Variation And Overlapping Of The High, Low Rising And Mid, Low Level Tones In Guangzhou And Hong Kong Cantonese

This paper is based on the research about the long tones in Guangzhou and Hong Kong Cantonese, especially the high, low rising and mid, low level tones. The methods we used involve sociolinguistics, experimental phonetics, perception and statistics.Guangzhou and Hong Kong are neighboring to each other; both are the economic and cultural centers of southern China. Similarities on location and affinity make the two cities even closer. As the representatives of YUE dialect, the Cantonese of Guangzhou and Hong Kong share the same origin, however, as a result of different social backgrounds, they turned out to be some kind of diverse at present. There are some researches on the variation and overlapping between the low rising and the mid level tones in Hong Kong Cantonese recent years, and we find that such phenomenon appears in Guangzhou as well. More over, even the high rising and the low level tones are touched on.After obtaining a certain amount of recoding samples, we try to redefine the pitches of the six long tones, and then we focus on the variation of the four ones mentioned above.It came to a conclusion that the variation of these four tones in the two cities are generally having the same shape, while it seems much more visible in the Cantonese of Hong Kong. We suppose the variation is due to phonological features, process of tones development and utterances or intonation, which are internal; in the meantime, lacking of language guidance and specification are counted. It's necessary to deliberate how to keep Cantonese original and alive.