Northern Wu phonology

Northern Wu, or Taihu Wu, is the largest subbranch of Wu Chinese, and is spoken in Shanghai, southern Jiangsu, and northern Zhejiang. These languages are noted for their extremely high number of vowels, even compared to some Germanic languages, and highly complex tone sandhi. This article will use Wugniu and IPA for transcription.

Syllable structure
Much like other Sinitic languages, Northern Wu languages almost universally have an initial-final-tone syllable structure. The final can be further split into the glide, nucleus and coda. For the most part, contemporary Northern Wu languages only permit nasals and the glottal stop in coda position, though there is evidence to suggest that this was not the case in some historical varieties. There are plentiful initials in Northern Wu, more than many other Sinitic languages such as Cantonese or Changshanese, partially due to the preservation of voiced initials, which will be explained in more detail in other sections.

Initials
Much like other Wu languages, Northern Wu languages tend to preserve historical voiced initials, which is a feature only found in several other lects along the Yangtze River, such as Old Xiang.

Northern Wu languages' initials are generally similar. The following is a table of all the commonly-found Northern Wu phonemic initials, with their common urban realizations, Wugniu romanization, and example syllables.

Noteworthy omissions
Some varieties in Suzhou and Jiaxing have retroflex initials, much like some Mandarin varieties. Compare the following examples.

Characteristic preservations and innovations
Northern Wu, much like other Wu varieties, preserves voicing in its initials. The exact mechanism in which this is realized is discussed below.

Again, much like other Wu languages, Northern Wu preserves the Middle Chinese ri initial (日母) as a nasal. Compare the following, where ⟨gn⟩ is used to notate //:

Note that 日 here is pronounced in the colloquial pronunciations rather than literary ones.

Palatalization
Many Northern Wu varieties have sibilants that undergo palatalization (尖團合流 [ zh ]). This process is becoming more common among younger speakers.

Depression
The voiced initials in Northern Wu languages are realised with breathy voice. This functions much like a phonemic depressor and lowers the pitch of the realization. Some linguists, such as Y. R. Chao, transcribe these phones not as voiced consonants, but as voiceless consonants followed by // or //. More recently, potentially due to Standard Mandarin influence, the younger generation has merged the pronunciation of the unaspirated voiceless series with the (breathy) voiced series. However, the functional load of the breathy voice is already relatively low, due to the fact that tonal distribution lends to disambiguation between historically voiced and voiceless syllables. This breathy voice is at times known as "murmur".

Some speakers, particularly in Shanghai, may constrict their throats when pronouncing voiceless (unaspirated) initials to further disambiguate breathy and modal initials. This construction may result in the pronunciation of an implosive.

Implosives
In various suburban Shanghainese varieties, the unaspirated voiceless series is realised as implosives. This feature appears to also have been in urban (Puxi) Shanghainese, though it is lost today.

Glottal plosive series
The glottal fricatives // and // are phonotactically part of a plosive series with //. Spectral analyses have found that these three phones show three-way differences parallel to stops. Younger speakers also tend to merge with, not , as would be expected if it were phonotatically a fricative. As the has been analyzed as a null initial in the past, it could be said that Northern Wu languages have a three-way null initial contrast.

Finals
Finals vary significantly more than initials in Northern Wu languages. As such, only noteworthy phonological and diachronic features will be discussed. For detailed analyses of individual lects, refer to their specific pages.

Ma raising
A feature found in many Wu languages, including Northern Wu, is the raising of the historical ma (麻) rimes. They are typically realised as //, though some lects such as Shanghainese or Wuxinese may raise it even higher and having it merge with //. The exact sets of words that undergo raising varies from lect to lect, though in general, the southern two branches (Linshao and Yongjiang) have more raising than northern ones.

Notice how the two localities in Zhejiang, Tonglu and Ningbo, both pronounce the word 家 with a raised vowel, whereas those in Jiangsu and Shanghai do not. Northern varieties tend to retain the // value after velars, whereas Linshao and Yongjiang do not.

Hou fronting
Northern Wu lects along the Grand Canal tend to front the Qieyun Middle Chinese 侯 rime (ie. Wugniu eu). Y. R. Chao suggested that this is due to influence from Hangzhounese. Chao raises the example of 歐洲後頭的狗 "the dog behind Europe", pronounced as [sic], taken from his native Changzhounese. Compare Standard Mandarin Ōuzhōu hòutóu de gǒu.

Shan and xian rimes
The Northern Wu languages exhibit interesting behaviour regarding Qieyun Middle Chinese shan (山) and xian (咸) rimes (ie. Wugniu ae). Some varieties lose the nasal coda completely, whereas others retain it. Some also leave some sporadic nasalization. They typically also have abnormally raised, rounded, or fronted vowels and more complex distribution when compared to other lects, thus resulting in noticeable differences. This behaviour is also exhibited in Hangzhounese.

