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The Om/Op ~ Am/Ap Merger In Cantonese: Acoustic Evidence Of A Not Quite Completed Sound Change, Holman Tse

English Faculty Scholarship

According to Bauer & Benedict (1997: 419-420), descriptions of Cantonese published before the 1940s describe a contrast between the om/op and am/ap rime groups (ex: gom2, ‘thus, so’, 噉vs. gam2, ‘embroidered’, 錦). They say that “one presumes that these earlier scholars were making a distinction that actually existed in the Cantonese language of their time; nonetheless, it was one which eventually disappeared from standard Cantonese” (1997: 420). This presentation addresses two questions about this purported contrast by analyzing sociolinguistic interviews (spontaneous speech samples) from speakers born between 1922 and 1998: (1)Is there acoustic evidence of this contrast among Cantonese speakers …