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Tone production, tone perception and Kammu tonogenesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2006

Jan-Olof Svantesson  and
David House
Jan-Olof Svantesson
Affiliation:
Lund University
David House
Affiliation:
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
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Abstract

The Northern and Western dialects of the Mon-Khmer language Kammu use fundamental frequency to distinguish words, while the Eastern dialect relies on the contrastive voicing of initial consonants to distinguish words which display an F0 contrast in the other dialects. The production and perception of tones in the three dialects is investigated, using recordings and perception tests. As expected, Northern and Western Kammu speakers do use F0 to distinguish words, as seen both in their production and in perception tests, which show that they could distinguish small F0 differences. In contrast, Eastern Kammu speakers neither produce nor perceive F0 differences at the lexical level. Furthermore, the voiceless and voiced stops in Eastern Kammu cause smaller F0 perturbations in the following vowel than might be expected for a language undergoing tonogenesis. The significance of these results for tonogenesis is discussed, as well as their relevance for the notion of ‘tone language’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 2006 , pp. 309 - 333
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We would like to thank Damrong Tayanin for arranging the recording sessions with our subjects and for advice concerning the test material. Thanks also to Marcus Filipsson for writing the F0 algorithm used for analysis and for help with the PSOLA synthesis and to Jan Lanke for statistical advice. The field studies carried out in Laos were made possible by grants from the Erik Philip-Sörensen Foundation and Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund. We would also like to thank the guest editors of this issue and two anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of this paper and many constructive suggestions.