臺灣華語自然語料中鼻韻尾合流之韻律與方言影響

Abstract

本研究旨在透過語料庫探討臺灣華語鼻音韻尾合流的表現。前人的諸多研究對於鼻韻尾合流的方向、強度、成因並無一致立場，此議題依舊撲朔迷離。最新研究認為鼻音韻尾合流存在南北地域差異。本研究納入臺北、臺中、高雄等三大都會，企圖深究方言差異，並透過自然語料，一併探討韻律因素對合流律的影響。本研究以廿四位臺灣華語、閩南語雙語人士為發音人（性別與代表地域之數量相同），各採用約卅分鐘之自然語料。探討的變因有四項，包含兩項社會變因（代表地域、性別）與兩項語言學變因（韻律顯著、韻律邊界）。結果顯示，套用/in/→[iŋ]最多的是臺北人，其次是高雄人，再次是臺中人。合流律/iŋ/→[in]以臺中人與高雄人為主，但本研究中亦有一台北女性套用。兩條/i/母音後的合流律傾向於相互競爭。三個地區的人都套用/əŋ/→[ən]。上述結果表示，/in/→[iŋ]可能透過音變波理論上的社會空間傳播較多，而/iŋ/→[in]則透過同一理論的地理空間擴散較多。至於語言學變因，韻律邊界促進了所有合流現象，韻律顯著則相對複雜，且只在高雄人看出影響：強化兩條/i/母音後的合流律，卻抑制了/əŋ/→[ən]。韻律顯著的影響可能牽涉到社會語言學與類型學上的有標程度，此一參數與合流律的進程與社會意涵有關。

This study reports the performance of syllable-final nasal mergers in Taiwan Mandarin spontaneous speech via a corpus. Past studies showed debates on merging direction, robustness, and cause, but the results was stilled puzzling. Recent findings on this issue suggested that there exists potential dialectal difference between the North and the South. In this study, the merger among the three representative regions, Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, were investigated to discover details of dialectal difference. With the usage of spontaneous speech materials, prosodic effects on merger application were also examined. The study extracted recordings of twenty-four Taiwan Mandarin-Min bilingual speakers (equally divided among regions and between genders), and each contributed around 30-minute-long speech data. Effects of two social factors (region and gender) and two linguistic factors (prosodic prominence and boundary) were observed. Results showed that speakers in Taipei took the lead in applying /in/→[iŋ], followed by Kaohsiung, and then Taichung. The /iŋ/→[in] merger was dominated by both Taichung and Kaohsiung speakers, but was also found in one Taipei female speaker. The post-/i/ nasal-mergers were generally in competition with each other. The /əŋ/→[ən] merger was applied by speakers of all dialects. The results across regions suggested that /in/→[iŋ] were spread more through the social space of Wave Theory, whereas /iŋ/→[in] diffused more through the geographic space. For the effect of linguistic factors, prosodic boundary facilitated all three mergers, while the effect of prosodic prominence was relatively complicated and was only found in Kaohsiung speakers: a strengthening effect for both post-/i/ nasal mergers, but a restraining effect for /əŋ/→[ən]. The effect of prosodic prominence seemed to interact with sociolinguistic and typological markedness, which is related to rule progression and connotation.