The role of creaky voice in Cantonese Tonal Production

Cantonese is a tonal language in which its low tones are reported to be produced with creaky voice inconsistently. The presence of the allophonic creaky voice in Cantonese has driven two hypotheses regarding its source: it is (1) a specific cue for Tone 4 identification or (2) a covariate when producing a low F0 [1]. To test whether creaky voice is tone-specific, native speakers were asked to produce Cantonese lexical tones under normal condition and low-pitch condition. Results revealed a correlation between creaky voice and low F0, and between creaky voice and prosodic positions. When participants were asked to speak in a low-pitch condition, creak occurrence increased significantly for tones other than Tone 4. The results shows that the source of Cantonese creaky voice is likely to be triggered by low F0, and is less likely to be phonemically tied to Tone 4.