Tone assignment in Hong Kong English

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)
45 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article provides an argument for Hong Kong English being a tonal language and informs the growing literature on word- and phrase-level prosody interactions. By teasing apart tonal effects that come from intonation and those that come from the word boundary, a clear picture emerges that H tones are assigned in all combinations to HKE di- and trisyllabic words. Tone spreading and blocking across words can also be seen in HKE, but syllables lexically specified for H never give up their tones. Complexity in HKE tone patterns arises when the H tones interact with boundary tones, such as the declarative final L% and the word-initial M.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)e67-e87
Number of pages21
JournalLanguage
Volume92
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2016

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

User-Defined Keywords

  • Boundary
  • English
  • Hong Kong
  • Intonation
  • Tone

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