A Phonetic Description of Tones in Hong Kong English

Abstract

The adaptation of English stress as tones with relative pitch values similar to those existing in a tonal mother-tongue cannot be more natural. Notably, unlike tones in Cantonese, the distinctive use of pitch in the English spoken in Hong Kong (HKE) is not phonemically contrastive but perceptually and productively preferable in normal speech. A tonal analysis of HKE has been adopted by recent works such as Luke (2000), Wee (2008), Cheung (2009), Yiu (2010) and Gussenhoven (2012). This paper attempts to give a phonetic description of the ‘tones’ in HKE. The data was elicited using a wordlist that would provide a comprehensive coverage of the syllable structure, vowel and consonant inventories, and surface tones of HKE. Six Cantonese speakers balanced for gender were chosen as subjects. They were born after 1980 and raised in Hong Kong. They were asked to produce each word three times in a row so that the basic position (initial, medial or final) of each target item in a non-contextual utterance was set. The list of words was recorded twice using Praat (ver. 5.3.39) with a sampling frequency of 22050Hz. F0 of words in the final position were extracted and then time normalized at 10% interval points. F0 profiles could then be generated in form of line graphs.