Frication
Several Northern Wu varieties have a very large number of contrastive high vowels. This contrast is typically realised in the form of rounding or frication. This frication can be notated as a lowering or raising of the vowel or as a glide insertion. Typically, frication in non-apical vowels happens to contrast terms with historical nasal codas.

Codas
Codas in Northern Wu are relatively simple compared to other Sinitic languages. In most modern Northern Wu varieties, only a single nasal phoneme and a checked coda (typically transcribed ) are permitted in coda position.

Nasal coda
Northern Wu languages typically only have one final nasal phoneme. This is typically realised as, , or a nasalization of the nucleus vowel, typically in free variation.

Checked coda
Northern Wu languages typically only permit in coda position. This is different to other coastal Southern Chinese languages, as they typically do not merge all checked codas into one category It is also noteworthy that the coda is often realised as a shortening of the vowel rather than an actual, which contrasts with Oujiang varieties, which typically lengthen checked syllables. Compare the following syllables.

Tones
Tone plays a critical role in Northern Wu and impacts the realisation of both initials and finals. It disambiguates between both monosyllabic words via underlying tone and polysyllabic terms through the use of tone sandhi. Northern Wu languages can theoretically have up to twelve phonemic tones, depending on analysis. These lects can be found in places in Suzhou and Jiaxing, such as Wujiang.

Phonemic tone
Phonemic tones in Northern Wu is traditionally analysed based on four historical tone categories, which are further divided in half based on the voicing of the initial. Those that pair with voiceless initials are known as "dark" (陰) tones and the opposite is true for "light" (陽) ones. This yields a total of eight tones. The hypothetical maximum of 12 tones are achieved when aspiration conditions a further tone split through the dark tones.

Note that, unlike Yue languages, the dark checked tone split is conditioned by aspiration, not vowel length.

Although there are Northern Wu lects with a high number of tones, it is also noteworthy that contemporary Shanghainese in particular only has at most five phonemic tones, by merging tones 2 and 4 with 6, and tones 3 with 5. A typical Northern Wu variety has 7–8 tones.

For the most part, light tones can only occur with voiced initials, and dark tones can only occur with voiceless initials. In general, the light counterpart of a dark tone tends to be a lowered (or depressed) equivalent of the dark tone, as explored above. Compare the pronunciations of the dark and light departing tones in the following Wu varieties:

Neutral tones
Neutral tones, informally transcribed as 0 or not transcribed at all, are found in tone sandhi and in some grammatical particles. For instance, the perfective particle 了 in Shanghainese should be tone 8 due to its voiced and checked nature, though it in reality functions without a tone. This phenomenon can also be observed in Standard Mandarin, though it is more pronounced in Northern Wu due to the grammatical nature of Northern Wu sandhi.

Tone sandhi
Northern Wu languages all have tone sandhi, both left-prominent (hereafter LPS) and often right-prominent (RPS). LPS is typically found in polysyllabic words, whereas RPS is typically found in verb-object constructions. This is a feature that is shared among Wu languages, though in Northern Wu, sandhi chains generally share similar contours. This, coupled with the fact that this sort of complex tone sandhi cannot be found in the Qieyun system or reconstructions of Middle Chinese, would suggest that this sandhi is a Wu shared innovation, and that Northern Wu languages share a recent common origin.

There are five general types of contours:
 * Contour spreading, where the contour of the head syllable gets stretched over subsequent syllables
 * Default realization, where the subsequent syllables become null tones
 * Countour levelling, where a syllable removes its tone contour movement such that it becomes level
 * Citation target, where a sandhi chain rises until it matches one of the monosyllabic tones
 * Categorical shift, where the subsequent syllables change tone categories

Left-prominent sandhi
LPS in Northern Wu is typically regarded as highly complex. Northern Wu varieties are traditionally analysed to have unique sandhi chains for each tone category of every syllable, which results in complex charts that sprawl several pages. However, these analyses can usually be simplified, and not all combinations yield unique sandhi chains. Shanghainese LPS, for instance, has traditionally been analysed to only preserve phonemic tone on the first or head syllable, and drop it on all subsequent syllables, which may thus be considered somewhat similar to pitch accent in some languages. However, some younger speakers insert a rising tone contour on traditionally voiced initials to perhaps mimic the depression effect.

This is similar to some analyses of Suzhounese and Hangzhounese. Checked tones in Suzhounese can be analysed to preserve the underlying tone of the first two syllables,, whereas Hangzhounese sandhi is conditioned based on whether the second syllable belongs to the rising or non-rising category.

The tone category of the third and fourth syllables do not matter.

Right-prominent sandhi
RPS primarily occurs on verbs in verb-object constructions, and often is only relevant to monosyllables. They also occur in certain situations such as quantitative adjectives and a handful of irregular words. This can be used to disambiguate between certain constructions, such as the famous 炒麪 example, but also the following: