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Question intonation in Hong Kong English: Interaction between Cantonese and English

Different sentence types are cued by various intonation patterns in English. Statements are uttered with a falling pitch while questions are cued by a raising pitch over the whole utterance. The intonation of questions in Cantonese, however, is signalled by a rising pitch at the second half of the last syllable. The current study investigates the intonation of statements and questions in Hong Kong English (HKE) to examine potential interaction of the two donor languages in HKE. Nineteen HKE speakers were recorded reading English and Cantonese sentences of different sentence types. Results showed that the intonation patterns of questions in HKE have mixed characteristics. They were cued by a final rising like Cantonese, but the rising was earlier than that in Cantonese, which may be affected by English.