Intonation effects on Cantonese lexical tones in speaking and singing

Cantonese lexical tones are preserved in both speaking and singing (which can be regarded as a special kind of speech style). Through three phonetic experiments, the present thesis studies the intonation effects on Cantonese lexical tones in speaking and singing. An innovative theoretical framework was proposed, which is a two-dimensional matrix of pitch configuration (slope, register and span) and pitch domain (syllable level and utterance level, including utterance-body and utterance-final portions). Data analyses with this framework identified an updrift intonation in singing speech style, which stands out to be a reference for the universal declination intonation in speaking speech style. Further studies were conducted in speaking speech style with an interdisciplinary approach of phonetics and syntax: declarative and interrogative utterances with and without sentence-final particles (SFP, henceforth) were systematically compared. The results suggested that the utterance-final intonation is a kind of segmentless SFP. This study enriches the knowledge of intonation typology and provides further insight into the interrelated concepts of tone, intonation and SFP. Copyright © 2016 Lincom Academic Publishers.