Acoustic Properties of Voiceless and Preglottalized Continuants in Khmu

<p>Voiceless (and preglottalized) sonorants are implicated in tonogenesis and tonal splits, but phonetic studies of these segments are rare. Here, we present an acoustic study of data from 20 speakers of a phonologically conservative, non-tonal Eastern Khmu variety. Vowels following voiceless sonorants are consistently realized with a high pitch, in some cases even higher than those following voiceless obstruents. The effects of preglottalized sonorants on vowel pitch, on the other hand, are speaker-specific. These findings support the idea that voiceless and preglottalized sonorants are crucial to understanding the initial stages of tonogenetic processes.</p>