Register (phonology)
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- See also: Speech register
In linguistics, a register language, also known as a pitch-register language, is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples. Burmese is often considered a tonal language, but differences in relative pitch are correlated with vowel phonation, so that neither exists independently.
There are three such registers in Burmese, which have traditionally been considered three of the four 'tones'. (The fourth is not a tone at all, but a closed syllable, called "entering tone" in translations of Chinese phonetics). Jones (1986) views the differences as
- resulting from the intersection of both pitch registers and voice registers […] Clearly Burmese is not tonal in the same sense as such other languages and therefore requires a different concept, namely that of pitch register.[1]
| Register | Phonation | Length | Pitch | Example | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | Modal voice | long | low | [làː] | 'come' |
| High | Breathy voice | long | high; falling when final | [lá̤ː] ~ [lâ̤ː] | 'mule' |
| Creaky | Creaky voice | medium | high | [lá̰ˀ] | 'moon' |
| Checked | Final glottal stop | short | high | [lăʔ] | 'fresh' |
Khmer is sometimes not considered to be a register language any more. It's also been called a "restructured register language" because its pitch and phonation can be considered allophonic: If they are ignored, the phonemic distinction remains as a difference in diphthongs and vowel length.
[edit] References
- ^ Robert Jones, 1986. Pitch register languages, pp 135-136, in John McCoy & Timothy Light eds., Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies
- ^ James Matisoff, 2001. Prosodic Diffusibility in South-East Asia, pp. 309-310. In Aleksandra Aikhenvald and Robert Dixon, Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance, OUP.
