Measurement of phonetic differences in Guangxi dialects

Abstract

The study of dialect differences plays an important role in the research of linguistics. In the recent years there has been a trend to measure dialect differences with computational models. From the perspective of phonology, a syllables of a Chinese character can be divided into three parts: The Initials, the Finals and the Tone. The Initials are usually composed of consonants, and the Finals are composed of vowels or vowels and consonants. Therefore, as long as the quantitative characteristic of vowels and consonants are described, and the Five-Degree markings method of tones are used, the differences between Chinese syllables can be calculated. We developed a model and applied it to the measure and analysis the differences of dialects in Guangxi. The analysis results accord with empirical data of Guangxi province dialectal subdivisions and this shows the validity of the model.