Relative role of pitch vs. phonation cues in White Hmong tone identification

Abstract

This study investigates the relative importance of phonation and pitch cues in (White) Hmong tone identification. Hmong has seven productive tones, two of which involve non-modal phonation. The breathy tone is usually produced with a mid- or high-falling pitch contour similar to the high-falling modal tone. Similarly, aside from some pitch differences between the low modal tone and the low-falling creaky or checked tone, production studies have shown that the phonation differences between the two tones are large. Fifteen native listeners participated in two perception tasks, in which they were asked to indentify the word they heard. In the first task, participants heard natural stimuli with manipulated F0 and duration (phonation unchanged). Results indicate that the phonation of the stimulus is important in identifying the breathy tone, but not the creaky one. Duration and F0 were more closely tied to creaky tonal identification than phonation. In the second task, source spectrum components were manipulated to create stimuli ranging from modal to breathy sounding, with the F0 held constant. The results of this task indicate that changes in H1-H2 and H2-H4 are independently important for distinguishing breathy from modal phonation when F0 is held constant. [Work supported by NSF and NIH]