Multiple patterns of competing tone merging in Guangzhou Cantonese: A production and perception study of young speakers.

Authors

Lishan Li, Wei Lai, Xiaoying Xu

Published in

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Volume 160. Issue 5. Pages 4013-4036. Nov 01, 2026.

Abstract

Previous studies have documented multiple coexisting tone mergers-in-progress in Cantonese, but it remains unclear how these merging categories interact within the tone system and how production and perception jointly evolve in response to this interaction. This study focuses on ongoing mergers involving three low tones (T3, T4, and T6) in Guangzhou Cantonese, asking whether concurrent merging pathways develop independently or form a structured system of interaction. Production and perception data were collected from 55 younger speakers. Acoustic analyses, combined with k-means clustering and Generalized Additive Mixed Modeling (GAMM), revealed four distinct production patterns: a T3-T6 merging pattern, a T4-T6 merging pattern, a three-way merging pattern, and a maintained three-way contrast. Correlation analyses showed that advancement in the T3-T6 merging pattern is negatively associated with advancement in the T4-T6 merging pattern, indicating competition between merging pathways. In addition, progress on the T4-T6 merging pattern is positively associated with the emergence of a three-way merging pattern, suggesting that the T4-T6 merging pattern may act as the primary precursor to the three-way merging pattern. In perception, listeners maintained high discrimination accuracy across all tone pairs, although the T3-T6 contrast was consistently the most difficult. This pattern holds regardless of listeners' tone production patterns. Overall, the results highlight the importance of understanding coexisting merging patterns as interacting pathways within a dynamic system and support a production-led pathway of sound change. The trajectory partly diverges from patterns reported for Hong Kong Cantonese, shedding light on how production and perception interact in multi-path tone merging within a speech community.

PMID:
43001894
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 09 Nov 2026.

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