ISCA Archive Interspeech 2016
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2016

Diphthongization of Nuclear Vowels and the Emergence of a Tetraphthong in Hetang Cantonese

Wenqi Hu, Fang Hu, Jian Jin

This paper is an acoustic phonetic description of vowels in Hetang Cantonese, and focuses on the diphthongization of nuclear vowels. Different to the representative dialect such as Guangzhou or Hong Kong Cantonese, the Hetang dialect exhibits its unique characteristics regarding the phonetics and phonology of vowels. A noticeable phenomenon is the diphthongization of nuclear vowels. And, a tetraphthong [uɔᵄi] emerges when the nuclear vowel is diphthongized in a triphthong.