Motivation

When Min native speakers learned to speak Mandarin, some linguistic features of

Min would inevitably be carried over to their Mandarin speech. One of the most salient

phonological features being identified at the early stage was the deretroflexion of

retroflex sibilants. There are four retroflex sibilants in Mandarin, including three

voiceless sibilants [tß], [tßH], [ß], and one voiced sibilant [Ω]. Specifically, deretroflexion

depicts the process that voiceless retroflex sibilants [tß], [tßH] and [ß], phones

non-existent in Min, are substituted by voiceless dental sibilants [ts], [tsH] and [s],

phones existent in both Mandarin and Min. The substitution pattern for the voiced retroflex sibilant [Ω], however, varies more, mainly due to the lack of a direct

corresponding voiced non-retroflex sibilant in Mandarin and Min. Some common substituents include [z], [l] and [n] (Chan, 1984).

The realizations of retroflex sibilants, nevertheless, are actually much more

complicated than mere substitution. Deretroflexion is so notorious a feature that in

Chinese education, students in Taiwan are explicitly taught to learn the “standard”

pronunciation. Starting from elementary schools, students are asked to pay extra

attention to retroflex sounds when learning phonetic symbols². It has always been

highlighted that retroflex sounds are produced with the tongue curled up. Similar

instructions can also be seen in the Mandarin phonetics textbook at college levels.

Textbook demonstration of the “standard” retroflex articulation of [ß] was shown in

Figure 1.2(a), which, in comparison with dental articulation of [s] in Figure 1.2(b), has a

clearly curled-up tongue blade and further retracted place of articulation.

2 The phonetic symbols here refer to Zhuyinfuhao, the sound transcription system officially used in Taiwan. Getting to know these symbols and making use of them are emphasized in the first two years of

Figure 1.2 The production of (a) [ß] and (b) [s] from the Mandarin Phonetics Textbook (NTNU Mandarin phonetics committee, 2003).

Figure 1.3 The X-ray slides of the production of (a) [ß] and (b) [s] from Ladefoged et al. (1984).

However, midsagittal X-ray data provided by Ladefoged et al. (1984) showed that

even for Standard Beijing Mandarin, retroflex sounds are not produced with a curled-up

tongue (see Figure 1.3). Instead, retroflex sibilants in Mandarin, just like dental sibilants,

are produced with the upper surface of the tongue; in other words, the tongue is not

curled up. In effect, the two sets of sibilants differ more crucially in terms of

constriction position and tongue shape. With respect to such an official overcorrection

(a) (b)

(a) (b)

of retroflex pronunciation in Taiwan Mandarin, the realizations of retroflex sibilants

thus drew many researchers’ attention, in terms of how and when Taiwan Mandarin

speakers would use retroflex sibilants and also how the contrast between retroflex and

dental sibilants was made.

Although a great number of studies have been conducted to investigate the

realizations of retroflex sounds in Taiwan Mandarin from various perspectives, several

gaps on this issue could still be observed. First of all, there is a gap of merging direction

being studied. Because the substitution of retroflex sibilants with dental counterparts

was first recognized as a salient feature, most studies focused on the deretroflexion

process in Taiwan Mandarin (M.-C. Li, 1995; C. C. Lin, 1983; Rau & Li, 1994). Few,

however, have paid attention to the realizations of dental sibilants. Although the general

assumption is that dental sibilants are the unmarked segments and the process of turning

marked into unmarked ones is linguistically universal, it is still interesting to investigate

when and how such a process will be reversed. In the case of Taiwan Mandarin, the

substitution of retroflex sibilants for dental ones has been observed from time to time

(e.g., Chung, 2006). It is worthwhile to study the mechanism behind such a

phenomenon.

Second, there is a gap of research materials and research methods. Early studies are

mostly impressionistic, and results are often derived from perceptual observations

(Chan, 1984; Kubler, 1985; M.-C. Li, 1995; C. C. Lin, 1983; Rau & Li, 1994). However,

sound perception is easily affected by various factors, such as ambient segments,

individual voice quality, suprasegmental effects, etc. Later studies on this issue started

to adopt a more objective way and acoustically measured retroflex and dental sibilants

(Jeng, 2006; Tse, 1988, 1998). Nonetheless, the measurements are so far limited to

experimental data. Under reading and citation conditions, subjects tend to be very aware

of their own pronunciation, so retroflex and dental sibilants are usually found to be

clearly distinguished. These totally different results thus create a mismatch between

recent experimental studies and previous impressionistic ones on this issue.

Third, there is a gap of factors being examined. Even though the deretroflexion

phenomenon has long been recognized and discussed, most studies are sociolinguistic

research that centers on a number of extra-linguistic factors such as gender, social class,

education level, etc. (M.-C. Li, 1995; C. C. Lin, 1983; Rau & Li, 1994). Few of them

really focus on linguistic variables. Considering the fact that interview is the most

frequent method for conducting sociolinguistic studies and also the fact that results are

mostly derived from spontaneous speech in the interview, a lot of information regarding

this issue will be masked if linguistic factors are not taken into consideration. For

example, the copula verb shi is such a high-frequency word in Mandarin. Given its low

semantic information and high frequency of use, it is predictable that its onset

consonant will hardly be realized as the canonical retroflex sibilant [ß] in natural speech.

Therefore, the results of simply averaging over the token numbers could possibly cause

difficulty for interpretation.

Given the gaps noted above, in this study, we intend to investigate both dental and

retroflex sibilants more thoroughly and completely, by acoustically measuring the

sibilant realizations in spontaneous speech, with several linguistic factors being

controlled for and looked into.