Tone and Phonation in Southeast Asian Languages

Brunelle, Marc; Kirby, James

doi:10.1111/lnc3.12182

Cited by 48 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…This requires further investigation of the Oeshi phonological-syntactic interface, especially since grammaticalization of tone and phonation is common for Tibeto-Burman languages and has been observed for the related Southern Ngwi language Akha (Hansson 2003). The phonatory alternation may go back to a form of affixation, further supporting that Tibeto-Burman languages are not strict morphologically isolating (Brunelle & Kirby 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

An acoustic analysis of tone and register in Louma Oeshi

Lew

Gruber

2016

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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Abstract. This study describes the acoustic properties associated with tone and register in Louma Oeshi, a previously unstudied Akoid language of Laos. Louma Oeshi uses three tones (High, Mid, and Low) which overlap with a tense/lax register distinction to yield a six-way suprasegmental contrast. In this paper, we (1) offer a first account of the pitch and voice quality characteristics associated with each Tone-Register pair, (2) examine further the variability in glottalization strategies signaling the constricted register, and (3) explore the influence of contrastive voice quality on pitch and vice versa, particularly as a predictor of the variation in glottalization.Keywords. tone; register; voice quality; Tibeto-Burman; Louma; Oeshi 1. Introduction. This study describes the acoustic properties associated with tone and register in Louma Oeshi (henceforth Oeshi), a previously unstudied Akoid/Hanoid language in Laos, belonging to the Southern Lolo/Ngwi subgroup of Tibeto-Burman. Like other Southern Ngwi languages, Oeshi phonology employs three tone levels (High, Mid, and Low) and an overlapping a tense/lax register distinction. In the case of Oeshi, tone and register are fully intersective such that they combine to yield a six-way suprasegmental contrast. In recent decades, the phonetic literature has shown that the boundary between what have traditionally been known as "tone" and "register" languages is often quite blurred, particularly in languages of mainland Southeast Asia (Abramson & Luangthongkum, 2009). How a mixed tone-register prosodic system weighs or emphasizes its multiple contrasts has become an issue of great interest to both phoneticians and phonologists (Silverman 1997 The complete intersection of tone and register levels in Oeshi (Lax and Tense register co-occur with each Low, Mid and High tone) indicates that the qualities are phonologically independent in the sense of Kuang (2013), but raises questions about their phonetic interaction. In addition to providing a first account of Oeshi tonal phonetics, this paper explores how voice quality settings affect pitch across the tone-register combinations, and vice versa. The preliminary data presented here suggests that pitch and voice quality are mostly independent in their phonetic production as well. That is, Oeshi speakers manipulate pitch or voice quality characteristics without great influence on the other property. There is, however, a substantial exception to this observation --High Tense tone-register words, which are noteworthy for a variety of reasons.The paper proceeds as follows. We first describe the relationship of Oeshi to other regional languages with similar, but importantly different, complex tone-register systems ( §2). After explaining our experimental methods and analytic techniques ( §3), we provide the findings ( §4) for the two most successful acoustic correlates of the six-way prosodic contrasts: F0, the fundamental frequency of the acoustic signal (tone) and *H1-H2, the

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

An acoustic analysis of tone and register in Louma Oeshi

Lew

Gruber

2016

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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“…In the case of the Burmese listeners, the difference between how lexical tones are phonetically realized in their L1 and in Mandarin may have made the cross-linguistic tone perception difficult. As described in the Introduction, Burmese is known to use phonetic features other than F0 substantially, such as phonation type and duration (e.g., Brunelle & Kirby, 2016; Thein Tun, 1982; Watkins, 2001; Wheatley, 2009). Therefore, it is possible that the Burmese listeners in this study were not accustomed to devoting their attention to variations in F0, which may be required for the processing of Mandarin lexical tones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the way in which lexical tones are encoded seems to differ substantially between Burmese and Mandarin; the former employs phonetic properties other than F0, such as phonation type and duration, to a greater extent than the latter (e.g., Brunelle & Kirby, 2016; Thein Tun, 1982; Watkins, 2001; Wheatley, 2009). Some scholars even regard Burmese as a register rather than a tonal language (Bradley, 1982).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perception of Mandarin Lexical Tones by Native Speakers of Burmese

Tsukada

Kondo

2018

Lang Speech

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This study examines the perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native speakers of Burmese who use lexical tones in their first language (L1) but are naïve to Mandarin. Unlike Mandarin tones, which are primarily cued by pitch, Burmese tones are cued by phonation type as well as pitch. The question of interest is whether Burmese listeners can utilize their L1 experience in processing unfamiliar Mandarin tones. Burmese listeners’ discrimination accuracy was compared with that of Mandarin listeners and Australian English listeners. The Australian English group was included as a control group with a non-tonal background. Accuracy of perception of six tone pairs (T1-T2, T1-T3, T1-T4, T2-T3, T2-T4, T3-T4) was assessed in a discrimination test. Our main findings are 1) Mandarin listeners were more accurate than non-native listeners in discriminating all tone pairs, 2) Australian English listeners naïve to Mandarin were more accurate than similarly naïve Burmese listeners in discriminating all tone pairs except for T2-T4, and 3) Burmese listeners had the greatest trouble discriminating T2-T3 and T1-T2. Taken together, the results suggest that merely possessing lexical tones in L1 may not necessarily facilitate the perception of non-native tones, and that the active use of phonation type in encoding L1 tones may have played a role in Burmese listeners’ less than optimal perception of Mandarin tones.

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“…The phonetic situation was undoubtedly more complex.8 Vietnamese tones, as do many languages in Mainland Southeast Asia, have a variety of phonation features, such as glottalization, breathiness, and the like, which played a part in both tonogenesis and registrogenesis (cf. Alves (1995), Brunelle and Kirby (2016)). As for Chinese, Sagart (1986Sagart ( , 1988 posited that Middle Chinese tones had secondary features, including distinctions in length, glottalization, and creakiness, before the height split which doubled the original four tone categories to eight (cf.…”

Section: Tonogenesis In Vieticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Sino-Vietnamese Lexical Data and the Relative Chronology of Tonogenesis in Chinese and Vietnamese

Alves

2018

Bull. Chin. Linguist.

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Vietnamese has numerous early-era Chinese loanwords with ngang and huyền tones, which in Middle Chinese loanwords correspond to the pingsheng level tone category, for words that should have sắc or nặng tones, corresponding to the Middle Chinese non-level qusheng departing tone category. 1 It is proposed that this layer of Early Sino-Vietnamese represents borrowing of Chinese words in the period after which Old Chinese had lost final *-s and prior to tonogenesis in Viet-Muong, thus leading to words with the level-tone category when tones emerged in Viet-Muong. This paper provides 60 items of Early Sino-Vietnamese that exemplify this phenomenon of ngang/huyền tones in qusheng words, but also 120 items exemplifying the previously noted reversal of sắc/nặng and hỏi/ngã tones between Early Sino-Vietnamese and later Sino-Vietnamese (the formalized readings of Chinese characters). Altogether, this allows for an overall relative chronology of the development of tones in both Sinitic and Vietic.

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Tone and Phonation in Southeast Asian Languages

Cited by 48 publications

References 65 publications

An acoustic analysis of tone and register in Louma Oeshi

An acoustic analysis of tone and register in Louma Oeshi

The Perception of Mandarin Lexical Tones by Native Speakers of Burmese

Early Sino-Vietnamese Lexical Data and the Relative Chronology of Tonogenesis in Chinese and Vietnamese

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