From Intonation to Tone: the case of utterance-final particles 'aa' and 'wo' in Cantonese

Abstract

This paper points out that some utterance-final particles in Cantonese can bear different boundary tones, which gives rise to a set of quasi-homophones that contrast merely in pitch, e.g. (a) “aaH”, “aaL”, “aaR” and (b) “woR”, “woL”, “woH”. These two sets of quasi-homophonous particles have four suprasegmen- tal sources: “aaR” is resulted from contraction of the compound “aa-haaR”; the evidential marker “woR” is likely to have been grammaticalized from waa33/waa23 “say”; the remainder emerged through localization of the boundary tones: [H] and [L]. The high tone of the particles originated from [H], which signals invitation of the interlocutor’s active participation in speech act, whereas the low tone originated from [L], whose pragmatic func- tion is to indicate that the speaker does not expect the interlocutor to further participate in speech exchange.

本文提出粤语某些句末语气助词当承载不同边界调时，能产生一套只有调值差别的近音句末语气助词：甲、“呀H”、“呀L”、“呀R”；乙、“喎R”、“喎L”、“喎H”。这两组句末助词的声调有四种来源：“呀R”是由合成助词“呀嗄”简化而来；“喎R”极可能是从“话”虚化成据由助词后所带的字调；其它的是在两个提示话语行为的边界调作用下，通过调型字调化而形成的。其中，高调值(H)源于边界调【H】，其语用功能为邀请受话者进行积极话语活动；低调值(L)源于边界调【L】，其语用功能为说话者没有跟受话者进一步进行话语交流的期望。