Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
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Cathryn Yang
,
James N. Stanford
Abstract
We investigate apparent-time variation of the low falling (T21) and low level (T11) tones of the Black Lahu language of Yunnan, China. Linear mixed-effects modeling of spontaneous speech shows that both tones have a higher F0 trajectory among younger speakers and in certain phonetic environments. Since F0 is known to lower with increasing age, for comparison we also analyze variation in the high rising tone (T45) and find no evidence of generational difference. This suggests that the effect of age on low tones is not due to physiological change across the life span. We leave open the question of whether this result reflects a change in progress or a stable sociotonetic difference between older and younger speakers. This study contributes towards two underrepresented areas of sound change research: (1) sociotonetic approaches to tone variation in naturalistic speech styles, and (2) engagement with Indigenous scholars who are cultural insiders in small rural minority language communities.
Funding source: Dartmouth College
Award Identifier / Grant number: Unassigned
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the members of the Lahu community who contributed to this project. Special thanks to Jerry Fine for writing the R code used to produce the figures in this paper.
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Research funding: Funding was provided by Dartmouth College’s Scholarly Innovation and Advancement Award, as part of the project Sociolinguistic Exploration of a Matrilineal/Matrilocal Society in Rural Southwest China (2018–2020).
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Ethics statement: This study was conducted with the approval and supervision of the Dartmouth Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects, which is the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (IRB protocol #21447).
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to sound change in endangered or small speech communities
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Phonological stability and mechanisms of sound change
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
- Cross-dialectal synchronic variation of a diachronic conditioned merger in Tlingit
- Vowel harmony in Laz Turkish: a case study in language contact and language change
- The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora
- Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals
- Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels
- Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang
- The emergence of bunched vowels from retroflex approximants in endangered Dardic languages
- The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy
- Speech style variation in an endangered language
- Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
- The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension
- Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic
- Phonetic transfer in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
- The evolution of flap-nasalization in Hoocąk
- Sound change and tonogenesis in Sylheti
- Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
- Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German
- Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to sound change in endangered or small speech communities
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Phonological stability and mechanisms of sound change
- Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
- Cross-dialectal synchronic variation of a diachronic conditioned merger in Tlingit
- Vowel harmony in Laz Turkish: a case study in language contact and language change
- The evolution of tonally conditioned allomorphy in Triqui: evidence from spontaneous speech corpora
- Sound change and gender-based differences in isolated regions: acoustic analysis of intervocalic phonemic stops by Bora-Spanish bilinguals
- Place uniformity and drift in the Suzhounese fricative and apical vowels
- Flexibility and evolution of cue weighting after a tonal split: an experimental field study on Tamang
- The emergence of bunched vowels from retroflex approximants in endangered Dardic languages
- The expanding influence of Thai and its effects on cue redistribution in Kuy
- Speech style variation in an endangered language
- Sound change in Aboriginal Australia: word-initial engma deletion in Kunwok
- The dental-alveolar contrast in Mapudungun: loss, preservation, and extension
- Sound change or community change? The speech community in sound change studies: a case study of Scottish Gaelic
- Phonetic transfer in Diné Bizaad (Navajo)
- The evolution of flap-nasalization in Hoocąk
- Sound change and tonogenesis in Sylheti
- Exploring variation and change in a small-scale Indigenous society: the case of (s) in Pirahã
- Rhotics, /uː/, and diphthongization in New Braunfels German
- Generational differences in the low tones of Black Lahu
