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13 - Functional Load and Vowel Merger in Toronto Heritage Cantonese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2024

By
Holman Tse
Edited by
Rajiv Rao
Rajiv Rao
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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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.

Keywords

CantoneseCanadian Englishfunctional loadHeritage Language Variation and Change CorpusPillai scorespontaneous speechvowel merger

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Type
Chapter
Information
The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages , pp. 280 - 301
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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