Cover not available
Article published In:
Regional Chinese in Contact
Edited by James A. Walker
[Asia-Pacific Language Variation 5:1] 2019
► pp. 67–83

Vowel shifts in Cantonese?

Toronto vs. Hong Kong

| University of Pittsburgh
This paper addresses Labov’s principles of vowel chain shifting in Toronto and Hong Kong Cantonese based on sociolinguistic interviews from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Project. The analysis is based on normalized F1 and F2 values of 33,179 vowel tokens from 11 monophthongs produced by 32 speakers (8 from Hong Kong, 24 from Toronto). In Toronto, results show retraction of [y] by generation but fronting of [i] by age. In Hong Kong, age is a significant predictor for the lowering of [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɔ], and for the fronting of [ɔ] and [i]. Overall, there is more vowel shifting in Hong Kong than in Toronto and the shifting is consistent with Labov’s Principles.
Keywords: heritage languages, bilingualism, sociophonetics, contact linguistics, Chinese language – Yue, sound change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Vowel space overview
    • 4.2Generation
    • 4.3Age
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 June 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.19001.tse
References (26)
References
Barrie, Michael (2003). Contrast in Cantonese vowels. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, 201, 1–19.Google Scholar
Bauer, Robert S., & Benedict, Paul K. (1997). Modern Cantonese phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David (2016). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program] (Version 6.0.15). Retrieved from [URL]
Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (2016). Thematic household survey report no. 591 (p. 171). Hong Kong. Retrieved from [URL]
Gorman, Kyle, Howell, Jonathan, & Wagner, Michael (2011). Prosodylab-aligner: A tool for forced alignment of laboratory speech. Canadian Acoustics, 39(3), 192–193.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel E. (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb Standard: Introducing Rbrul for Mixed-Effects Variable Rule Analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass, 3(1), 359–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William (1984). Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In John Baugh & Joel Sherzer (Eds.), Language in use: readings in sociolinguistics (pp. 28–53). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
(1994). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford/Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
(2011). Principles of linguistic change. Volume 3: Cognitive and cultural factors. Oxford/Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lau, Chun-Fat (2003). Labovian principles of vowel shifting revisited: The short vowel shift in New Zealand English and southern Chinese. In Barry J. Blake & Kate Burridge (Eds.), Historical linguistics 2001: Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13–17 August 2001 (pp. 293–301). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lee, Thomas (1983). The vowel system in two varieties of Cantonese. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 571, 97–114.Google Scholar
Matthews, Stephen, & Yip, Virginia (2011). Cantonese: A comprehensive grammar. (2nd edition). London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nagy, Naomi (2011). A multilingual corpus to explore variation in language contact situations. Rassegna Iitaliana di Linguistica Applicata, 43(1/2), 65–84.Google Scholar
Peters, Andrew, & Tse, Holman (2016). Evaluating the efficacy of Prosody-lab Aligner for a study of vowel variation in Cantonese. Presented at the workshop on Innovations in Cantonese Linguistics (WICL-3), the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.
Sloetjes, Han, & Wittenburg, Peter (2008). Annotation by category – ELAN and ISO DCR. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008), (pp. 816–820).Google Scholar
Statistics Canada (2017). Toronto, C [Census subdivision], Ontario and Canada [Country] (table). Census Profile. 2016 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-316-X2016001. Ottawa. Retrieved from [URL]
Thomas, Erik, & Kendall, Thomas (2007). NORM: The vowel normalization and plotting suite. Retrieved from [URL]
Tse, Holman (2016a). Contact-induced splits in Toronto Heritage Cantonese mid-vowels. Linguistics Atlantica, 35(2), 133–155.Google Scholar
(2016b). Variation and change in Toronto heritage Cantonese: An analysis of two monophthongs across two generations. Asia Pacific Language Variation, 2(2), 124–156. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019). Beyond the monolingual core and out into the wild: A variationist study of early bilingualism and sound change in Toronto heritage Cantonese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Yip, Moira (1996). Lexicon optimization in languages without alternations. Rutgers Optimality Archive. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yu, Dominic (2000). The underlying representation of Cantonese vowels. Unpublished Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Yue-Hashimoto, Anne Oi-kan (1972). Phonology of Cantonese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1991). The Yue dialects. Languages and dialects of China. Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, 31, 294–324.Google Scholar
Zee, Eric (1999). Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese). In Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (pp. 58–60). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(2003). Frequency analysis of the vowels in Cantonese from 50 male and 50 female speakers. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1117–1120). Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Barcelona. Retrieved from [URL]
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

CHODROFF, Eleanor, Leah BRADSHAW & Vivian LIVESAY
2023. Subsegmental representation in child speech production: structured variability of stop consonant voice onset time in American English and Cantonese. Journal of Child Language 50:5 ► pp. 1245 ff. DOI logo
Tse, Holman
2022. Chapter 5. What can Cantonese heritage speakers tell us about age of acquisition, linguistic dominance, and sociophonetic variation?. In Variation in Second and Heritage Languages [Studies in Language Variation, 28], ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo
Tse, Holman
2024. Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese. In The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages, ► pp. 280 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.