The Interaction Between Intonation and Tone in Cantonese

This dissertation, "The Interaction Between Intonation and Tone in Cantonese" by Ka-yin, Joan, Ma, 馬嘉賢, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled The Interaction between Intonation and Tone in Cantonese submitted by Joan Ka-Yin Ma for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in May 2007 In tone languages, intonation and tone are transmitted simultaneously through fundamental frequency (F0) variations. Speakers need to encode these linguistic functions into a spoken acoustic signal simultaneously. Listeners must be able to decode the overlapping F0 cues that are present in the acoustic signals, and assign these cues to the respective linguistic functions. Thus, there are potential conflicts in tone languages due to the coexistence of intonation and lexical tone. This thesis includes four studies which aimed at elucidating the interaction between intonation and lexical tone in spoken Cantonese. Study One examined the effect of intonation and word position on F0 patterns and duration of tones using acoustic analysis. Speech materials contrasting in intonation (question versus statement), target tone position (initial, medial and final) and tone (55, 25 33, 21, 23 and 22) were collected from twenty native Cantonese speakers. The results showed that intonation affects both the F0 level and contour of tones, while the duration of the six tones varied as a function of position. All six tones at the final position of questions showed a rising F0 contour, regardless of their canonical form. Study Two investigated the perceptual effects of intonation patterns on tone identity. Speech materials from two speakers were presented to twelve naive listenersunder three presentation conditions: original carrier, neutral carrier and isolation. Overall, listeners were more accurate in the identification of tones presented within the original carrier than of the same tones presented in isolation or within the neutral carrier. A large proportion of tones 33, 21, 23 and 22 at the final position of questions were misperceived as tone 25 in all three presentation conditions. These results suggest that, although the intonation context provided cues for correct tone identification, the intonation-induced changes in F0 contour cannot always be compensated for perceptually. The third study analyzed the effect of lexical tone on the production of intonation, employing the "command-response" model (Fujisaki & Hirose, 1984). Speech materials with tonal contrasts at the final position of the utterance from all twenty speakers were analyzed according to the features of the model (base frequency, phrase component and tone component). Question-statement contrasts were marked by both difference in base frequency and tone component. Additionally, questions containing tones with negative tone commands (tones 25, 21 and 23) at the final position had significantly higher amplitude for question boundary tone command than those containing tones with zero or positive tone command (tones 33 and 55). The final study explored the perceptual effect of lexical tones on the identity of intonation. Speech materials from two speakers were presented to twenty-four naive listeners in three presentation conditions: complete sentence, carrier-only and final- syllable-only. Tones with a high F0 peak at the end were confused with the final-rise in F0, leading to reduced perceptual accuracy for statements but higher perceptual accuracy for questions.The results of the four studies showed a bi-directional relationship between intonation and tone. The int