Onset Voicing and Register in Northern Raglai, Chrau and Arem

Abstract

This paper examines the status of onset voicing and the phonetic characteristics of rhymes in three languages - Northern Raglai, Chrau, and Arem - with respect to the register contrast in Austroasiatic and Austronesian languages in Mainland Southeast Asia. The results show that in Northern Raglai (Chamic), onset voicing is still preserved, although vowels following voiced and voiceless onsets already carry ancillary properties of the register contrast, such as the distinction between breathy and normal voice quality and vowel modulations. Onset voicing in Chrau, however, is optional, and this language has developed a full-fledged register contrast based mainly on differences in terms of voice quality, f0 and vowel quality. Finally, Arem can be considered as a restructured register language whose vowel system was doubled, similar to Standard Khmer (Ferlus, 2013; Henderson, 1952), while retaining some traces of voice quality differences. Northern Raglai, Chrau, and Arem can be positioned at the first, third, and fifth stages in the registrogenesis scenario proposed by Huffman (1976). This study, therefore, contributes new materials and provides new insights and interpretations for the issue of register in Southeast Asian languages.