Comparing the postverbal downtoners -faan1 and -haa5 in Cantonese

2025

The present study aims to conduct a phonetic analysis of two SFPs that are segmentally identical and phonologically unspecified, both being T0 syllables. Specifically, the SFPs under investigation are ma 吗 (hereinafter “ma1”), which marks yes-no questions, and ma 嘛 (hereinafter “ma2”), which is generally used in declarative sentences to convey various pragmatic functions. All selected SFPs in this study follow another T0 syllable (the functional particle le 了) so as to highlight their intonational plasticity, thereby minimizing the potential influence of preceding tone-bearing syllables. The target segments under investigation are all sonorant. The dataset consists of 137 occurrences (ma1 n=65; ma2 n=72) drawn from approximately 30 hours of spontaneous telephone conversations from the CallFriend Corpus (2018). Data were annotated and analyzed using the ProsodyPro script (Xu, 2013) in Praat. The extracted f0 values were normalized per sentence using z-scores and were time-normalized for statistical analysis. Specifically, the statistical analysis was twofold, employing both “simple” GAMs (generalized additive models) and GAM Trees. The results indicate that ma1 and ma2 exhibit distinct f0 contours. Specifically, ma1 displays a rising contour, whereas ma2 shows a falling contour. However, it should be noted that significant differences are observed only in the contour, not in the register (i.e., pitch height). The presence of a negation marker in the sentence also appears to significantly affect the f0 contour of ma2: in sentences containing a negation marker, ma2 exhibits a sharper pitch contour, while in the absence of a negation marker the contour is smoother and more convex. Given that ma2 marks various pragmatic meanings, we expected that it would not be defined by a single intonational pattern, in contrast to ma1, which exhibited only one distinct intonational pattern regardless of the presence of a negation marker. In addition to highlighting the phonological significance of intonational patterns in MC as a tone language, these results reveal distinctive intonational characteristics in the pitch contours of SFPs. Moreover, they suggest that phonological features consistently shape T0 SFPs in alignment with the pragmatic meaning of the utterance, potentially rendering SFPs more phonologically “specifiable” than previously anticipated in the literature.

Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2018

A multi-speaker acoustic study on citation tones in Kaifeng Mandarin, referred to as LH, HL, H and L, shows that L is realized as three different subtypes by different speakers, i.e. dipping, falling and falling with lengthening, while generally being longer than the other three tones and frequently spoken with creaky voice in part of the vowel. This inter-speaker variation is reflected in the different transcriptions of Kaifeng L that have been given in the literature. We argue that a L-tone is intrinsically less salient than a H-tone, due to a lack of phonetic space in the low pitch range as well as to a potential ambiguity between contextual low pitch around f0 peaks and low pitch due to L-tones, and thus more likely to be enhanced.

2014

L'objectif de l'article est une recherche des mots chinois mandarin prononces avec des tons moyens et bas que l'on retrouveraient en cantonais. La comparaison de prononciation entre les deux dialectes met en evidence une certaine correspondance de tons. Ainsi l'auteur propose d'etudier les quatre correspondances regulieres - mais non systematiques - mises en evidence par cette etude : 1. les tons hauts descendants du cantonais correspondent aux tons haut du mandarin, 2. les tons bas descendants du cantonais correspondent aux tons hauts ascendants du mandarin 3. les tons bas et haut montants du cantonais correspondent aux tons bas montants du mandarins et, enfin, 4. les tons moyens et bas du cantonais correspondent aux tons descendants du mandarin

