scholarly journals Vowel shifts in Cantonese?

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83
Author(s):  
Holman Tse
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Hong Kong Cantonese

Abstract 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.

Phonological Production in Young Speakers of Cantonese as a Heritage Language

2020 ◽  
pp. 002383092091046
Author(s):  
Rachel T. Y. Kan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Background Factors ◽  
Hong Kong Cantonese ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Predictive Effect

This study investigates the phonological production of 50 heritage speakers of Cantonese aged 5–11 in the USA. They were compared to 12 majority language speaker peers in Hong Kong via ratings from first language adult speakers. Overall, the heritage speakers were rated as less native-like and less comprehensible than the children in Hong Kong, although they received higher scores from raters speaking the same variety of Cantonese (i.e., Guangzhou Cantonese, vs. Hong Kong Cantonese). None of the tested language background factors, including age of testing, had a predictive effect on the heritage speakers’ scores. The results illustrate the divergence and heterogeneity of heritage phonology compared to homeland varieties.

scholarly journals Variation and change in Toronto heritage Cantonese

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holman Tse
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Multiple Comparisons ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Internal Motivation ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Generation Female

Abstract This paper presents the first sociophonetic study of Cantonese vowels using sociolinguistic interview data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Corpus. It focuses on four allophones [iː], [ɪk/ɪŋ], [uː], and [ʊk/ʊŋ] of two contrastive vowels /iː/ and /uː/ across two generations of speakers. The F1 and F2 of 30 vowel tokens were analyzed for these four allophones from each of 20 speakers (N = 600 vowel tokens). Results show inter-generational maintenance of allophonic conditioning for /iː/ and /uː/ as well as an interaction between generation and sex such that second-generation female speakers have the most retracted variants of [ɪk/ɪŋ] and the most fronted variants of [iː]. This paper will discuss three possible explanations based on internal motivation, phonetic assimilation, and phonological influence. This will illustrate the importance of multiple comparisons (including inter-generational, cross-linguistic, and cross-community) in the relatively new field of heritage language phonology research.

scholarly journals Heritage Tagalog Phonology and a Variationist Framework of Language Contact

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Pocholo Umbal ◽  
Naomi Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Mixed Effects Modeling ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Using Data

Heritage language variation and change provides an opportunity to examine the interplay of contact-induced and language-internal effects while extending the variationist framework beyond monolingual speakers and majority languages. Using data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Project, we illustrate this with a case study of Tagalog (r), which varies between tap, trill, and approximant variants. Nearly 3000 tokens of (r)-containing words were extracted from a corpus of spontaneous speech of 23 heritage speakers in Toronto and 9 homeland speakers in Manila. Intergenerational and intergroup analyses were conducted using mixed-effects modeling. Results showed greater use of the approximant among second-generation (GEN2) heritage speakers and those that self-report using English more. In addition, the distributional patterns remain robust and the approximant appears in more contexts. We argue that these patterns reflect an interplay between internal and external processes of change. We situate these findings within a framework for distinguishing sources of variation in heritage languages: internal change, identity marking and transfer from the dominant language.

Classifier use in Heritage and Hong Kong Cantonese

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-108
Author(s):  
Naomi Nagy ◽  
Samuel Lo
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Chinese Text ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Heritage Speaker ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Hong Kong Cantonese ◽  
Heritage Language Speakers

Abstract Heritage language speakers have frequently been reported to have language skills weaker than homeland (monolingual) speakers. For example, Wei and Lee (2001, p. 359), a study of British-born Chinese-English bilingual children’s morphosyntactic patterns (including classifier use), report “evidence of delayed and stagnated L1 development.” However, many studies compare heritage speaker performance to a prescriptive standard rather than to spontaneous speech from homeland speakers. We compare spontaneous speech data from two generations of Heritage Cantonese speakers in Toronto, Canada, and from Homeland Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Both groups are similar in a strong preference for general and mass classifiers, and classifier choice being primarily governed by the noun’s number. We observe specialization of go3 個 to singular nouns, a grammaticalization process increasing with each generation. The similarity between homeland and heritage patterns replicates previous studies utilizing the same corpus.

Hands off the metadata!: Comparing the use of explicit and background metadata in crowdsourced dialectology

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamsin Blaxter ◽  
David Britain
Keyword(s):  
Language Variation ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Background Information ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dialect Variation ◽  
Regional Dialect

Abstract In this article we assess the extent to which we can collect plausible data about regional dialect variation using crowdsourcing techniques – the BBC Future Survey – without explicitly gathering any user metadata, but relying instead on background information collected by Google Analytics. In order to do this, we compare this approach with another crowdsourced survey, operated from a smartphone application, which examines the same site – the British Isles – but which explicitly asks users to submit detailed social background information – the English Dialects App (EDA) (Leemann et al. 2018). The EDA has the disadvantage that there is a considerable user drop-off between completing the dialect survey and completing the social metadata questionnaire. The BBC Future Survey, however, only collects information on where users are physically located when they complete the survey – not where they are from or even where they live. Results show that the BBC Future Survey produces a plausible snapshot of regional dialect variability that can complement other more sophisticated (expensive, time-consuming) approaches to investigating language variation and change. We suggest the approach constitutes a digital-era rapid anonymous survey along the lines of Labov (1972), serving similar aims, with similar success, but on a much much larger scale.

Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese)

1991 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Zee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
University Student ◽  
Hong Kong Cantonese ◽  
Younger Generation

The style of speech illustrated is that typical of the educated younger generation in Hong Kong. The recording is that of a 22-year-old female university student who has lived all her life in Hong Kong.

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