14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

An Acoustical Analysis of the Diphthongs in Cantonese

Eric Zee

Phonetics Lab, Department of Chinese, Translation, and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong

The study is an acoustical analysis of the diphthongs in Hong Kong Cantonese spoken by young adult undergraduates, male and female. The onset and offset formant measurements were made as well as the durations of the onset and offset steady states and the transition between them. Results show that (1) formant frequency data provide a basis for diphthong transcription, (2) the diphthongs may be separated into two categories according to temporal organisation, and (3) the relative formant values for some of the diphthongs and vowels differ in male and female speech.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Zee, Eric (1999): "An acoustical analysis of the diphthongs in Cantonese", In ICPhS-14, 1101-1105.