Non-modal sonorants in Hakha Lai

Phonemic non-modal sonorants are both typologically rare and prone to diachronic loss crosslinguistically, but are robustly attested and diachronically stable in subgroups of Tibeto-Burman (TB) such as Kuki-Chin (KC). KC is a cluster of appr. 50 related languages spoken in Chin State in western Burma/Myanmar and by a large refugee community in Indiana. Chin languages generally contain rich phonetic inventories replete with 3-way laryngeal stop contrasts (e.g., /t t^h d/), lateral affricates (/tl, tl^h/), and modal/non-modal sonorant pairs (most commonly /m m_°, n n_°, η η°, l l_°, r r_°/). Extant phonetic investigation ofnon-modal sonorants—in KC and beyond—is limited, and often focuses exclusively on the nasals, but recent data suggest highly variable phonetic instantiation across languages, speakers, and contexts that may involve true voicelessness, slack or breathy voicing, and pre- or post-aspiration. The current study presents acoustic analysis of the full suite of modal and non-modal sonorants in Hakha Chin. Data are from six native speakers (three female) now living in Indiana. A variety of temporal and spectral measures are reported in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the degree and type of variation observed in production of these sounds.