Speaker
Professor Zhongmin CHEN
Fudan University
Prof. Zhongmin, Chen (陈忠敏) received his two MA from Fudan University (1987), and the University of Iowa in USA (1995) respectively. In 2000 he received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, he is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Fudan University in Shanghai; an adjunct professor at the Institute of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Fudan University, and the deputy director of the academic committee of the Institute. He is also an adjunct professor at the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University. He previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the California State University at East Bay, the National University of Singapore, and Zhejiang University in China. His research and teaching areas include experimental phonetics, pathological linguistics, neurolinguistics, historical linguistics, and Chinese dialectology. He has published over 140 professional papers in domestic and international linguistics and medical journals, and authored or co-authored 37 books. He is the chief expert of a major National Social Science Foundation twice, and has won the First Prize of Shanghai Philosophy and Social Sciences Academic Award twice, the Second Prize three times, and the Tang Zuofan（唐作藩）Award of the National Society for Phonology once. Currently, he also serves as a senior expert at the Ninth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine since 2020, and a visiting professor at the Institute of Medicine and Health, East China Normal University.

Event Details
The theory of tonogenesis originated from the study of the origin of tones in the Vietnamese language in the 1950s. Subsequently, this theory was extended to other tonal languages in Southeast Asia, including Chinese. In recent years, some revisions to the theory have been made, incorporating an intermediate link involving phonation types. However, the underlying mechanism remains poorly explained. This paper investigates the mechanism of voiced obstruents, their relationship with breathy voice and low tones, and presents the following viewpoints: 1. Voiced obstruents have a strong tendency to produce breathy voices. The association between voiced obstruents and breathy voices is attributed to two reasons: a. During the closure period of obstruents, there is an action of expanding the supraglottal area, particularly the pharyngeal space, leading to the ATR phenomenon; b. During the closure period of voiced obstruents, high pressure within the supraglottal area is exerted on the vocal folds, creating a pressure that keeps the vocal folds apart while they vibrate, resulting in breathy voice production. These two factors contribute to the generation of breathy voice. 2. A physiological explanation for low tones caused by breathy voice. 3. The paper proposes that sound change is gradual, beginning with the progressive alteration of sound cues, which are the subordinate units of segments.

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Enquires
lin@cuhk.edu.hk