An Acoustic Phonetic Study of the Intonation of Sentence-Final Particles in Hong Kong Cantonese

Abstract

This paper attempts to illustrate the interaction of sentence-final particles and intonation in Hong Kong Cantonese using acoustic phonetic analysis. The system of sentence-final particles is very rich in Cantonese, and these particles serve similar functions as intonation in intonation languages. How intonation and sentence-final particles work in the language, and how the pitch levels and contours on the sentence-final particles compare to the lexical tones in the language are discussed.