An initial acoustic investigation of the Mindat (K’Cho) phonetic inventory

Mindat (also known as K’chò or Mün) is a South Central Tibeto-Burman (Chin) language spoken in southeastern Chin State in western Burma and in diaspora communities worldwide. Little work on—and, to our knowledge, no acoustic documentation of—the Mindat sound system exists. Nolan (2002) notes a series of plain and aspirated voiceless stops that is relatively standard both cross-linguistically and Chin-internally (/p pʰ t tʰ c k kʰ/), as well as voiceless sonorants (and voiced counterparts) /m̥ n̥ ŋ̊ l̥/, which are typologically rare but common in Chin. Additional sounds that are uncommon even in Chin languages include dental and velar affricates /t̪͡θ k͡x/, implosives /ɓ ɗ/, a dense fricative space /f v s∼ʃ z∼ʒ x ɣ h/, and complex onsets /pl pʰl/. Nolan (2002) also reports a seven-vowel system /i ɛ a ə ɨ o u/ with all monophthongs contrasting for length, six diphthongs /ɛj aj əj ɨ oj uj/, and four tones (high, low, rising, falling). Using data from one speaker, we provide an acoustic description of the Mindat phonetic inventory, including (but not limited to) measures of VOT for stops, center of gravity for fricatives/affricates, formant measures/trajectories for vowels, and pitch tracks for tones.