This study presents an acoustic analysis of the citation tones and tone sandhi patterns of bisyllables in Zhenjiang dialect with an attempt to provide an empirical data for the theoretical study of tone sandhi patterns of Zhenjiang dialect. The results demonstrate that this dialect has five citation tones, i.e., Tone1 (42), Tone2 (35), Tone3 (32), Tone4 (55) and Tone5 (5). The acoustic realization of the first syllable, a falling tone, exhibits a more complex pattern than the one previous study has found. This study also examines neutral tone syllables, and proposes that the neutralization of the second syllables results from the assimilation effect of the preceding syllable.

Index Terms: Zhenjiang dialect, citation tone, tone sandhi, neutral tone