A Laryngoscopic Study of Chong Registers

Abstract

Chong, a Pearic language of the Mon-Khmer family is described with four registers; clear, clear and creaky, breathy, and breathy and creaky. The voice qualities have been investigated instrumentally by observing salient acoustic features and by studying the glottograms through inverse filtering. Both of these previous instrumental studies provide indirect information on the glottal state in vowel production. This paper is set out to explore the larynx itself through a direct investigation of the configuration and movement of the larynx by means of videolaryngoscope recording. The findings help clarify the production of the four registers and have implications for phonological representations.