INITIAL CONSANANT either voiceless or voiced consonants were VOICING PERTURBATION found to be higher in fundamental frequency than oral vowels, except in the OF THE FUNDAMENTAL younger age group where the fundamental FREQUENCY OF ORAL frequency of nasal vowels following voiced VOWELS AND NASAL consonants was lower than that of the oral vowels following voiced consonants. VOWELS: A CONTROVERSIAL CASE 1. Introduction FROM BAN DOI PWO KAREN According to linguistic classification (Grimes 1988), the languages spoken in Phanintra Teeranon1 Southeast Asia (SEA) can be grouped into five language families: Tai-Kadai (e.g. Abstract Thai); Miao-Yao (e.g. Miao, White Hmong); Sino-Tibetan (e.g. Chinese, This paper aims to analyze the acoustic Burmese); Austroasiatic or Mon-Khmer characteristics of initial consonant voicing (e.g. Vietnamese, Mon, Khmer); and perturbation of the fundamental frequency Austronesian (e.g. Malay, Javanese). The of oral vowels and nasal vowels of Ban languages in these five families contain 3 Doi Pwo Karen. Three age groups of main variations and are classified as the informants were selected: over-sixty years following: tonal languages (e.g. Thai, old (>60), middle aged (35-45), and Chinese); non-tonal languages (e.g. Malay, under-twenty years old (<20). The Indonesian); and register languages (e.g. acoustic analysis method was employed to Chong, Mon). The distinctive feature of analyze the mean vowel duration (msec), Tai-Kadai, Miao-Yao and Sino-Tibetan is mean vowel amplitude (dB), and mean tone. In contrast, most of the Mon-Khmer vowel fundamental frequency (Hz). The and Austronesian languages are non-tonal results show that voiceless initial languages. At present, however, a number consonants tend to cause a lower of non-tonal languages and register fundamental frequency than that of the languages, such as some of the languages voiced initial consonants. This has excited of New Caledonia in the Austronesian controversy concerning the tonogenesis family and some Khmer dialects in the theory of initial voicing perturbation on Mon-Khmer family, have been found to vowels. However, it was later found that have changed from a stage of tonelessness the vowels followed by voiceless initial to that of a tonal language. Some of the consonants were breathy and it was the present tonal languages have also been voice register of vowels that caused the found to have shifted their number of low fundamental frequency values. In tones, that is to say, increasing the number contrast to other studies, the nasal vowels of tones or decreasing the number of were not always higher in fundamental tones. This process of transformation is frequency when compared to oral vowels. widely discussed as tonal evolution or the In all age groups, nasal vowels following tonogenesis theory (Matisoff 1973). 1 In the year 1954, Haudricourt (1954) Assistant Professor, School of Liberal Arts, claimed that the Vietnamese language, Mae Fah Luang University Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:21:47AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities Regular 15.2, 2012 which is tonal, had derived its tones from Chiangrai, the identical phenomenon its non-tonal ancestral language. seems to be appearing in some words. It Therefore, he proposed that Vietnamese has been observed that an initial voiceless should be classified as a language in the consonant has initiated a lower tone, while Mon-Khmer family, not as it had a voiced initial consonant has initiated a previously classified, Sino-Tibetan. He higher tone. This corresponds to what had argued that the main influences causing been found in T’iensin. Therefore, the tone birth in the Vietnamese language had objective of this study is to attest to the been the loss of initial and final fundamental frequency behaviour of consonants (See Table 1). Since then, vowels influenced by initial consonant Haudricourt’s proposal has been broadly voicing in Ban Doi Pwo Karen. This study verified by linguists (Matisoff 1973, intends to investigate pitch behaviour in Maddieson 1984, L-Thongkum 1988, L- the vowels following voiceless and voiced Thongkum et al. 2007, Thurgood 2007, initial consonants, i.e to investigate etc.). Following this, others have proposed whether or not the voiceless consonant new influences that give birth to tones, for induces a high pitch, while the voiced instance, the influence of the high-low consonant induces a low pitch. dimension of vowels. Up to the present, linguists have discovered the various 2. Literature review influences of consonants and vowel quality on the tonal evolution of the five Tonogenesis is the study of tone evolution Southeast Asian language families. These or tone development in languages, influences are; 1. Internal factors, (i) especially in