Research (and other Projects)
Research (and other Projects)
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Spoken Japanese and Shanghainese (a major dialect branch of Sino-Tibetan) are similar in that both have historical influences from Wu Chinese—the former borrowed heavily from medieval Wu and the latter is a modern descendant of the Wu language group. What similarities might appear between the two?
Spoken Japanese and Shanghainese (a major dialect branch of Sino-Tibetan) are similar in that both have historical influences from Wu Chinese—the former borrowed heavily from medieval Wu and the latter is a modern descendant of the Wu language group. What similarities might appear between the two?
Correlations in the Pronunciation of Sino-Japanese Lexical Items in Shanghainese and Japanese
Correlations in the Pronunciation of Sino-Japanese Lexical Items in Shanghainese and Japanese
Xu, C. Correlations in the pronunciation of Sino-Japanese lexical items in Shanghainese and Japanese [Preprint]. Research Archive of Rising Scholars. (2025). https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.3209.
Keywords: Shanghainese (Wu Chinese), Japanese, Sino-Xenic borrowings, phonetics/phonology, comparative linguistics, contact linguistics
Abstract: This study investigates the phonetic relationships between Shanghainese, a major Wu-branch dialect of Chinese, and Japanese on’yomi (Sino-Japanese) readings, assessing whether historical Wu Chinese influences yield closer phonological parallels with Japanese than modern Mandarin. The researcher elicited pronunciations for 379 shared Sino-Japanese lexical items from three native Shanghainese speakers (from Pudong and Zabei) and three native Japanese speakers (from Kanto and the Fukuoka prefecture), using Mandarin as an intermediary control. IPA transcriptions of each token were compared via Levenshtein distance to quantify structural similarity, alongside qualitative analyses of segmental patterns. The results reveal an average normalized phonetic resemblance of 29.14%, higher than the 19.6% previously reported for Mandarin-Japanese phonetic resemblance, suggesting that Shanghainese retains greater phonological affinity to Japanese over Mandarin. Key convergences include voicing patterns conditioned by Shanghainese tone versus Japanese pitch accent, systematic deaffrication and alveolarization of retroflex consonants, and parallel adaptations of labiodentals and laterals in Japanese. On the other hand, phonological divergences arise in nasal codas and vowel sequences, which are affected by coda constraints and phonotactic shifts. These findings exhibit the impact of medieval Wu Chinese on Japanese on’yomi and provide insights on Sino-Xenic contact phenomena. Future work should expand to other Wu dialects and focus exclusively on Go-on readings to refine our understanding of historical sound correspondences.
My independent comparative study of Shanghainese-Japanese phonetics—mentored by Dr. Grabowski, PhD in Linguistics at UC Berkeley—is in peer-review at the Journal of Japanese Linguistics. First, I compiled an IPA-aligned corpus and compared phonological patterns across Wu-influenced languages. Then, I planned and executed a field trip to parts of rural China and elicited locals and native speakers. For ethical review, I assembled an IRB committee at my high school. The manuscript is currently available as a preprint at the Research Archive of Rising Scholars, as displayed below:
Synthesizing Idealized Pronunciations of Nonstandard IPA Sounds
A Computational Linguistics Project; view full paper on Wolfram Community
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Conducted at Ohio State University, I had my first linguistics fieldwork experience, eliciting native Hawai'i Creole speakers. What are some parallels between standard and Pidgin English?
Studying neurodegenerative diseases via C. elegans
Interacting with hands-on lab work at WPI's Frontiers Program, we investigated how neurotransmitters affected motor function in the context of studying ALS, a neurodegenerative disease—a real deep-dive into cognitive lab methods which I later applied to my linguistics projects.
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