An Experimental Analysis of Teotepec Chatino Tones

Proceedings of ConSOLE XVI, 2008

The Journal of the Acoustical …, 2010

In this paper we examine the status of lexical tones in Sylheti. Sylheti is generally considered to be one of the varieties of Bangla (belonging to the Indo-Aryan language family). The consonant inventory of Sylheti has undergone significant reduction and restructuring, and lost all the aspirated stops due to obstruent weakening ([bhai>bai] „brother‟, [lat̪hi> lat̪i] „kick‟) and spirantization of the underlying voiceless bilabial stop (both aspirated and unaspirated) [p] and [ph] ([por] > [ɸɔr] „read, [phul] > [ɸul] „flower) and voiceless velar stop (both aspirated and unaspirated) [k] and [kh] ([kali] > [xali] „ink‟, [ [khal > xal] „drain/channel‟). These processes gave birth to numerous homophones. Eight native speakers of Sylheti participated in a production experiment which recorded their utterances of 60 homophonous words (in a carrier sentence). However, in this paper we have concentrated only on the tonal properties of 24 monosyllabic words. The results show that the loss of breathy voice contrast and spirantization is compensated with a higher f0 in the adjacent vowels. The result of one-way ANOVA shows a highly significant effect of tone on f0 (measured at various points such as f0 at vowel mid-point (measured in Mel) p < 0.05, [F (1, 414) = 67.06, p = 0.00)], max pitch (measured in Mel) p < 0.05, [F (1, 414) = 26.21, p = 0.00], min pitch (measured in Mel) p < 0.05, [F (1, 414) = 40.83, p = 0.00], average pitch (in Mel) p < 0.05, [F (1, 414) = 48.18, p = 0.00]. Index Terms: Sylheti, [+spread glottis], spirantization, homophone, tone, tonogenesis, production, perception.

1999

1974

This annotated bibliography, which has been entered into the SOLAR Bibliography File, focuses on the phonetics and phonology of tone, including studies on the physiology of phonation and pitch control, pitch perception, inherent pitch of vowels, the interaction of tone with musical melody in tone languages, and other related issues. An attempt has been made to cover all the major contributions to such subjects as the phonological epresentation of tone, the nature of downdrift, the interaction of pitch and consonant types, and to include many phonological descriptions of tone or°p itch accent° systems. The main entries, totaling 550, are listed in alphabetical sequence by author. In addition to the bibliographic citation, a list of keywords is provided for each entry. Abstracts are given for virtually all entries. An index is provided from an alphabetical listing of all the keywords, the language names and families, and the geographical areas of languages referred to in the entries. (KM) BEST COPY AVAILABLE sicr Ji://lyrasve,.5ft-e7.T

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1973

2002