A Preliminary Exploration of Tones in Paite — Acoustic Phonetics Study
An acoustic phonetics research paper by Rosie Nempalching Hangshing and Shakuntala Mahanta (IIT Guwahati) confirming three contrastive tones (rising, level, falling) and a fourth low-checked tone in the Paite language.
A Preliminary Exploration of Tones in Paite — Acoustic Phonetics Study
Authors: Rosie Nempalching Hangshing & Shakuntala Mahanta (Phonetics and Phonology Lab, Department of HSS, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati)
Publication: Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2023), Prague, Czech Republic
Document Link: Download Full Research PDF Document
Abstract & Linguistic Findings
Paite (ISO 639-3: pck) is an under-documented Tibeto-Burman language of the Northern Kuki-Chin sub-group spoken in Manipur, Mizoram, and Myanmar.
This experimental acoustic study conducts f0 and duration analysis, confirming:
- Three Primary Contrastive Tones: Rising, Level, and Falling tones.
- Fourth Tone (Low Checked): Arises from consonant-tone interaction in syllables with final stop consonants.
The research provides essential empirical groundwork for Paite orthography, language documentation, and digital speech technology development.
Citation & Attribution
Hangshing, Rosie Nempalching, and Shakuntala Mahanta. "A Preliminary Exploration of Tones in Paite." Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2023, pp. 972-976. www.internationalphoneticassociation.org.
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