Diphthongized vowels in the Xiuning Hui Chinese Dialect

Abstract

This paper gives an acoustic phonetic description of the diphthongized vowels in the Xiuning Hui Chinese dialect in terms of temporal structure, spectral property and dynamic aspect. The results suggest that diphthongized vowels in Xiuning function as an intermediate vowel category between monophthongs and diphthongs. And comparisons between the Xiuning case, Yi county Hui, and Qimen Hui reveal that the process of diphthongization is gradient in Hui dialects.