An quantitative analysis of Punjabi tones

Punjabi has three tones, the falling and the rising tones developed due to the historically lost voiced aspirated consonants and word-final glottal fricative /ɦ/, and the default tone occurred elsewhere. While there has been some experimental research on Punjabi tones, there have been limitations due few stimuli and speakers. The main aim of the current study was to provide a phonetic examination of the fundamental frequency (f0) patterns across a large number of Punjabi words produced by multiple speakers. The experiment was conducted online using 24 native speakers (9F, 15M) of Indian Punjabi. The list of stimuli contained 66 monosyllabic words (default = 18, falling = 15, rising = 33) with either /a/ or /ə/. The speakers were recorded producing the stimuli in carrier and natural sentence environments. Linear mixed effects analyses were conducted on six f0 measures: the onset, mid, and offset of the vowel, the f0 range (MaxF0-MinF0), and the f0 trajectory in the first (MidF0-BegF0) and final (EndF0-MidF0) halves of the vowel. The results confirmed three distinct pitch curves for the three tones. Each of the three tones were distinguished from one another for the onset f0 and the EndF0-MidF0 measures. Vowel quality influenced tone realization. Between-speaker and word variation was observed.