Chrau, a South Bahnaric language of the Austroasiatic family spoken in South Vietnam, has been described as having a voicing contrast in onset stops. However, a production experiment reveals that rather than a voicing contrast, Chrau, like many other Austroasiatic languages, has register, a two-way contrast realized on syllables through a bundle of phonetic properties including phonation type, vowel quality, and pitch differences. Stop voicing is marginally present in some speakers but seems to be an optional property of register. The results of a perception study on register further suggest that speakers roughly employ the same phonetic properties in perception as in production. Individual variation is observed in both production and perception, but there is not a straightforward correlation between the two modes at the individual level—an indication that listeners’ perception is flexible enough to accommodate variation in production. Our results raise questions about the diachronic scenarios proposed to account for the transphonologization of onset voicing into register and tone in Mainland Southeast Asian languages.

Chrau 是一种在越南南部使用的 Austroasiatic 家族的南巴纳克语，被描述为在开始停止时具有语音对比。然而，一项生产实验表明，与许多其他南亚语言一样，Chrau 不是语音对比，而是通过一系列语音特性（包括发声类型、元音质量和音高差异）在音节上实现了注册，这是一种双向对比。停止发声在某些扬声器中很少出现，但似乎是注册的可选属性。对音域的感知研究的结果进一步表明，说话者在感知中大致使用与生产中相同的语音特性。在生产和感知中都观察到个体差异，但在个人层面上，这两种模式之间并没有直接的关联——这表明听众的感知足够灵活，可以适应制作中的变化。我们的研究结果提出了关于为解释东南亚大陆语言的起始发声到语域和声调的转音而提出的历时情景的问题。