Laryngeal contrasts in the Tai dialect of Cao Bằng

The Tai dialect spoken in Cao Bằng province, Vietnam, is at an intermediate stage between tonal register split and the accompanying transphonologization of a voicing contrast into a dual-register tone system. While the initial sonorants have completely lost their historical voicing distinction and developed a six-way tonal contrast, the obstruent series still preserves the original voicing contrast, leaving the tonal split incomplete. This paper presents the first acoustic study of tones and onsets in Cao Bằng Tai. Although f0, VOT, and voice quality were all found to play a role in the system of laryngeal contrasts, the three speakers considered varied in terms of the patterns of acoustic cues used to distinguish between onset types, particularly the breathy voiced onset //. From the diachronic perspective, our findings may help to explain why the reflex of modal pre-voiced stops (*b) can be either aspirated or unaspirated voiceless stops.</jats:p

The Phonology Of Proto-Tai

Proto-Tai is the ancestor of the Tai languages of Mainland Southeast Asia. Modern Tai languages share many structural similarities and phonological innovations, but reconstructing the phonology requires a thorough understanding of the convergent trends of the Southeast Asian linguistic area, as well as a theoretical foundation in order to distinguish inherited traits from universal tendencies, chance, diffusion, or parallel development. This dissertation presents a new reconstruction of Proto-Tai phonology, based on a systematic application of the Comparative Method and an appreciation of the force of contact. It also incorporates a large amount of dialect data that have become available only recently. In contrast to the generally accepted assumption that Proto-Tai was monosyllabic, this thesis claims that Proto-Tai was a sesquisyllabic language that allowed both sesquisyllabic and monosyllabic prosodic words. In the proposed reconstruction, it is argued that Proto-Tai had three contrastive phonation types and six places of articulation. It had plain voiceless, implosive, and voiced stops, but lacked the aspirated stop series (central to previous reconstructions). As for place of articulation, Proto-Tai had a distinctive uvular series, in addition to the labial, alveolar, palatal, velar, and glottal series typically reconstructed. In the onset, these consonants can combine to form tautosyllabic clusters or sequisyllabic structures. Regarding the rime, PT had seven vowel qualities that contrasted in height, backness, and rounding. A vowel length contrast also existed for each quality. Palatal and lateral consonants also occurred in the coda in addition to the final consonants generally assumed. Furthermore, Proto-Tai was a tonal language whose four tonal categories *ABCD contrasted both in terms of pitch and voice quality. Many of these Proto-Tai traits are not attested in modern Tai languages. The current reconstruction of Proto-Tai phonology is thus a demonstration of the power of the Comparative Method as well as the role that phonological theory can play in reconstruction. This thesis presents a picture of the history of Tai languages as characterized by divergent changes overridden by waves of convergent trends that transformed Proto-Tai into a network of typologically homogenous dialects that differ markedly from their parent. This analysis offers a comprehensive account of the transformation of the Proto-Tai phonology into modern systems

The Tai Ahom Sound System as Reflected by the Texts Recorded in the Bark Manuscripts

Tai Ahom (Southwestern Tai) mostly survives in manuscripts. (Terwiel 1988; Morey 2015). It has long been held that Ahom retained many archaic features lost in most modern Tai languages. For example, Li (1977: pp87-89) reconstructs the cluster *phr- as evidence from Ahom in words like phra ‘rock’ and phrai ‘walk’. However, Diller (1992), argues that Ahom exhibited the “pan-Tai consonant mergers of the sort in which the sounds of the “low series consonants presumably fell together with certain of the others” and hence is not archaic. In order to uncover the true nature of Ahom, this paper investigates how each of Ahom graph relates to the reconstructed proto phonemes in the Proto-Southwestern branch (Li 1977; Pittayaporn 2009). Our analysis was based on eight carefully analyzed manuscripts, identified allographic variations, suggesting mergers and retentions of Tai phonemic contrasts are common among the modern Shan varieties and the lack of archaic features claimed by earlier authors

Mapping between Lexical Tones and Musical Notes in Thai Pop Songs

The aim of this paper is to examine the parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions in Thai pop songs based on the data from 30 current pop songs. The results suggest that there is a statistically significant parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions. Interestingly, the results show that both contour tones, RISING and FALLING, typically pattern with HIGH with respect to the mapping between tonal transitions and note transitions. Nevertheless, when two FALLING occur consecutively, the offset of the second one is used for mapping. Our results seem to find further support for decomposability of contour tones in Thai. Furthermore, they suggest that Thai pop music composition does not strive to maximize parallel transitions but prefer to avoid opposing transitions. 1