Cantonese vowel merger-in-progress

Abstract

This study investigates an unreported ongoing sound change in Hong Kong Cantonese. Cantonese is arguably the only variety of Chinese that contains long-short contrast in its vowel system, which is essentially a contrast in vowel quality. However, results from a roduction experiment with 60 genderbalanced native Hong Kong Cantonese speakers of three age groups suggests that this contrast is disappearing. Extracted from a read passage, the bark-normalized formant values of the three pairs of vowels with length contrast [a]-[ɐ], [ɛ]-[e], and [ɔ]-[o]) were compared across the three age groups and gender using linear mixed modelling. While the length contrast is largely retained across age groups, the acoustic difference is diminishing, especially among the young group. This merger-n-progress is actualized by increasing proximity in vowel height. All the vowel pairs seem to adopt the unidirectional merger-by-transfer, but they are realized differently: for [a]-[ɐ] pair, the long vowel transfers to the short one, but the other way around for the ther two pairs.