Title

The Development of Qu Category in Chinese before the Qieyun Period – An Acoustic Study in Postvocalic -s in rGyarong

Author

Yueh-chin Chang

Genre

Article  

Pages

297-325

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Language

Chinese

Key words

Old Chinese, tone category, Qu sheng, -s final coda, acoustics, rGyarong

Abstract

       Pulleyblank(1962, 1973) and Li(1980) claim that in Old Chinese the four tone categories correspond to four different postvocalic consonants. The postvocalic -s which corresponds to the Qu category becomes -h in Middle Chinese. In other words, Medieval Shang category comes from -ʔ and Medieval Qu category from -h. Hombert(1997) finds that in Arabic, -ʔ produces a rise in F0 and -h produces a drop in F0 on the preceding vowel. This might support that a raising tone develops from the respective loss of -ʔ and -h.

      This study examines the intrinsic effects of -s on the F0 in rGyarong, a Sino-Tibetan language, and finds that same as -h, -s also produces a drop in F0 on the preceding vowel. A cross- linguistic study shows that -s in rGyarong has weaker mean power of spectrum than that of other languages and only -s accompanying the level tone produces a drop in F0.