The Perception-Production Asymmetry of Cantonese Tone Mergers

2022-05-04

The phonological tone is an interesting linguistic phenomenon with characteristics distinguished from other phonological segments such as consonants and vowels. Tones have been shown to be autonomous to the segments they are associated with (i.e., the underlying representation and operation of tones are independent of the associated segments. See Goldsmith (1976)). This suggests that tone and other segments may have distinct structures of mental representation. While the emergence of tones in some languages is not completely understood, it has been shown that tonogenesis in some languages was likely induced by contacts with other phylogenetically unrelated tonal languages in neighboring areas (e.g. in some Southeast Asian languages; see Kirby and Brunelle (2007)), and that tonogenesis and tonoexodus (loss of tones) could happen in a relatively short period of time (e.g., Korean). Such an areal feature of tone and its relatively high fluidity compared to other segments raise the question of how the brain represents and processes tones and other segments differentially.

The unique characteristics of tone discussed above make tonal languages promising targets for studying speech processing and gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how language works. Indeed, the study of tonal languages revolutionized the traditional approach to segment analysis, leading to the development of autosegmental phonology.

Cantonese is a tonal language spoken in the Guangdong Province of China, Hong Kong, Macau, and many other Han Chinese communities around the world. Compared to other equally-resourced tonal languages, it is particularly well suited for the study of the cognitive processing of tones since most native Cantonese speakers have little metalinguistic awareness of Cantonese tones [1], and therefore, expectedly, less influenced by top-down processing in tone perception.

It is widely accepted that standard Cantonese [2] has six canonical tones. However, it has been observed recently that some of the tones seem to be merged and are no longer distinguished among younger Cantonese speakers in their perception or production. In this paper, I will first summarize the current findings about tone merging in Cantonese. Using Cantonese tone merging as an example, I will also review some of the proposed mechanisms to shed light on an interesting linguistic phenomenon – the asymmetry between perception and production. Tone merging can happen in perception, production, or both language modalities. Different studies may use different wordings to describe their findings.

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Footnotes

[1]: Most native Cantonese speakers have difficulties in categorizing syllables based on lexical tones, regardless of their ability to distinguish tones. This is likely due to the lack of formal Cantonese education: Even in Hong Kong where Cantonese is the de facto official language, essentially no native Cantonese speakers have received formal education on the Cantonese language in school (except for students who study Cantonese as a linguistics subject in university). In China, including Cantonese-speaking regions, Mandarin Chinese is the only Chinese language taught in school. In Hong Kong, while Cantonese is the teaching medium of the Chinese language in most schools, students only study the official variety of written Chinese (i.e. written Chinese based on Mandarin syntax). As a result, most native Cantonese speakers do not possess the same level of linguistic knowledge about tones in their native language compared to other tonal language speakers who study their native language formally in school, such as Mandarin speakers (e.g. most Mandarin speakers can categorize tones in Mandarin without much effort).

[2]: Currently, two different dialects of Cantonese are both considered the de facto standard form of Cantonese: the Guangzhou dialect spoken in Guangzhou and the Hong Kong dialect spoken in Hong Kong. The two varieties are nearly identical phonologically, but the vocabulary of each of the varieties is influenced by Mandarin and English respectively. At the moment, Hong Kong is the only place where Cantonese is recognized as a working language and widely used in different settings such as education, literature, and courts, while Guangzhou Cantonese is mainly used between friends and family. This makes Hong Kong Cantonese a good study target for Cantonese as most of its speakers are able to express their ideas on different topics fully in Cantonese.

References

  • Goldsmith, J. A. (1976). Autosegmental phonology (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
  • Kirby, J., and Brunelle, M. (2017). Southeast Asian tone in areal perspective. The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics, 703-731. DOI:10.1017/9781107279872.027