Contribution to Book
Functional load and vowel merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese
The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
(2024)
Abstract
The functional load hypothesis predicts that phonemes with lower functional load are more likely to merge than higher functional load phonemes. Using Cantonese spontaneous speech data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change Corpus (Nagy, 2011), this chapter addresses the functional load hypothesis in a heritage language context by comparing F1/F2 production patterns of two vowel pairs (i.e., /y/~/u/ and /a/~/ɔ/) across thirty-two speakers based on generational group (i.e., Gen0, Gen1, and Gen2) and dominant language (i.e., Cantonese versus English). An analysis of Pillai score values (Nycz & Hall-Lew, 2015) shows a significant decrease in the phonetic distinctiveness of /y/~/u/ for English-dominant speakers (i.e., all Gen2). The /y/~/u/ pair also has a lower functional load. Dominant language, however, was not a significant Pillai score predictor for /a/~/ɔ/. Overall, the results support the functional load hypothesis in a heritage language context and show how it can complement accounts of heritage languages based on dominant language transfer.
Keywords
- Cantonese,
- Canadian English,
- functional load,
- Heritage Language Variation and Change Corpus,
- Pillai Score,
- spontaneous speech,
- vowel merger
Disciplines
Publication Date
February 15, 2024
Editor
Rajiv Rao
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108966986.014
Citation Information
Tse, Holman (2024) Functional load and vowel merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese. In Rao, Rajiv (ed.). The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages, pp. 280-301. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108966986.014