The role of acoustic cues in the checked-unchecked tone merging of the Qixian Jin dialect

The weakening/loss of the stop coda in checked tone syllables (also known as "Ru syllable opening") may lead to a subsequent merger of tonal contrasts in Chinese. This study examined the role of acoustic cues in checked-unchecked tone merging in the Qixian Jin dialect by comparing three age groups. Results showed that duration served as a robust cue for the tonal contrast regardless of age, whereas glottalization did not. The F0 contour signaled the tone merging process with variations across age groups. The findings have implications for modeling complex F0 (falling-rising) contours to enable further cross-dialect comparisons from a phonetic perspective.