Quantity, quality, both or neither? Vowel contrasts in Hakha Chin monophthongs

Abstract

Hakha Chin—a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Chin State in western Myanmar—is reported to have phonemic length distinctions in its monophthongs (Melnik, 1997; Peterson, 2003; Maddieson, 2004) (e.g., [ii] vs. [i], [aa] vs. [a]). These pairs are also sometimes represented with tense/lax vowels (e.g., [i] vs. [ɪ], [a] vs. [ə]) (Peterson, 2017). Indeed, the results of a perception study conducted by Mortenson and Van Bik (2002) found variable response patterns in different dialect groups. Listeners from Hakha, the city after which the language is named, relied heavily on spectral cues related to quality to distinguish between long and short vowels, while listeners from the town of Thanthlang relied mainly on durational cues to perform the same task. In the current study, we present the first instrumental acoustic analysis of Hakha Chin vowel quality in order to aid in elucidating the nature of the contrast. Data from three college-aged native speakers (two male) suggest that neither duration nor quality play key roles in distinguishing between the so-called long and short vowels of Hakha Chin. Rather, as originally suggested by Maddieson (2004), the length associated with long vowels is mainly realized through lengthening of sonorant codas.