Book contents
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Front Rounded Vowels of Heritage Korean in Northern China
- 2 Phonetic Influence from the Minority Language
- 3 Phonological Transfer in Heritage Japanese in Australia
- 4 Phrasal Prosody of Heritage Speakers of Samoan in Aotearoa New Zealand
- 5 Stress Placement in English Loanwords by Speakers of Mirpur Pahari in the UK
- 6 Intergenerational Transmission of Laterals in Punjabi–English Heritage Bilinguals
- 7 Perception and Production of Phonemic Contrasts in Heritage Russian and Polish in Germany
- 8 Focus Realization in Heritage Spanish
- 9 Language-Specific Phonology of Heritage Perception
- 10 An Individual-Differences Perspective on Variation in Heritage Mandarin Speakers
- 11 Childhood Language Exposure
- 12 The Intonation of Declaratives and Polar Questions in Modern versus Heritage Icelandic
- 13 Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese
- 14 Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?
- 15 Phonetics of Stop Voicing in Heritage and Homeland Polish
- 16 Perception and Production of English and Portuguese Voiceless Stops by Heritage Learners
- 17 Prosodically Conditioned Variation
- Index
- References
14 - Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2024
Edited by
Book contents
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Front Rounded Vowels of Heritage Korean in Northern China
- 2 Phonetic Influence from the Minority Language
- 3 Phonological Transfer in Heritage Japanese in Australia
- 4 Phrasal Prosody of Heritage Speakers of Samoan in Aotearoa New Zealand
- 5 Stress Placement in English Loanwords by Speakers of Mirpur Pahari in the UK
- 6 Intergenerational Transmission of Laterals in Punjabi–English Heritage Bilinguals
- 7 Perception and Production of Phonemic Contrasts in Heritage Russian and Polish in Germany
- 8 Focus Realization in Heritage Spanish
- 9 Language-Specific Phonology of Heritage Perception
- 10 An Individual-Differences Perspective on Variation in Heritage Mandarin Speakers
- 11 Childhood Language Exposure
- 12 The Intonation of Declaratives and Polar Questions in Modern versus Heritage Icelandic
- 13 Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese
- 14 Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?
- 15 Phonetics of Stop Voicing in Heritage and Homeland Polish
- 16 Perception and Production of English and Portuguese Voiceless Stops by Heritage Learners
- 17 Prosodically Conditioned Variation
- Index
- References
Summary
This is the first variationist sociolinguistic study of Cantonese tone-merger using conversational recordings. These data differ from experimental data exploring tone mergers: the speech is continuous and spontaneous, the tones appear in diverse contexts, and speakers are from both Toronto and Hong Kong. We investigated the status of three reportedly ongoing mergers: T2/T5忍 / 引, T3/T6 印 / 孕, and T4/T6 仁 / 孕. We measured three cues (i.e., mean pitch, pitch at 90% duration of the syllable, and pitch slope) in 12,000+ tokens from thirty-two speakers. Using normalized duration and speaker pitch, mixed-effects models showed that unmerged tones are statistically distinguishable in spontaneous speech, but that two of the three “ongoing-merger” pairs are fully merged, and the third is nearly merged. Analyses included segmental and suprasegmental (i.e., phrasal position, word position, adjacent tones) factors affecting pitch. We found no differences between heritage and homeland speaker samples.
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- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages , pp. 302 - 320Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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