Relating production and perception in two Raglai dialects at different stages of registrogenesis

Lư Giang Đinh; Marc Brunelle; Thành Tấn Tạ

doi:10.1515/phon-2024-0032

Article

Relating production and perception in two Raglai dialects at different stages of registrogenesis

Lư Giang Đinh , Marc Brunelle and Thành Tấn Tạ

Published/Copyright: January 20, 2025

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From the journal Phonetica Volume 82 Issue 1

Abstract

This paper explores the perception of two diachronically related and mutually intelligible phonological oppositions, the onset voicing contrast of Northern Raglai and the register contrast of Southern Raglai. It is the continuation of a previous acoustic study that revealed that Northern Raglai onset stops maintain a voicing distinction accompanied by weak formant and voice quality modulations on following vowels, while Southern Raglai has transphonologized this voicing contrast into a register contrast marked by vowel and voice quality distinctions. Our findings indicate that the two dialects partially differ in their use of identification cues, Northern Raglai listeners using both voicing and F1 as major cues while Southern Raglai listeners largely focus on F1. Production and perception are thus not perfectly aligned in Northern Raglai, because F1 plays a stronger role in perception than production in this dialect. We conclude that mutual intelligibility between dialects is possible because they both use F1 for identification.

Keywords: Raglai language; register; voicing; perception

Corresponding author: Lư Giang Đinh, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam, E-mail: giangdl@hcmussh.edu.vn

Funding source: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Award Identifier / Grant number: 435-2022-0047

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their gratitude to all the participants who took part in the perceptual study. We also thank the authorities of the province of Ninh Thuận, as well as those of the People’s Committees of the districts of Ninh Sơn and Bác Ái, for providing the necessary authorizations and assisting with participant recruitment.

Author contributions: Đinh Lư Giang was in charge of the field authorizations and logistics. The experiment was designed by Marc Brunelle. The field data was collected by Đinh Lư Giang, Marc Brunelle and Tạ Thành Tấn. Đinh Lư Giang and Marc Brunelle analyzed the data and wrote the paper.
Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Research funding: This work was made possible by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2022-0047].
Statement of ethics: The research protocol was approved by the Office of Research Ethics and Integrity of the University of Ottawa. All participants were explained the procedure in simple terms and gave written consent.

Appendix I: Mixed logistic regressions

See Tables 5–8.

Table 5:

Table of estimates of the final logistic regression model for Northern Raglai /aː/ stimuli. Estimates represent the log odds of voiceless stop responses. VQ, F1 and F2 are centered.

	Estimate	Std. error	z Value	Pr(>\|z\|)
(Intercept)	−1.366	0.326	−4.196	0.000
F1	1.921	0.217	8.854	0.000
F2	−0.114	0.051	−2.241	0.025
Voicingvr	1.045	0.249	4.198	0.000
Voicing10	2.484	0.501	4.955	0.000
VQ	−0.231	0.066	−3.507	0.000
F1:Voicingvr	0.206	0.095	2.162	0.031
F1:Voicing10	0.346	0.100	3.466	0.001
Voicingvr:VQ	0.148	0.081	1.821	0.069
Voicing10:VQ	−0.002	0.084	−0.021	0.983

Table 6:

Table of estimates of the final logistic regression model for Southern Raglai /aː/ stimuli. Estimates represent the log odds of high register responses. VQ, F1 and F2 are centered.

	Estimate	Std. error	z Value	Pr(>\|z\|)
(Intercept)	−0.718	0.191	−3.750	0.000
F1	3.408	0.295	11.567	0.000
F2	−0.109	0.036	−3.044	0.002
Voicingvr	−0.183	0.122	−1.500	0.134
Voicing10	0.100	0.152	0.657	0.511
VQ	−0.390	0.064	−6.134	0.000
F1:VQ	0.084	0.053	1.592	0.111
F2:VQ	−0.060	0.041	−1.443	0.149

Table 7:

Table of estimates of the final logistic regression model for Northern Raglai /uː/ stimuli. Estimates represent the log odds of voiceless stop responses. VQ, F1 and F2 are centered.

	Estimate	Std. error	z Value	Pr(>\|z\|)
(Intercept)	−2.061	0.329	−6.265	0.000
F1	1.299	0.190	6.820	0.000
F2	−0.136	0.036	−3.759	0.000
Voicingvr	1.109	0.232	4.783	0.000
Voicing10	3.468	0.448	7.741	0.000
VQ	0.036	0.041	0.861	0.389
F1:Voicingvr	0.591	0.107	5.522	0.000
F1:Voicing10	0.666	0.111	5.988	0.000

Table 8:

Table of estimates of the final logistic regression model for Southern Raglai /uː/ stimuli. Estimates represent the log odds of high register responses. VQ. F1 and F2 are centered.

	Estimate	Std. error	z Value	Pr(>\|z\|)
(Intercept)	−0.177	0.220	−0.805	0.421
F1	2.257	0.231	9.764	0.000
F2	−0.088	0.034	−2.563	0.010
Voicingvr	−0.162	0.118	−1.376	0.169
Voicing10	0.140	0.144	0.969	0.332
F1:Voicingvr	0.338	0.099	3.427	0.001
F1:Voicing10	0.363	0.101	3.600	0.000

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Received: 2024-08-05

Accepted: 2024-12-23

Published Online: 2025-01-20

Published in Print: 2025-02-25

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https://doi.org/10.1515/phon-2024-0032

Keywords for this article

Raglai language; register; voicing; perception