Event Abstract

Back to Event

Utterance-body intonation is not realised as a function of SFP in Cantonese: A preliminary investigation

Carmen Kung1, 2*, Dorothee J. Chwilla3, Roxana Fung1 and Herbert Schriefers3
  • 1 Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, SAR China
  • 2 Macquarie University, Australia
  • 3 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Netherlands

Tone languages use variations in fundamental frequency (F0) to express both lexical tone and intonation. These two serve distinctive functions: The former distinguishes between meanings at the lexical level (hereafter lexical meaning) while the latter do so at the utterance level (e.g., pragmatic meaning). To preserve the lexical-tone contrasts, tone languages with a crowded lexical-tone space tend to reduce the expression of intonation relative to non-tonal languages, thereby using other linguistic devices to supplement the function of conveying pragmatic meaning (Torreira, Roberts, & Hammarstöm, 2014). This can best be illustrated by Cantonese, which relies on both intonation and sentence-final particles (SFPs) to express pragmatic meaning. Despite sharing the same functions, very little is known about the relationship between SFPs and sentence intonation in Cantonese. Previous studies have speculated that Cantonese may rely more on SFPs than intonation to convey pragmatic meaning, therefore SFP may guide the realisation of the utterance-body intonation—the intonation contour preceding the SFP (Fang, 2003; Fox, Luke, & Nancarrow, 2008; Mai, 1998). For example, if the tone of SFP is high, it can lead to a global rise in F0 register of the utterance-body intonation, and vice versa. However, this speculation has not been tested empirically. This issue is addressed in the present study by investigating the F0 realisation of the intonation contours of identical carrier sentences preceding three different SFPs (laa1, laa3, and laa4). These three SFPs occupy the high-extreme, mid-level, and the low-extreme of the tone space, respectively. Based on the above-mentioned speculation, the global F0 register of the utterance-body intonation will vary depending on the F0 height of the tone of the SFP. We recorded three female native Hong Kong Cantonese-Chinese speakers aged from 27 to 60 years (mean age= 38 years), each reading 300 sentence-tokens, which were made up of 100 carrier sentences each ending with 3 different SFPs (laa1, laa3, laa4). Using Praat, the pitch tracks were extracted in semitones and time-normalised by dividing each sentence-token in 10 equally long intervals. Then, we calculated the pitch values of the start and end of the token, and those of the 10 intervals by averaging the F0 within each interval. Next, we performed z-score normalization on the pitch values of all tracks, allowing a comparison of the different speakers. ANOVAs were performed separately on the start and end point of the contour using Intonation as within-subject factor and Speakers as between-subject factor, and on the 10 time-points using the same factors plus Time-points as within-subject factors. The results only show an effect of SFP on the last parts of the utterance-body intonation (i.e. from time-point 8 to the end), and especially on the degree of declination—i.e., the gradual lowering of F0 along the utterance, which is commonly observed in Cantonese and other tonal and non-tonal languages (Gussenhoven, 2004; Lee, 2004; Ma, Ciocca, & Whitehill, 2006; Yuen, 2007). This contradicts with previous proposals that the tone of a SFP can affect the global F0 register of the utterance-body intonation (Fang, 2003; Fox et al., 2008; Mai, 1998). The present study thus provides the first empirical evidence on how SFPs can affect the realisation of utterance-body intonation in Cantonese.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience TOPTalent grant [grant number NWO 022.001.026] from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

References

Fang, X. Y. (2003). 廣州方言句末語氣助詞 (Sentence-final mood-helping words in Guangzhou dialect). Guangzhou: Jinan University Press. Fox, A., Luke, K.-K., & Nancarrow, O. (2008). Aspects of intonation in Cantonese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 36(2), 333–367. Gussenhoven, C. (2004). The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, W.-S. (2004). The effect of intonation on the citation tones in Cantonese. International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages: With Emphasis on Tone Languages. Beijing, China. Ma, J. K.-Y., Ciocca, V., & Whitehill, T. (2006). Effect of intonation on Cantonese lexical tones. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120(6), 3978. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2363927 Mai, Y. (1998). A brief account of Intonation in Cantonese. In D. Chen & J. Cai (Eds.), Research and Teaching in Cantonese (Vol. 3). Torreira, F., Roberts, S. G., & Hammarstöm, H. (2014). Functional trade-off between lexical tone and intonation: Typological evidence from polar-question marking. In C. Gussenhoven, D. Dediu, & Y. Chen (Eds.), 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language (pp. 100–103). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0018-1937-1 Yuen, I. (2007). Declination and tone perception in Cantonese. In C. Gussenhoven & T. Riad (Eds.), Tones and tunes: volume 2: Experimental studies in word and sentence prosody (Vol. 2, pp. 63–77). Berlin; New York: de Gruyter.

Keywords: Sentence-final particles, intonation, Cantonese, phonetics and phonology, Prosody

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting, Macau, Macao, SAR China, 27 Oct - 29 Oct, 2019.

Presentation Type: Poster presentation

Topic: Not eligible for student award

Citation: Kung C, Chwilla DJ, Fung R and Schriefers H (2019). Utterance-body intonation is not realised as a function of SFP in Cantonese: A preliminary investigation. Front. Hum. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2019.01.00032

Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.

The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.

Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.

For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.

Received: 06 May 2019; Published Online: 09 Oct 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. Carmen Kung, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China, carmen.kung@mq.edu.au