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Title

I鈥檓 Not Your Brother, I鈥檓 Your Emperor: Cantonese Suprasegmental Adaptation in Conversations

Abstract

Adaptation occurs when speakers adjust their speech for their interlocutors. In Cantonese, 鈥渕ergers鈥� who confuse Tone3 (mid-level) and Tone6 (low-level) in production can temporarily distinguish them when shadowing 鈥渘on-mergers鈥�. Whether this reflects mere acoustic mimicking or goal-driven adaptation for intelligibility remains unclear.

This study explores the phenomenon through an unscripted, goal-oriented conversation task between a tone merger and a non-merger, involving a video game that required interlocutors to resolve Tone3-Tone6 word confusions. Pre- and postconversation tone-word productions were also collected. Acoustic analyses focused on normalised average F0 of target tones. Results showed a trend of decreasing Tone3鈥� Tone6 F0 distance in non-mergers over the course of the conversation, while mergers maintained their typical patterns.

This led to an approximation of the two groups鈥� Tone3鈥� Tone6 distance. However, pre- versus post-conversation productions revealed no significant change. These findings suggest goal-driven adaptation, with either party potentially adjusting their speech to enhance intelligibility.

Keywords: Phonetic Adaptation; Cantonese Tone Merger; Intelligibility; GoalOriented; Unscripted Conversation.

About the student

Ivan Fong has been accepted into the PhD program at SFU Linguistics. Says Ivan about his ongoing journey, "Before I discovered my love for and career in linguistics, I completed my B.Sc with a combined Major in Science (Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences) and Life Sciences at UBC. I then graduated with a Diploma in Linguistics at UBC in 2020. During my studies there, I worked as a Research Assistant at Prof. Molly Babel鈥檚 , mainly for Khia Johnson. I've now been an MA student here at SFU under Prof. Yue Wang and her Language and Brain Lab since 2022. I鈥檓 interested in the prosody of multiple East Asian languages. My MA research centres on investigating how Cantonese tone mergers might adapt their speech sounds when having a conversation with non-mergers.鈥� 

Exam committee

Chair: Ashley Farris-Trimble, Associate Professor, Linguistics, SFU
Supervisor: Yue Wang, Professor, Linguistics, SFU
Henny Yeung, Associate Professor, Linguistics, SFU
Paul Tupper, Professor, Mathematics, SFU 
Molly Babel, Professor, Linguistics, University of British Columbia
External Examiner: Peggy Mok, Professor, Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong