| Cantonese Sociolinguistic Patterns joins the Theory of Lexical Diffusion with sociolinguistic methodology for the micro-synchronic study of sound change in Hong Kong Cantonese. The phonetic, lexical, and social dimensions of two sound changes are investigated: Standard Cantonese /n/(, )(--->) /m/ and SC kw- (--->) k-/ (C). A total of 75 subjects ranging in age from 15 to 75 with all but seven born and raised in Hong Kong were interviewed. The subjects' use of the n/m(, )and kw-/k- variables under formal and informal speech conditions was correlated with the age, sex, and educational level of the subjects. The change SC /n/(, )(--->) /m/ first began with the word SC(, )/n/ "five" which developed the syllabic bilabial nasal variant as the result of labial assimilation. The change has not affected all lexical members of the(, )n-class in the same way: is more advanced in the change to /m/ in terms of the number of speakers who use this pronunciation than are and . For most subjects age and educational level inversely correlate with the subject's use of /m/: for example, the majority of young men between the ages of 15 and 22 use 100% /m/ in their casual speech but those having 11 to 13 years of schooling use an average of 25% less /m/ in their readng pronunciation than their agemates having 10 years or less of schooling. Men and women over the age of 45, regardless of their educational level, do not use /m/ in either their casual speech or formal speech.;The phonetic cause of the delabialization of labialized velar initials is attributed to speakers following the principle of maximum ease of articulation. The difference between SC /kwo(C)/ and /ko(C)/ is the extra tension in lip-rounding of the labialized velar initial. Loss of the tension in rapid speech would give rise to the delabialized variant. Homophony has resulted from the loss of the phonemic contrast between SC /kwo(C)/ and SC /ko(C)/, but it has not created any burden of miscommunication since the variant has replaced the standard form for many speakers. In reading pronunciation the high frequency words , , and are more advanced in the change to /ko(C)/ than the low frequency words and . The very low frequency words , , and are even more advanced in the change to /k-/ than the high frequency words. The majority of subjects--46 out of 75--have a completed change to the plain velar in informal speech; 35 of the 46 subjects were under the age of 30. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI... |
