Vowel quantity/quality redux: Revisiting vowel contrasts in Hakha Lai monophthongs

Abstract

Previous scholars have documented a phonemic length distinction in the monophthongal vowels of Hakha Lai, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Chin State in western Myanmar (Melnik, 1997; Peterson, 2003; Maddieson, 2004). In a previous pilot study of data from two college-aged speakers (the first instrumental acoustic analysis of Hakha Chin vowel quality), our findings revealed stark individual differences: one speaker showed robust quantity and minor quality differences, while for the other, neither duration nor quality played key roles; rather, her system had merged. Maddieson (2004) proposed that the length associated with long vowels in Hakha Lai is mainly realized through lengthening of sonorant codas; we did not find this to be the case for either speaker. However, those pilot data were limited both in terms of sample size and age range. Therefore, to expand on our previous findings, we now present analysis of data from fourteen talkers, including both a group of nine college aged talkers (6 women) and five older talkers (2 women, ages 46 and 77; 3 men, ages 48, 60, and 62). Duration and quality measures are reported for all monophthongs in all possible syllable shapes.