Comparison of sentence final particles between Cantonese child-directed and adult-directed speech

Abstract

Conversation in Cantonese is characterized by a large number of Sentence Final Particles (SFPs). The current study compared the relative frequency of occurrence, duration and fundamental frequency (F0) of 7 common SFPs in a corpus of child-directed speech (CDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) produced by 26 Cantonese-speaking mothers in a naturalistic context. Results demonstrated that the relative frequency of occurrence was significantly higher in CDS. The main effect of register on duration and F0 of SFPs, after controlling for speech rate and mean pitch, respectively, was not significant. However, the interaction effects of register and speech rate on the duration of the SFPs and the interaction effect of register and mean pitch on the F0 of the SFPs were significant, suggesting that caregivers make adjustments when they generally slowed down their speech and raise the pitch. Such qualitative and quantitative differences of the SFPs may imply that CDS serves the pragmatic functions of gaining children’s and engage them in the conversation.