A Study of the Cantonese Hearsay Particle wo from a Tonal Perspective

Leung, Wai Mun

doi:10.5296/ijl.v1i1.204

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…Besides this evidential particle, it has been argued that Cantonese also has a mirative marker: the particle wo3 which marks information that is unexpected for the speaker (Luke 1990;Matthews 1998;Hara & McCready 2017). 7 Leung (2009) mentions that wo3 was initially used as an hearsay evidential, and only later became a mirative particle, in line with the general semantic change paths from evidentials to miratives discussed by Aikhenvald (2012).…”

Section: Mirativity In Cantonesementioning

confidence: 82%

From additivity to mirativity: The Cantonese sentence final particle <i>tim1</i>

Winterstein

Lai

Lee

et al. 2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper studies the Cantonese sentence final particle tim1 and more generally the semantics of additive particles. The range of meanings conveyed by tim1 appears quite broad, covering both scalar and non-scalar additive readings as well as mirative ones. We argue in favor of separating an additive tim1-particle and a mirative one. Our claims are based on their semantic differences but also on syntactic and acoustic differences. We formalize the meaning of each of these particles using a probabilistic argumentative framework which helps us define the scale with which tim1 associates, namely an argumentative scale which is relative to speaker's goal in the discourse. In doing so we also contrast the meaning of each particle with similar elements in other languages. We use these descriptions to claim that the mirative reading is the result of a metonymic semantic shift of the additive reading of the particle, and discuss paths of semantic change for additive particles in natural language from a cross-linguistic perspective.Abstract This paper studies the Cantonese sentence final particle tim1 and more generally the semantics of additive particles. The range of meanings conveyed by tim1 appears quite broad, covering both scalar and non-scalar additive readings as well as mirative ones. We argue in favor of separating an additive tim1-particle and a mirative one. Our claims are based on their semantic differences but also on syntactic and acoustic differences. We formalize the meaning of each of these particles using a probabilistic argumentative framework which helps us define the scale with which tim1 associates, namely an argumentative scale which is relative to speaker's goal in the discourse. In doing so we also contrast the meaning of each particle with similar elements in other languages. We use these descriptions to claim that the mirative reading is the result of a metonymic semantic shift of the additive reading of the particle, and discuss paths of semantic change for additive particles in natural language from a cross-linguistic perspective.

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Section: Mirativity In Cantonesementioning

confidence: 82%

From additivity to mirativity: The Cantonese sentence final particle <i>tim1</i>

Winterstein

Lai

Lee

et al. 2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…Functionally, they are often said to be the equivalent of intonation in English (Wakefield, 2011). The SFPs are potentially good variables for FVC, because they have a high frequency of occurrence in daily use (Leung, 2009). However, there is no empirical study showing the exact frequency of occurrence of each SFPs, which is probably due to the high variability of different types of SFPs (e.g., "ah, lah, wor, ga").…”

Section: Segmental Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of sampling variability on overall performance and individual speakers’ behaviour in likelihood ratio-based forensic voice comparison

Wang

2022

IJSLL

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In the past years, there is increasing awareness and acceptance among forensic speech scientists of using Bayesian reasoning and likelihood ratio (LR) framework for forensic voice comparison (FVC) and expressing expert conclusions. Numerous studies have explored overall performance using numerical LRs. Given that the data used for validation is a sample coming from an unknown distribution, little attention has been paid to the effect of sampling variability or individuals' behaviour. This thesis investigates these issues using linguistic-phonetic variables. First, it investigates how different configurations of training, test and reference speakers affect overall performance. The results show that variability in overall performance is mostly caused by varying the test speakers, while less variability is caused by sampling variability in the reference and training speakers. Second, this thesis explores the effect of sampling variability on overall performance and individuals' behaviour in relation to the use of linguistic-phonetic features. Results show that sampling variability affects overall performance to different extents using different features, while combining more features does not always improve overall performance. Sampling variability has limited effects on individuals in same-speaker comparisons, and most speakers are less affected by sampling variability in different-speaker comparisons when four or more features are used. Third, this thesis explores the effect of sampling variability on overall performance in relation to score distributions. Results reveal that system validity and reliability are more affected by differentspeaker score skewness, and less affected by same-speaker score skewness. Using different calibration methods reduces the effect of sampling variability to different extents. The resultsin this thesis have implications for both FVC using numerical LRs and FVC in general, as experts need to make pragmatic decisions whether numerical LR is used or not, and every decision made has implication to final evaluation results. Further, the results on score skewness and different calibration methods have potential contribution for improving FVC performance using automatic systems.

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“…Functionally, they are often said to be the equivalent of intonation in English (Wakefield 2011). These particles are potentially good variables for FVC because they occur frequently in daily usage (Leung 2009). The number of different sentence final particles in Cantonese ranges from 30 (Kwok 1984) to 95 depending on how one counts them (e.g.…”

Section: Filled Pauses In Ssbementioning

confidence: 99%

effect of speaker sampling in likelihood ratio based forensic voice comparison

Wang

Hughes

Foulkes

2019

IJSLL

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Within the field of forensic voice comparison (FVC), there is growing pressure for experts to demonstrate the validity and reliability of the conclusions they reach in casework. One benefit of a fully data-driven approach that utilises databases of speakers to compute numerical likelihood ratios (LRs) is that it is possible to estimate validity and reliability empirically. However, little is known about the stability of LR output as a function of the specific speakers sampled for use in the training, test, and reference data sets. The present study addresses this issue using two large sets of formant data: Cantonese sentence final particle /a/ and British English filled pauses UM. Experiments were replicated 100 times varying the (1) training, test and reference speakers, (2) training speakers only, (3) test speakers only, and (4) reference speakers only. The results show that varying the speakers in all three sets has the greatest effect on system stability for both the Cantonese and English variables, with the Cllr varying from 0.60 to 0.97 for /a/ and 0.32 to 1.33 for UM. However, this variability is primarily due to the effects of uncertainty in the test set. Varying only the training speaker speakers has the least effect on system stability for /a/ (Cllr range: 0.76 to 0.88), while varying reference speakers has the smallest effect for UM (Cllr range: 0.40 to 0.54). The results indicate that in LR-based FVC it is important to assess the stability of system as a function of the samples of speakers used (Cllr range) rather than just reporting a single Cllr value based on one configuration of speakers in each set. The study contributes to the general debate on reporting uncertainty in LR computation.

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A Study of the Cantonese Hearsay Particle wo from a Tonal Perspective

Cited by 12 publications

References 10 publications

From additivity to mirativity: The Cantonese sentence final particle <i>tim1</i>

From additivity to mirativity: The Cantonese sentence final particle <i>tim1</i>

The effect of sampling variability on overall performance and individual speakers’ behaviour in likelihood ratio-based forensic voice comparison

effect of speaker sampling in likelihood ratio based forensic voice comparison

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