The Influence of Initial Consonants on the Intrinsic Pitch of High and Low Vowels in the Malay Dialect Spoken in Pathumthani Province, Thailand

Abstract

High vowels tend to have higher intrinsic F0 (pitch) than low vowels (e.g. Lehiste, 1970; Whalen and Levitt, 1995). Higher intrinsic F0 occurs on vowels which follow voiceless consonants, lower intrinsic F0 occurs on vowels which follow voiced consonants. When high vowels follow voiced consonants and low vowels follow voiceless consonants, the voicing of initial consonants has been found to counterbalance the intrinsic F0 value of high and low vowels. In other words, voiced consonants will lower F0 values of high vowels, and voiceless consonants will raise F0 values of low vowels to the extent that the average F0 of these high vowels is actually lower than the average F0 of the low vowels under examination (Clark and Yallop, 1990; House and Fairbanks, 1953; Lehiste, 1970; Lehiste and Peterson, 1961; Laver, 1994). To test whether this counterbalance finding is applicable to Southeast Asian languages, the F0 values of high and low vowels following voiceless and voiced consonants were studied in a Malay dialect of the Austronesian language family spoken in Pathumthani Province, Thailand.