A spectral analysis of the apical vowel in Yongding Hakka

The so-called apical vowels occur in a large number of Chinese dialects, including Yongding Hakka spoken in the southwest of Fujian Province in southeastern China. A main difference between apical vowel and dorsal vowels is in the fact that the former is a syllabic approximant with a linguo-palatal contact pattern of either laminal alveolar or apical postalveolar. Phonologically, both vowel types function as the syllable nucleus. The paper analyzes the spectral characteristics of the apical vowel [???] in Yongding Hakka. Preliminary results show that the F-pattern of the apical vowel differs from that of the dorsal [i] substantially. The average F1, F2, and F3 values of five repetitions of [???] from 10 male speakers are 500.9 Hz, 1323.4 Hz, and 2722.9 Hz, but 339.8 Hz, 2362.6 Hz, and 3269.6 Hz for [i]. Thus, a large difference is in F2. This is also true for female speakers of Yongding, in that the average F-values are 567.9 Hz, 1473.2 Hz, and 3242.6 Hz for [???] and 405.4 Hz, 2362.1 Hz, and 3269.6 Hz for [i]. The spectral data for the apical vowel in Yongding Hakka will be compared with those for the apical vowels in other Chinese dialects, such as Beijing Mandarin.