Tone and intonation in Cantonese English
Carlos Gussenhoven
1

2

Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University of London, UK
c.gussenhoven@let.ru.nl

Abstract
Cantonese English tonal patterns are analyzed based on thedescription provided by K.K. Luke. Results of a production
test with isolated words lead to the conclusion that thelanguage has at least three intonations, declarative, emphatic
and interrogative. The last two are expressed through theboundary tones L% and H%, while the first is characterized byhaving no boundary tone. The interaction with the word toneon the last syllable leads to a situation in which L-endingwords (whose British English counterparts have non-final
primary stress) either have a rising or a low final syllable, but
H-ending words (whose British English counterparts havefinal primary stress) have high pitch, low pitch or high rising
pitch. A comparison with British English shows that surface
contours receive very different interpretations in the two
languages.

stress and the final main stress (Chinese). If there is any
syllable after the main or primary stress (coffee, conversation,
character), it has L, and if there is any word-initial syllable
before the primary stress or before the preprimary secondarystress if there is one, it is M (about, cartoon, consideration).
These observations are illustrated in (1). In (1a,b), H-toned
words are shown, in (1c) there are two L-toned syllables after
H, in (1d) three H-toned syllables before L, in (1e) a M-tone
precedes a series of three H-tones before a final L-tone, and(1f) shows a word with two M-tones. Representative pitch
contours for the lexical words (1a,b,c,e) are shown in Fig. 1. It
will be clear that a Cantonese English word maximally has a
MHL-melody, where H and L may occur more than once.

(1) a. tea|
HIndex Terms: Hong Kong English, Cantonese English, lexical
tone, boundary tone

2. Cantonese English words
According to [1], three Cantonese lexical tones are used in
Cantonese English, H, M and L. English words are H if they
are monosyllabic (tea) or if the first syllable has secondaryc. character
| | |
H L L

d. conversation e. consideration f. into
| | | |
| | | | || |H H H LM HH H L
MM

1. Introduction
The word prosody of varieties of English that have a tone
language substrate consists of lexical tone patterns that aresystematic translations of the pitch contours occurring incitation pronunciations of the donor language, British English.
These tone patterns are likely to be a subset of the tone
patterns of the substrate language. Cantonese has seven tones,
High, Mid, Low, High Rise, Low Rise and Low Fall, but only
three of these are apparently used in Cantonese English words[1]. The sentence prosody of these tonal varieties of English
consists of concatenations of the lexical tone patterns, plus any
systematic adjustments in the pitch values of the tones, as in
the case of automatic downstep, and any additional
intonational tones, as in the case of final boundary tones.
Below, the pitch patterns of Cantonese English words arederived from the British English citation pronunciations,following a revision of the algorithm presented by Luke [1](section 2). In section 3, it is argued that concatenations of thetone patterns of words largely give the sentence prosody, withthe exception of an account of the endings of pitch contours
and their meanings and the downstepped implementation of
H- tones after M-tones. The existence of final intonationalboundary tones was not recognized by Luke. It will be argued
in section 4 that a full understanding of the pitch shapes of IPfinal words requires an account of these boundary tones andtheir interaction with the preceding lexical tones.

b. Chinese| |HH[1] analyzed the relation between British English and thetonal structure of Cantonese English as in (2). While hepresented the description as if it applied to words that havestress and whose stressed syllables are provided with a pitchaccent, his description is evidently intended as an account of
the historical development from British English to Cantonese
English. Tone patterns are lexical, and there is no necessary
implication that tones are assigned to words in Cantonese
English in the way that pitch accents are assigned to English
words. An analysis whereby tones are assigned to Cantonese
English words would imply that these words are lexicallylisted with accented syllables, like the words of Japanese, andthat accented syllables are provided with tone (pitch accents)
at a later stage. An accentual analysis for Cantonese English isin fact quite viable, as will be argued after the sentence
prosody has been dealt with. Before we get to a considerationof the merits of an accentual vs a tonal analysis, I have foundit convenient to continue the metaphor of ‘tone assignment’for ‘historical origin of the word tones’. It is also to be notedthat ‘function word’ is a fairly undefined category and that thedescription of where M-tones are assigned is far fromcomplete.
(2)a. Place MH*L on the main stress of the wordb. Place MH*L on any secondary stress pre-ceding
the main stress.
c. Place M on any function word.
d. Raise L to H if followed by either H or M.
e. Delete M after any other tone in the word.
f. Copy tones right to empty syllables.