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 2022

This paper explores tone2 and tone3 in monosyllabic words in Mandarin, aiming to illustrate the contributing factors that influence the perception of tone2 and tone3 with low-falling contours. Previous studies mainly focus on inflection position and onset or final F0 values. As the pitch value of the inflection point is a vital acoustic parameter for tone3 identification, this study brings in inflection F0 values as one of the focuses. To reveal the crucial features of tone2 and tone3 identification, this study applies a series of synthetic sounds with identification tasks to investigate three factors that influence tone perception in Mandarin, inflection F0 values, final F0 values, and inflection position, both as independent variables and combined variables. Empirical results suggest that an individual variable cannot determine the perception of tone2 and tone3. Only combinations of variables can decisively alter tone identification. The inflection position plays a minor role in identifications of tone2 and tone3, contradicting with findings from previous researches. The status of inflection F0 values seems to be crucial in tone3 perception. The relationship between inflection F0 values and inflection positions is mutually promotion and compensation for tone3 identification. Final F0 values function as compensation for the emphasis on T2 perception caused by inflection F0 values. The perception of tone2 and tone3 does not show a categorical pattern at a stimuli continuum with varying inflection F0 values.

Phonetica, 2006

Many weak elements in speech, such as schwa in English and neutral tone in Standard Chinese, are commonly assumed to be unspecified or underspecified phonologically. The surface phonetic values of these elements are assumed to derive from interpolation between the adjacent phonologically specified elements or from the spreading of the contextual phonological features. In the present study, we re-evaluate this view by investigating detailed F 0 contours of neutral-tone syllables in Standard Chinese, which are widely accepted as toneless underlyingly. We recorded sentences containing 0-3 consecutive neutral-tone syllables at two speaking rates with two focus conditions. Results of the experiment indicate that neutral-tone syllables do have a target that is independent of the surrounding tones, which is likely to be static and mid. Furthermore, the neutral tone is found to be different from the full lexical tones in the manner with which the underlying tonal target is implemented: it is slow and ineffective both in overcoming the influence of the preceding full lexical tone and in approaching its own target. Applying the recently proposed pitch target approximation model, we conclude that the neutral tone differs from the other lexical tones in Standard Chinese not only in terms of its mid target, but also in terms of the weak articulatory strength with which this target is implemented. Finally, we suggest that this new understanding is potentially applicable to other weak elements in speech.

This article examines speech errors in Cantonese with the aim of fleshing out a larger speech production architecture for encoding phonological tone. A corpus was created by extracting 2,462 speech errors, including 668 tone errors, from audio recordings of natural conversations. The structure of these errors was then investigated in order to distinguish two contemporary approaches to tone in speech production. In the tonal frames account, tone is encoded like metrical stress, represented in abstract structural frames for a word. Because tone cannot be mis-selected in tonal frames, tone errors are expected to be rare and non-contextual, as observed with stress. An alternative is that tone is actively selected in phonological encoding like phonological segments. This approach predicts that tone errors will be relatively common and exhibit the contextual patterns observed with segments, like perseveration and anticipation. In our corpus, tone errors are the second most common type of ...

Lingua, 2012

Cantonese linguists have said that Cantonese sentence-final particles (SFPs) express the same kinds of meanings that are expressed by intonation in languages such as English, yet apparently no study has ever systematically attempted to discover whether any SFPs have English intonational equivalents. This study identifies the English intonational counterpart to the SFP lo1 by looking at the pitch contours of Cantonese-to-English audio translations, which were provided by four Cantonese/English native bilingual participants. Based on the data, it is concluded that the English equivalent of lo1 is a high-falling pitch contour. A definition using the natural semantic metalanguage is formulated to define lo1, and native English-speaker judgments indicate that this same definition also defines the meaning of lo1's English equivalent. Examples are given to demonstrate that this definition succeeds at defining either lo1 or its English equivalent in any context within which they are used. It is proposed that this lo1-equivalent pitch contour is a floating tone morpheme in the English lexicon. Linguists have long debated whether or not any forms of intonation have context-independent meanings. This study offers empirical evidence in support of the argument that they do. Keywords: Cantonese; discourse particle; floating tone; evidential marker; discourse intonation; natural semantic metalanguage metalanguage (NSM), and native English-speaker judgments are collected as a form of evidence to show that lo1 and its English equivalent have the same meaning. It is taken as a working hypothesis that lo1 and its English counterpart are equivalents with regard to function, meaning, and grammatical category, i.e., that they are both discourse particles that function to link the sentence to the discourse in the same way. This paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the forms and functions of intonation and SFPs, and explains the three-way relationship among intonation, lexical tones and SFPs. Section 3 introduces the natural semantic metalanguage and proposes an NSM definition for lo1. Section 4 describes the research design and methodology. Then, based on the Cantonese-to-English translations, section 5 describes the form of lo1's English equivalent. Section 6 demonstrates that the NSM definition is able to accurately describe the uses of lo1 and it English equivalent in any context where they appear. Section 7 explains the polysemy of lo1 and the final section provides a summary and conclusion of the study. Throughout the paper, the term SFP refers to Cantonese SFPs. 2. Intonation and discourse particles Cheung (1986:251) said it is "beyond doubt" that lexical tones, SFPs, and intonation are interrelated because lexical tones and intonation both share the same form, while SFPs and 4 intonation share the same functions. To help readers better understand this three-way relationship among SFPs, intonation and lexical tones, this section first describes the forms of intonation and lexical tones, and then the forms of discourse particles. After that the overlapping functions of SFPs and intonation are described in order to explain why the complex lexical tone system of Cantonese has resulted in its using segmental particles to express the types of meanings that are expressed by intonation in English. 2.1. The forms of intonation and lexical tones Intonational forms consist of pitch, length and loudness. Pitch is considered by linguists to be the most important of the three, followed by length and then loudness (Chun, 2002;

