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Full-Text Articles in Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics
The Pre-Nasal Allophonic Splitting Of /Ɛ/ In Toronto Heritage Cantonese, Holman Tse
The Pre-Nasal Allophonic Splitting Of /Ɛ/ In Toronto Heritage Cantonese, Holman Tse
English Faculty Scholarship
Muysken (2019) has argued that the most convincing cases of contact-induced change in heritage languages involve the dominant language having two distinctions mapping on to one (2-to-1). Evidence of such a case from Toronto heritage Cantonese will be discussed. Toronto English (the dominant language) has an allophonic split in which the TRAP vowel is raised and fronted in pre-nasal contexts. This is argued to influence the development of a similar allophonic split, led by lower proficiency speakers, in which Cantonese /ɛ/ is fronted before nasal consonants. The lack of an /ɛ/ split in Hong Kong Cantonese provides further support for …
Tone Mergers In Spontaneous Speech And Gaps In The Tone Inventory, Naomi Nagy, James Stanford, Holman Tse
Tone Mergers In Spontaneous Speech And Gaps In The Tone Inventory, Naomi Nagy, James Stanford, Holman Tse
English Faculty Scholarship
We investigate the status of three ongoing tone mergers, comparing Heritage Cantonese in Toronto and Homeland Cantonese in Hong Kong, using conversational recordings from the Heritage Language Variation and Change (HLVC) Corpus (Nagy 2009). The mergers, which have been reported from experimental tasks in several Cantonese dialects (cf. Bauer et al. 2003, Mok et al. 2013, Zhang 2018) are: T2/T5 忍 jɐn35 / 引 jɐn23; T3/T6 印 jɐn33 / 孕 jɐn22; and T4/T6 仁 jɐn11 / 孕 jɐn22. In connected speech, many contextual variables influence the acoustic value of a tone in a given syllable (cf. Stanford 2016), so each …
The Om/Op ~ Am/Ap Merger In Cantonese: Acoustic Evidence Of A Not Quite Completed Sound Change, Holman Tse
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 …
Functional Load, Token Frequency, And Contact-Induced Change In Toronto Heritage Cantonese Vowels, Holman Tse
Functional Load, Token Frequency, And Contact-Induced Change In Toronto Heritage Cantonese Vowels, Holman Tse
English Faculty Scholarship
Unlike many previous studies of heritage speakers showing phonological maintenance, this presentation will show evidence for a vowel merger among second-generation Toronto Cantonese speakers. Two pairs of vowels are tested for merger. Both pairs are hypothesized to merge due to the lack of similar contrasts in Toronto English: /y/~/u/ and /a/~/ɔ/. Results show merger for only /y/~/u/. This is argued to be due to the lower functional load of /y/~/u/ (three minimal pairs with /y/~/u/, but 105 minimal pairs for /a/~/ɔ/) and due to lower token frequency of /y/ and /u/ compared to /a/ and /ɔ/ in conversational speech.
Does Standard Chinese Mean Anything For Cantonese Vowel Variation?, Holman Tse
Does Standard Chinese Mean Anything For Cantonese Vowel Variation?, Holman Tse
English Faculty Scholarship
Unlike many communities studied by variationists in which SLI means convergence of spoken and written language, for Cantonese speakers, language ideology historically meant the opposite. In this presentation, I show how traces of this ideological distinction between written and spoken codes (cf. Snow 2004) remain present in both Hong Kong and in Toronto. I focus on two sets of sound correspondences found with (Standard) Mandarin cognates: Cantonese /i/ to Mandarin /ə/ and Cantonese /y/ to Mandarin /u/). Only Cantonese /y/ shows convergence, but only for second-generation Toronto speakers who are least likely to speak Mandarin. Toronto English influence, thus, better …