This account can be simplified. Apart from function words,
the M-tone of the pitch accent only shows up in any word-initial syllable that is unstressed in British English. Since italso appears on function words, it can be removed from thepitch accent and be assigned by default. This leaves us with
H*L as the pitch accent, further HL. To get these H, M and L
tones to occur on any following syllables that haven’t been
provided by a tone, a spreading or copy rule was tacitly
assumed by [1]. A spreading single H-tone across all hightoned toned syllables in an IP was proposed by [2]. I haveassumed a copying rule within the word, simulating therepresentations in [1], but nothing much depends on thischoice of analysis. Copying tones to empty syllables on theright as given in (2f) gives the results shown in (1). By thisprocedure, given in (3), we lose M-Deletion.
a. Place H*L on the primary stressed syllable andany preceding stresses.
b. Raise L to H if followed by H.
c. Place M on word-initial syllables without tone andfunction words.
d. Copy tones right to empty syllables.
400

300

300

200

200

100

100

0

(t)h

0

iː

0

0.6

tʃ

aɪ

n

iː

Figure 2: F0 track and close-copy stylization of an utterance of(4) illustrating downstep of H after M (panel a) and F0 of anutterance of (5) illustrating absence of downstep ofconsecutive H-tones (panel b).

z

0

1

Pitch (Hz)Time (s)
400

400

300

300

200

200

100

100

0

(k)h æ

r ə kt h

0

0

ə
0.9

(k)h ɔ n s

ɪ d

ə

r

eɪ

ʃ ə

n

0

Time (s)Figure 1: Declarative (panels a, d), emphatic declarative(panels b, e) and interrogative (panels c, f) intonation contours
for tea (panels a, b , c) and apple (panels d, e, f).

3 Cantonese English sentences
The sentence prosody in tone languages as given by the
concatenations of the tone patterns of the words is additionallydefined by any post-lexical phonological rules, any
intonational tones and any phonetic implementation rules thathave a major impact on the pronunciation.
A cross-linguistically frequent example of this third typeis downstep. In many languages, H-tones, and any following
tones after them, are pronounced at a lower pitch than apreceding H-tone in the same domain, conditioned by thepresence or absence of intervening L-tones. Cantonese English
has downstep if one or more M-tones intervene between thetrigger-H and the target H, but consecutive H-tones arepronounced on the same pitch. As usual, downstep is iterative.
This is illustrated in Fig. 2 (panel a) for an utterance of thesentence given in (4). Here, there are two M-tones interrupting
a series of H-tones, and downstep occurs twice, on stop and on-bout, as a result. To bring out the pattern, a close-copy
stylization has been added to the measured F0-contour. By
contrast, cross-word pitch patterns of lexical words without
M-tones are strikingly high level [2]. The phrase in (5) is an
example, an utterance of which is shown in Fig. 2 (panel b).
(4)

You should stop thinking about it
HM

H H H MH M

1.3

If L only appears finally in the IP, it is a reasonablecandidate for the status of a boundary tone. Citation
intonations are declarative intonations, and declarative
intonations are typically falling or low-ending. If there were
to be an interrogative intonation with rising pitch, thedistribution of L% could be compared with that of H%. In
order to investigate this issue, a list was composed with words
a variety of stress patterns in three orthographic conditions,which was recorded by a 27-year old female native speaker.
Words ended with no punctuation mark, followed by ‘!’ andfollowed by ‘?’. This procedure led to three pitch patterns forwords which have final primary stress in British English andto two patterns for words with penultimate or antepenultimate
primary stress in British English. Specifically, words like
Chinese and tea has a pitch fall, a level tone or a pitch riseon the final syllable, with words like character and apple had
low pitch or a low-to-high rise on the final syllable. Fig. 3
gives representative results.
Pitch (Hz)400

