own dialect tone system indicates that the Gaoping 55 tone in Mandarin is perceived as the Shaoxing dialect 33 tone, and the Mandarin tortuous 214 tone is perceived as the Shaoxing dialect 35 tone. There is a similar correspondence between the perception of tones in different tone systems, which has reference value for phonetic teaching.