Production and Perception of Lexical Tones in Manipuri Language

Abstract

There is a discrepancy in the established number of lexical tones in Manipuri, a tonal language, as well as the terminology used to describe them. Hence, the present study attempts to describe the characteristics of lexical tones monosyllabic and bisyllabic words in Manipuri using acoustical analysis and it perception by eight native speakers. Minimal pair words contrasting in tone were recorded from three native speakers of Manipuri. Pitch values extracted for each word were used to identify different tone contours based on the configuration of the pitch contour, initial pitch and final pitch. Results revealed four pitch contours namely, level, falling, rising and falling-rising in monosyllabic words. First syllable of the bisyllabic words revealed level-high and level-low contours. The second syllable showed level, rising and falling contours. In addition, individual differences were noticed in the pitch contours obtained for the same word across speakers. However, for each speaker, each minimal word pair were always distinguishable using pitch contour, initial pitch and final pitch of the pitch contour. The meaning of all the words was identified correctly above chance level by native speakers. It is possible that normalization of the lexical tones produced by different speakers was done by the listeners.