Voice register in Mon: experiments in production and perception

Register is a two-way contrast realized through a bundle of phonetic properties which may include phonation type, vowel quality, and differences in pitch. Mon, an Austroasiatic language spoken in Myanmar and Thailand, is often described as a prototypical register language. However, reports differ as to which acoustic properties of register are dominant or even present in Mon, and no studies have investigated the extent to which they cue the register contrast in perception. A functional principal component analysis of acoustic and electroglottographic data from seventeen speakers of Burma Mon varieties shows that registers are acoustically differentiated primarily by covarying differences in fundamental frequency (f0) and voice quality. The results of a forced-choice identification study show that listeners are also sensitive to these phonetic properties in perception, but that f0 was the most robust cue to the register contrast. Individual variation is observed in both production and perception, but there is not a straightforward correlation between the two at the individual level. Our analysis suggests that although fundamental frequency is a highly salient cue to register in Burma Mon, it is likely a manifestation of a more general laryngeal configuration rather than a specific acoustic target.