Realization of Cantonese Rising Tones under Different Speaking Rates

The two Cantonese rising tones, high-rising and low/mid-low rising tones, are found to maintain their distinct slopes of F0(fundamental frequency)-rise and offset F0 under different speaking rates. This suggests the two as possible acoustic cues for rising tone discrimination. The rising contours, under whichever speaking rate, reside in area temporally near the syllable offset. Furthermore, through tests with different alignment methods, the rising contours are found to show the most significant overlap when aligning with offset of the host syllable. Finally, discussions on characterization of rising tones within the Target Approximation (TA) model are presented.