| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立聯合大學 === 客家語言與傳播研究所 === 101 === This acoustic study of alveolar and retroflex fricatives [s, ] in Dongshi Hakka was designed to examine the overall trend and the variation of acoustic characteristics regarding the spectral peak frequency.
In this study, three generations, both genders, 60 people in total who live in Dongshi District were selected to be our participants in the speech recording. A word table with six life-common two-syllable phrases and an informal reading article, consisting of Dongshi Hakka fricatives [s, ] as well as a table with Mandarin Chinese fricative[],each following with the cornor vowels [i, a, u] were used as target words. With PRAAT voice analysis software, we conducted the acoustic analysis (measurement of the spectral peak) with the selected samples. The SPSS statistical software package was adopted for statistical processing and plotting graphs.
The results are as follows: (1) In terms of Dongshi Hakka fricative [s], from the overall trend, the spectral peak frequency in [s] was distinctly higher than that in [], both on the word table and the article, which showed that [s] and [] essentially had great difference in their spectral peak frequency. It also suggested that the position of sound emitting of [s] was much more from the front of the mouth than that of []. The conclusion from the above analysis is that, [s] was not palatalized into []. (2) In terms of Dongshi Hakka fricative [], from the overall trend, the spectral peak frequency in [] did not reach a significant statistical level, however, when followed by high front vowel [i], the most possible palatalizing factor, [] had a tendency close to []. A similar result appeared when [] was used in less-formal circumstances. That is to say, [i] had a great effect upon making [] palatalized to []. (3) Certain social factors, like age and gender, or any speech register would not influence the palatalization of [s], even if it was placed before [i]. However, those factors did effect the palatalization of []. From the average of spectral peak frequency, we can see that the younger the participants were, the higher possibility for [] being palatalized to []; the less informal the speech register was, the closer the sound position [] approached []; the spectral peak frequency of women’s [] was obviously closer to [], compared with men’s.
Finally, according to the above results, this article strives to deliver the descriptions and remediation for the appropriateness of research methods, also to provide a satisfactory explanation of how [s, ] changed.
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