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Tonogenesis in Khmer: A cross-dialect comparison| old_uid | 12451 |
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| title | Tonogenesis in Khmer: A cross-dialect comparison |
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| start_date | 2013/05/16 |
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| schedule | 13h30 |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | Ampère, salle Jacques Cartier |
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| summary | Unlike many languages of Southeast Asia, Khmer is not a tone language. Nonetheless, a nascent pitch-based contrast, which covaries with the loss of /r/, has been noted in several dialects since at least the 1960s (e.g. Noss, 1966). While tonogenesis is well-documented in languages of Southeast Asia, the manner by which it might be taking place in Khmer has not been reported for any other language.
Here, I compare acoustic and perceptual data on the emergence of F0-based contrast in two varieties of Khmer: the colloquial speech of the capital Phnom Penh (PP), and the dialect spoken in Gi ”ng Ri ¡ng district, KiÍn Giang province, Vietnam (KG). The results provide new data on the phonetic realization of this ongoing sound change, suggesting that while F0 has become a necessary and sufficient cue to this contrast in both dialects, it is primary in KG in a way that it may not be in PP, where additional cues appear to be active in both production and perception. I propose a perceptual explanation, based on the frication and devoicing of /r/, that may have been responsible for this unusual sound change. |
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| responsibles | Loevenbruck, Welby |
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