Mon voice registers: Acoustics and laryngeal control
Arthur S. Abramsonn, Mark Tiede, Theraphan Luangthongkum · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2013
Mon is spoken in many villages in Thailand and Myanmar. The dialect of Ban Nakhonchum, Ratchaburi Province, Thailand, has two voice registers, modal and breathy, phonation types that, along with other phonetic properties, commonly distinguish registers. Four native speakers recorded several repetitions of 14 randomized words (seven minimal pairs) for acoustic analysis. We used a subset of these pairs for listening tests to verify the perceptual robustness of the distinction. Four speakers, three of the original ones and one new one, were also recorded using electroglottography (EGG) while repeating the word set several times. The listening tests showed the distinction to be robust. Acoustic analysis of both sets of recordings was done using the UCLA VoiceSauce program. Differences in noise component (ratio of harmonics to noise and cepstral peak prominence), spectral slope, fundamental frequency, and formant frequencies all differ across the registers. For analysis of the EGG data we used the UCLA EGGWorks program to obtain closure quotient (CQ) measures. CQ was significantly different for all four speakers with higher values for the modal register. The salience of these cues in maintaining the register distinction will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH grants and the Thailand Research Fund.]