lemon tea
| | |
H H H

Before the conclusion that L-Raising is adopted as a
post-lexical rule, it needs to be confronted with an alternative
assumption. If L only shows up on any IP-final syllables aftera H-tone in the same word, it makes sense to ‘generate’ L
only in that location. However, a tone that only appears in IPfinal position should not be analyzed as a lexical tone, but as aright-edge boundary L%. While this would remove the needfor L-Raising, there would need to be an account for the factthat it doesn’t show up when the final syllable is either H or
M. A possible analysis here would be that H in syllables withprimary stress does not copy rightward, leaving potentially
low-toned final syllables free to be associated with the L%,
while final syllables with H or M are merely lowered
somewhat through the effect of a floating L%.

400

400

400

300

300

300

200

200

200

100

100

0

0

(t)h

iː

0

0.6

100
(t)h

0

iː

0

0.6

(t)h

iː

0

0.6

Time (s)Pitch (Hz)Pitch (Hz)

(3)

(5)

400

400

400

300

300

300

200

200

200

100

100

0

æ

p

ə

0

0

l
0.75

0

100
æ

p

ə

0

l
0.75

0

æ

p

ə

l
0.75

Time (s)Figure 3. Declarative (panels a, d), emphatic declarative(panels b, e) and interrogative (panels c, f) intonation contours
for tea (panels a, b , c) and apple (panels d, e, f).
These results are surprising if the pitch contours in Fig. 3
are taken to be intonation contours. Intonation contours are
typically orthogonal with word prosodic structures. That is, it
is uncommon for the structure of the word to determine howmany of the possible intonation contours can be used.
Moreover, on the basis of the cases that have been reported,
the situation in Cantonese English wouldn’t be predicted.
They either concern avoidance of contours that involve
excessive tone crowding or avoidance of forms that would
form a precarious contrast with another form. Avoidance due
tone crowding is exemplified by the English rise-fall-rise on
monosyllables [3]. Avoidance due to poor discriminability
was reported for a fall-rise monosyllabic contour used with
one of tones of the language, in order to avoid confusion withthe other tone in a Limburgish dialect [4].
Neither case applies to Cantonese English. First, of thesix potential forms obtained by combining a fall, a rise and alevel intonation with tea and apple, the missing contour is by
far the easiest to produce, a level tone over two syllables.
Second, if there were a concern over the maintenance of thephonological contrast between M and H, both of which arelevel tones, this would be as problematic on monosyllables as
on disyllables. In fact, this contrast exists in monosyllables,
since function words have M and lexical words have H. As aresult, can ‘tin’ and the auxiliary can ‘be able’ form a tonal
minimal pair, as do inn and in, wood and would, and so on.
An example is given in (6). There is no case to be made, inother words, for form avoidance motivated by a concern forthe low perceivability of a contrast between M and H.
(14) a. The workers can fish
M H H M H
‘The workers are able to fish’b. The workers can fish
M H H H H
‘The workers put fish in tins’

Going by the distribution of the contours over theorthographic punctuation marks in the word list, the absenceof a boundary tone represents a neutral declarative intonation.
When this same intonation is used for words that have at least
one syllable after the last H-tone, like apple, the final syllable
has low pitch.
While in British English, a Fall on apple (H*L L% [6] or
H* L- L% [7]) and a Level tone on tea (H* H- L% [6] and H*
H-L% [7]) are interpreted as different intonations, inCantonese English these are instances of the same intonation,
the interrogative H%. Conversely, the implication is also thatwhile in British English a Fall on apple and a deeper Fall on
apple of the kind illustrated in Fig. 3, panels (d) and (f), countas the same intonation, in Cantonese English they must be
assumed to be instances of different intonations, neutral
declarative Ø and emphatic declarative L%. The emphatic
declarative was elicited by the exclamation mark in the script.
The three IP-final boundary conditions are given in (7).
(7)