Applied Psycholinguistics, 1999

The issue of how tones are represented and processed when speaking Mandarin Chinese was examined via naturalistic slips of the tongue. The slips were collected from tape-recorded radio call-in programs over a period of one year. One research assistant listened to the programs twice, and another listened to them a third time independently. All the errors judged to be slips by the assistants were reviewed by the author. A total of 987 slips were confirmed and classified according to the system of Garnham, Shillcock, Brown, Mill, and Cutler (1982). With respect to the sound movement errors, it was found that, although errors of segmental phonemes were fairly common, errors of tones were rare. Moreover, the error pattern of the tones was different from that of the segmental phonemes. The relative immunity of tone to production errors is similar to the problem of stress in English. It is suggested that lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese are represented and processed differently than segme...

Phonetica, 2006

Many weak elements in speech, such as schwa in English and neutral tone in Standard Chinese, are commonly assumed to be unspecified or underspecified phonologically. The surface phonetic values of these elements are assumed to derive from interpolation between the adjacent phonologically specified elements or from the spreading of the contextual phonological features. In the present study, we re-evaluate this view by investigating detailed F 0 contours of neutral-tone syllables in Standard Chinese, which are widely accepted as toneless underlyingly. We recorded sentences containing 0-3 consecutive neutral-tone syllables at two speaking rates with two focus conditions. Results of the experiment indicate that neutral-tone syllables do have a target that is independent of the surrounding tones, which is likely to be static and mid. Furthermore, the neutral tone is found to be different from the full lexical tones in the manner with which the underlying tonal target is implemented: it is slow and ineffective both in overcoming the influence of the preceding full lexical tone and in approaching its own target. Applying the recently proposed pitch target approximation model, we conclude that the neutral tone differs from the other lexical tones in Standard Chinese not only in terms of its mid target, but also in terms of the weak articulatory strength with which this target is implemented. Finally, we suggest that this new understanding is potentially applicable to other weak elements in speech.

2006

This paper mainly examines four issues within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993): the nature of the changed Tone 2, Tone 2 Sandhi (T2S), Tone 3 Sandhi (T3S), the interaction with T2S and T3S. T2S refers to the phenomenon in which the contour of final Tone 2s produced by Southern Min (SM) speakers in Taiwan becomes falling. In this paper, T2S is treated as a weakening/neutralization process in final positions. Phonetic evidence shows that the changed Tone 2 does fall. Evidence from perception and its interaction with T3S imply that changed Tone 2 is phonologically Tone 3. For T2S, the constraint *Rising ]#, which disallow rising contour in final positions, is proposed to be the triggering constraints. To avoid violating *Rising ]#, a final Tone 2 is forced to change. This paper shows that this T2S, as well as its interaction with T3S, can be well captured in OT.