This study investigates the intonation in Cantonese. Previous studies showed that questions can be cued by final rising in Cantonese. Moreover, the presence of a large amount of sentence final particles suggests that a boundary tone may be an important part of the Cantonese intonation system, which is contrary to Mandarin in which the global raising of F0 is more important than the boundary effect. While previous studies focused on the tone-intonation interaction caused by the final rising, this study investigates the phonetic profiles of both final rising and the global raising in Cantonese questions. Results showed that final rising is an essential cue for Cantonese questions while significant global raising was not observed, indicating a boundary tone in Cantonese.
['Bo Robert Xu', 'Peggy Mok']
FINAL RISING AND GLOBAL RAISING IN CANTONESE INTONATION