Future Investigations

Table of contents
  1. Future Investigations
  2. Motivation
  3. Consonants
  4. Vowels
  5. Tones

Motivation

  • GaGiNang Phonetics is far from complete in its analysis of SwaTao, let alone the other varieties of Teochew
  • The motivation of this section is to address potential limitations of the research findings and share the possible next steps and goals of more deeply investigating Teochew
  • The Future Investigations are split up into the three areas of investigation: Consonants, Vowels and Tones

Consonants

  1. Minimal Contrastive Environments
    1. Currently minimal contrastive pairs for consonants are recorded in Phonetically Rich Sentences rather than in isolated environments with pauses between each segment
      1. This could introduce latent prosodic influences
  2. Breathy Voice in /tsʰ/
    1. Future investigations can verify the distributions of VOT for the biphasic waveform in /tsʰ/ suggestingbreathy voice
  3. Word Final Consonants
    1. Teochew word finals1 may also include an optional consonant
    2. Thus, it would be interesting to investigate whether there are differences between consonants in onset versus word final positions

Vowels

  1. Minimal Contrastive Environments
    1. Although the /i/, /e/, /ɑ/, and /o/ are recorded in a /mV/ context, /u/ and /ɤ/ were recorded in a /gu/ and /kɤ/ context
    2. Further investigation should record all vowels in the same /CV/ context or even /V/ context
      1. Currently the vowels are time sliced out to include stable regions with no formant change to compensate for the different contexts
  2. Diphthong Timing Data
    1. As Teochew also has diphthongs, further investigations can seek to understand the distribution of timings of diphthongs under a fixed tone condition
  3. Vowel Lengthening
    1. Since Teochew final consonants can be both voiced and voiceless, further investigations can seek to understand whether or not vowels are lengthened depending on the voicing of the final consonant
  4. Investigating Allophonic Variation between /e/ vs. /ɛ/
    1. See Investigating /e/ vs. /ɛ/ for context
    2. Future Investigation
      1. Since there was only one speaker, it is difficult to draw a conclusion as to whether or not the high F1 value for the /e/ phoneme is a result of:
        1. The individual speaker’s manner of speech
        2. The SwaTao variety versus the Teochew Proper variety
        3. The /e/ and /ɛ/ are in allophonic variation
      2. To investigate whether /e/ and /ɛ/ are in allophonic variation, future investigations should compare the F2-F1 and F1 of all /e/ and /ɛ/ like phonemes.
      3. If a bimodal distribution occurs, then the two vowels are in allophnic variation
    3. Vowel Shifting across Speakers and Varieties (/ɯ/ to /ɤ/ and /a/ to /ɑ/)
      1. See Possible Reasons For Vowel Shifting for context
      2. Future Investigation
        1. Future investigations should compare F2-F1 and F1 data from other speakers of SwaTao and other Teochew varieties.
        2. If a biomodal distribution occurs between/ɯ/ vs./ɤ/ and /a/ vs. /ɑ/, then there is a vowel shift between Teochew varieties
      3. Note: the /ɯ/ and /a/ are from Teochew Proper literature

Tones

  1. Tone Sandhi
    1. Tone Sandhi is the change of a word’s tone depending on the tone of the following word
      1. Documentation on SwaTao Tone Sandhi in Learn Teochew and Wikipedia
    2. Future Investigation should verify that the recorded literature Tone Sandhi occurs in the same way in the SwaTao variety
  2. Tone and Vowel Length
    1. Since the different tones recorded were not minimal contrastive pairs, it is not possible to draw a conclusion between vowel length and tone.
    2. Future investigations can have many speakers saying the same minimal pair an identify a correlation based on the vowel length distributions
  3. More Speaker Data in SwaTao
    1. The researched F0 modulation is based off of a single SwaTao speaker, future investigations should track the distribution of modulation across many speakers
  4. Tone Shifts Across Varieties
    1. Future investigations can also seek to record Sandhi and compare the tone change in SwaTao versus other Teochew varieties such as Teochew Proper

  1. Phonemes occurring at the end of a word. In Teochew’s /CVC/ segments the last C is considered a final consonant ↩