Declarative:
Emphatic declarative:
Interrogative:

Ø
L%
H%

Assuming (3), the assignment of HL to a word like tea willlead to a deletion of L, because there is no syllable after tea
which can serve as its Tone Bearing Unit. The representationsof the contours in Fig. 3 are given in (8a, b, c) for the contours
in panels (a) (b) and (c), respectively, and in (9a, b, c) for thecontours in panels (d), (e) and (f), respectively. The
explanation for the absence of the level tone for apple is thus
provided by the fact that the word has a lexical L-tone on its
last syllable, giving a fall, regardless of whether a boundary
L% is added. And the absence of this L-tone in (8b) explains
why three contours show up for the IP-final H-toned syllable.
(8)
a. tea4. Intonational boundary tones
What requires an explanation, then, is the finding thatmonosyllabic words like tea can have level pitch, butdisyllabic words like apple do not. The difference between themonosyllabic and disyllabic words in Fig. 3 lies in the fact thatthe disyllables have a syllable after the last H-tone,
corresponding to an unstressed syllable or a post-primarystressed syllable in British English. When clause (3a) assigns a
HL pitch accent to a word-final syllable with primary stress, as
it will in the case of monosyllabic function words, the L
apparently has no reality, and should either not be assigned or
be deleted. Deletion is easily achieved if it is assumed that all
lexical tones need to be associated and that Cantonese English
has obligatory one-to-one associations between tones andsyllables. The L of HL then remains floating, and is deleted asa result.
However, under the assumption that there is no L-tone in alevel high pronunciation of words with final H, the question
arises why there is a falling contour for such words at all.
Given that both tea and apple can end in a rise, the solution
here is to assume that IPs can end in H% and in L%, and that a
H% will lead to a rise and L% to a fall. To account for thelevel pitch, which would appear to be the default pattern forwords that in British English have final primary stress, theabsence of a final boundary tone is assumed, notated Ø [5],
[6].

H Ø

b. teaH L%

c. teaH H%(9)
a. appleH L Ø

b. apple
H L L%

c. appleH LH%Intonational boundary tones have a different functional
status from lexical tones, since they represent morphemes inthemselves, rather than forming part of the representation ofmorphemes that are also specified in terms of vowels andconsonants. However, their phonological status is also
different in that they are floating, yet are not deleted. By
contrast, the L-tone of HL will delete when no syllable isavailable for it.
What does this mean for the status of Luke’s L-Raising[1]? In all positions other than the last primary stress of thelast word in the IP, it disappears on the surface, whether this is
between the H-tones within words or across words. If wemaintain the assignment of HL in (3), L-Raising becomes a
post-lexical rule and needs to be ordered after lexical Minsertion. Lexical representations of lexical words might theninclude one or two instances of HL, depending on whether thewords have a secondary stress before the primary stress, whilelexical representations of function words then have M-tones,
as will any word-initial syllables without tone. Post-lexically,
all L’s disappear except that after the last H in the IP. The
stretches of level high pitch will then arise through spreadingof H or copying of H within words, as before. Moreeconomically, words can be listed with accents in position of
H. Postlexically, H is inserted on every accented syllable,
while the last accented syllable in the IP additionally has a Ltone. Any toneless word-initial syllable receives M, and tones
spread or copy right.
(10)a. Pitch accent: H
b. Insert L after last H in the IP.
c. Place M on empty word-initial syllable
d. Copy tones rightIn (11a), an illustrative sentence iss given with lexical
representations. These are now toneless, but provided withaccents where H is needed. In (11b), H is provided to allaccents and L is added after the last, following (10b).
Subsequently, (11c) illustrates (10c), while (11d) finishes therepresentation following (10d).
(11) a. You cán’t chánge yésterday into tomórrow
b. You cán’t chánge yésterday into tomórrow
H

