How does voice quality help distinguish tones in Burmese?

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relationships among the Tibeto-Burman languages — Tibeto-Burman languages Relationships among the Tibeto-Burman languages.

In the Tibeto-Burman languages, tone is not defined solely by relative pitch but is deeply connected to phonation type, which is determined by the configuration of the glottis.

In modern Burmese, the three nonstopped tones are primarily distinguished by their voice quality rather than their pitch contours. These qualities are categorized as follows:

Clear
Breathy
Creaky

This reliance on voice quality highlights how phonation serves as a critical phonetic feature for maintaining tonal contrasts in the language.1