Book contents
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Front Rounded Vowels of Heritage Korean in Northern China
- 2 Phonetic Influence from the Minority Language
- 3 Phonological Transfer in Heritage Japanese in Australia
- 4 Phrasal Prosody of Heritage Speakers of Samoan in Aotearoa New Zealand
- 5 Stress Placement in English Loanwords by Speakers of Mirpur Pahari in the UK
- 6 Intergenerational Transmission of Laterals in Punjabi–English Heritage Bilinguals
- 7 Perception and Production of Phonemic Contrasts in Heritage Russian and Polish in Germany
- 8 Focus Realization in Heritage Spanish
- 9 Language-Specific Phonology of Heritage Perception
- 10 An Individual-Differences Perspective on Variation in Heritage Mandarin Speakers
- 11 Childhood Language Exposure
- 12 The Intonation of Declaratives and Polar Questions in Modern versus Heritage Icelandic
- 13 Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese
- 14 Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?
- 15 Phonetics of Stop Voicing in Heritage and Homeland Polish
- 16 Perception and Production of English and Portuguese Voiceless Stops by Heritage Learners
- 17 Prosodically Conditioned Variation
- Index
- References
13 - Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2024
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Edited by
Book contents
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Front Rounded Vowels of Heritage Korean in Northern China
- 2 Phonetic Influence from the Minority Language
- 3 Phonological Transfer in Heritage Japanese in Australia
- 4 Phrasal Prosody of Heritage Speakers of Samoan in Aotearoa New Zealand
- 5 Stress Placement in English Loanwords by Speakers of Mirpur Pahari in the UK
- 6 Intergenerational Transmission of Laterals in Punjabi–English Heritage Bilinguals
- 7 Perception and Production of Phonemic Contrasts in Heritage Russian and Polish in Germany
- 8 Focus Realization in Heritage Spanish
- 9 Language-Specific Phonology of Heritage Perception
- 10 An Individual-Differences Perspective on Variation in Heritage Mandarin Speakers
- 11 Childhood Language Exposure
- 12 The Intonation of Declaratives and Polar Questions in Modern versus Heritage Icelandic
- 13 Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese
- 14 Have Cantonese Tones Merged in Spontaneous Speech?
- 15 Phonetics of Stop Voicing in Heritage and Homeland Polish
- 16 Perception and Production of English and Portuguese Voiceless Stops by Heritage Learners
- 17 Prosodically Conditioned Variation
- Index
- References
Summary
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.
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- The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages , pp. 280 - 301Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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