H

H

H L

c. You cán’t chánge yésterday into tomórrow
M H

H

H

M

M H L

d. You cán’t chánge yésterday into tomórrowM H

Hcontour over the last two syllables of words with penultimate
stress.
Two perception tests were conducted with 40 Cantonese
listeners whose second language is English in order to findsupport for these predictions. Both experiments presented
citation pronunciations, i.e. the pronunciation in IP-final
position, of final-stressed and penultimate-stressed words inwhich the F0 had been manipulated using Praat [8]. Stimuli in
Experiment I included F0 contours that were predicted to be
ill-formed, like a fall-rise on a final stressed word, and F0
contours that were attested in the production experiment. It
required listeners to (a) judge whether the pronunciation ofeach word was acceptable Cantonese English, and (b) if so, toindicate the degree to which the pronunciation was likely tosignal a question. Stimuli in Experiment II consisted of pairsof words with different F0 contours. In an adaptation of the‘passable imitation task’ used by [9], listeners were asked toindicate in each case whether the intonation on the two words
was the same or different. The results of these experiments
will be presentable at the workshop.
Since the lexical L only appears on syllables after the
stress in the last word of the IP, it stands to reason to represent
the words of Cantonese English as accented, not as tonallyspecified. Accented syllables receive H-tones post-lexically.
Tonal specifications would imply either that L-tones will need
to be deleted in words that end up in IP-medial position, or – ifthey are left out in the lexical representations, to be supplied inwords that end up in IP-final position. In this analysis,
Cantonese English thus is a language like Japanese, withunaccented words, like in, would, into, and accented words
like inn, wood, apple, consideration, etc.

H H H MM M H L

We must assume that both the primary stress and thepreprimary secondary stress are accented, following [1]. If wewere to have an accent only on the first stressed syllable in aword, it would not be clear where to stop copying H
rightwards so as to preserve the contrast between words thathave a final L and words that do not. Conversely, we could
not just have an accent on the primary stress, again speaking
in British English terms, since it would not be clear where tostop copying H leftwards so as to preserve the contrast
between words that start with M and those that do not.

5. Conclusion
Analyzing the tonal system of a language without taking theintonation into account can be risky. The danger is not justthat generalizations about the intonation are missed, but thatthe understanding of the data remains incomplete. Pitch
phenomena may be assigned to lexical tones that belong tointonational tones. Cantonese English is a case in point.
Unexpectedly from a British English point of view, falling
pitch on a final syllable with primary stress (e.g. tea, support)
is always the realization of a lexical tone (H) and a final
intonational boundary L%, while falling pitch over the lasttwo syllables of a word with penultimate stress (e.g. apple,
consideration) can be due to just lexical tone, H on the penultand L on the final syllable. The fact that in words withpenultimate stress no syllable is available for a L-tone explainsthat a falling-rising contour over the last two syllables isfunctionally equivalent to a rising contour on the final syllableof a word with final stress. Also, a level contour on the final
syllable of a word with final stress is equivalent with a falling

References[1] Luke, K.K. “Phonological re-interpretation: theassignment of Cantonese tones to English words”. ICCL
9. National University of Singapore. 2000.
[2] Cheung, Winnie H.Y. “Span of High Tones in Hong
Kong English”. Hong Kong Baptist University Papers in
Applied Linguistics 12, 19-46. 2008
[3] Leben, W.R. 1975. “The tones of English intonation”.
Linguistic Analysis 2, 69-107. 1975.
[4] Gussenhoven, C. & van der Vliet, “The tone andintonation of the Dutch dialect of Venlo”. Journal of
Linguistics 35, 99-135. 1999.
[5] Grabe, E., Comparative intonational phonology: English
and German. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute. 1998.
[6] Gussenhoven, C., The phonology of tone and intonation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004.
[7] Peters, J., Intonation deutscher Regionalsprachen.
Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. 2006.
[8] Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. PRAAT: Doing phonetics bycomputer. www.praat.org. 1992-2011.
[9] Odé, C. Neutralization or truncation? The perception of
two Russian pitch accents on utterance-final syllables.
Speech Communication 47, 71-79. 2005.