A Sociophonetic Study on Tones of Chongqing Mandarin in Gender and Age Difference

Based on the acoustic experimental data from 30 subjects, we reported sociophonetic variation in the citation tones in Chongqing Mandarin in this paper. The comprehensive analysis of both the pitch and duration illustrated the difference in the citation tones. Our results showed that pitch is greatly impacted by age but not by gender. The tone curve is located on the top of the tone register in the group of aged over 60 years, at the bottom in the group of aged 40-60 years; the tone curve is unstable in the group aged 40-60 years, who are the transition between the younger and older groups. Similar as the pitch, the duration is not affected by gender; while the duration of the T3 (Shangsheng) is gradually increased with the age decline. Our data may provide implications on sociophonetic perspective in tone studies.