Southeast Asian languages. monosyllabicization (ii) initial consonants Prior to linguistics publishing linguistic (iii) vowel quality (iv) final consonants, results, many comparativists tried to and 2. external factors. Both internal and reconstruct a proto-language to demonstrate external factors have been claimed, that languages may form more contrastive seemingly, as universal phenomena. pitches—that is, tones—through changes in the initial and final consonant features in Data from published studies proves SEA their parent languages. This concept was languages to have developed tones by a first introduced by Przyluski (1924). A similar influence of consonants and classical model of tonal evolution has been vowels. The most established factor proven in the Vietnamese language by causing tone birth and development is Haudricourt (1954) and has later been initial consonant voicing; the voiced clarified by Matisoff (1973). consonant changing to a voiceless consonant causing a low pitch or low tone According to Table 1, the Vietnamese in the later state. This is accepted to be a language in the early 6th century was a universal phenomenon by linguists non-tonal language. Its syllables during studying SEA languages. However, an this period were of (i) the open type, uncommon phenomenon has emerged ending in a vowel /*-∅/ or a nasal from a dialect of Cantonese, T’ientsin, in consonant /*-N/, and (ii) the closed type, which a high tone was found to have ending in a fricative /*-h/ or a glottal stop developed from an initial voiced consonant. This was reported in 1977 (Li /*-ʔ/. There were, in addition, two types of 1977). In the Pwo Karen of Ban Doi, voicing distinction for initial consonants: 40 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 01:21:47AM via free access Initial Consonant Voicing Perturbation voiceless /p-/ and voiced /b-/. The loss of Glottal fricatives, /*-h/ or glottal stops, /*-ʔ/ final consonants, /*-N/, /*-h/, /*-ʔ/, caused alone are not the primary cause of falling or phonologically distinctive pitches or rising pitch but abrupt glottal stops [-ʔ tones to emerge, namely level, falling and abrupt] and [-h nonbreathy] relate to the rising tones, as shown in Table 2. raising of pitch or to a high pitch and a By the end of the 12th century, the number creaky glottal stop [-ʔ creaky] and a breathy of tones had increased to six through the final -h [-ɦ breathy] relate to the lowering of loss of initial consonant voicing, as shown pitch or a low pitch (Thurgood 2007). in Table 3. As the voiced initial consonants lost their voicing, /*b-/ > /*p-/, In short, linguists have become aware of low and high tones emerged to avoid many universal phenomena which are homophones. Tones emerged to replace thought to give birth to tones: 1. internal consonant voicing and to differentiate factors, (i) monosyllabicization (ii) initial word meanings. That is to say, when /*p-/ consonants (iii) vowel quality (iv) final became /p/, a high tone resulted, and when consonants, and 2. external factors. /*b-/ became /p/, a low tone resulted. 2.1 Internal factors The study of tonal evolution or tonogenesis has developed into a long 2.1.1 Monosyllabicization progression, following the statement of the theory of consonant effect on the According to Matisoff (1973), languages development of contrastive tones in the whose basic syllable structures are Vietnamese language. monosyllabic in form are likely to develop tones. Most of the words in a language Recently, Thurgood (2007) revised the consist of stressed and unstressed model of Haudricourt (1954); explaining syllables. An unstressed syllable tends to that pitch assignment occurs not from the drop more than a stressed one (Thach consonant-based account but from the 1999). This may possibly result in the laryngeal-based or voice quality. This is creation of monosyllabic words and even due to instability in assigning pitch to the bring homophones into a language. syllable from initial consonant types and However, languages create tones to final consonants. distinguish word meanings and also to avoid having homophones. Several studies In the case of initial consonants, it is have regarded monosyllabicization as the argued, it is not Haudircourt’s initial source of tone birth in the five language consonant types but the voice quality, families of SEA (Henderson 1982, L- breathy voice, tense voice and clear voice, Thongkum 1984, Matisoff 1973, Teeranon that assigns pitch to the syllable. Mostly, a 2008, Thach 1999, Thurgood 1999). Table breathy voice induces low pitch, a tense 4 examines monosyllabicization in the voice high pitch and a clear voice mid Kiengiang Dialect of the Khmer language. pitch. In the case of the unstressed syllable, the first syllable of each word tends to drop Considering final