Perception of Manipuri tones by native and non-native speaker

Abstract

The present study investigated Manipuri tones and perception of Manipuri tones by native and non-native speakers. One young adult female spoke 26 Manipuri words contrasting in tone. All these words were recorded, digitized and stored on to the computer memory. The lowest FO, highest FO, the height of the tone and the duration of the tones were measured using SFS software. For perception task six groups of subjects participated in the study. Each group had 20 subjects with 10 males and 10 females in the age range of J8-25 years (mean age = 20 years). Group I had Manipuri speakers, group II, III, IV, V and VI had Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil Speakers, respectively. Subjects were individually tested and the material was audio presented through headphones at comfortable listening levels. Subjects were instructed to record 'same' or 'different' on a given binary forced choice format. The result indicated six tones in Manipuri. The falling tone had a steep and a gradual fall pattern characterized by short and long tone durations. Further, the words contrasting for tones were also characterized by aspiration, different in vowel/consonant duration and vowel distortions. Perceptual analysis indicated that native speakers' tone discrimination was significantly better (96.5%) than non-native speakers (38.4%); also, tone discrimination was significantly better in females compared to males. Among non-native speakers, Tamil speakers performed best and Malayalam speakers the worst. The material of this study can be used as a test of tone in Manipuri and the data obtained can be used as normative. Also, speech pathologists can be trained to identify and discriminate tones that would help them in treating patients speaking Manipuri language.