It’s Not So Bad: An English Tone for Downplaying

Cantonese sentence-final particles (SFPs): o Cantonese has more than 30 SFPs. o SFPs express discourse related meanings. o Their functions and meanings are comparable to those expressed by English intonation. o They probably evolved because the complex lexical tone system of Cantonese restricts the use of intonation. o The literature has repeatedly compared the system of SFPs to the system of English intonation, and some one-to-one comparisons have been made: The SFP me1 is expressed in English by “rais[ing] your voice almost to a squeak” (Baker and Ho, 2006, p. 40). The SFP me1 can be expressed in English intonationally as “an echo question” (Chan, 2001, p. 59). Wakefield (2010) concluded that four SFPs (lo1, aa1maa3, me1, and aa4) are expressing in English as specific forms of intonation.