A Phonetic Study of Voicing Contrast of Obstruents in Wuxi Wu Chinese

Abstract: Wu Chinese has a well-known characteristic of the three-way laryngeal contrast in obstruents, namely voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated. It preserves the voicing contrast pattern from Middle Chinese which has been lost in most of other Chinese languages. However, based on recent studies, in the initial position, the phonologically voiced obstruents are found to be phonetically voiceless and VOT fails to distinguish between voiced stops and voiceless unaspirated stops. There is also a ‘muddy voice’ (i.e., breathiness) appearing along with the voiced obstruents. This study is going to investigate the acoustic correlates of the voicing contrast of obstruents in Wuxi Wu, a Northern Wu Chinese dialect that lacks an overall acoustic study. Also, the nature and origin of the breathy voice are investigated to cast light on the relationship between voicing, aspiration and phonation type.