Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 41:1 (2018) ► pp.22–44

Vowels and tones in Poula

| University of Bern
| Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati

This paper presents a sketch of the vowels and tones in the Poula language as spoken in the Naamai (Koide) village of Manipur. Acoustic studies on the vowels and tones are conducted in this work, and it is concluded that Poula has a six vowel inventory like many of the languages in the vicinity; however the distribution of vowels in Poula is quite peculiar, with the absence of high back vowels and presence of two high front vowels. In case of tones, this study reports four tones in Poula, namely, High-falling, Rising-falling, Mid and Low. The paper concludes with a short discussion on tones in Poula underived words.

Keywords: Poula, Poumai Naga, Trans-Himalayan, vowels, tones
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Poula language
    • 1.2Phonology of related languages
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Analysis of vowels in Poula
    • 3.1Absence of /u/ and presence of /y/ in Poula
  • 4.Analysis of tones in Poula
    • 4.1Phonetics of tones in Poula
    • 4.2Observations on tones in Poula derived and underived words
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.16022.lem
References

References

Blankenship, Barbara, Peter Ladefoged, Peri Bhaskararao & Nichumeno Chase
1993 Phonetic structures of Khonoma Angami. LTBA 16 (2): 69–88.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. & D. Weenink
2016 Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.3. 231. (Retrieved January 24, 2015).Google Scholar
Bradley, David
1975 Nahsi and Proto-Burmese-Lolo. LTBA 21: 93–150.Google Scholar
Burling, Robbins
1960 Angami Naga phonemes and word list. Indian Linguistics 211: 51–60.Google Scholar
Cha, Jae-Kyung
1995 Narrative discourse structure in Lhasa Tibetan. Arlington: University of Texas. Masters Dissertation.Google Scholar
Cheng, C. C.
1973 A quantitative study of Chinese tones. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 11: 93–110.Google Scholar
van Driem, George
2011 Tibeto-Burman subgroups and historical grammar. Himalayan Linguistics 10(1): 31–39.Google Scholar
2014 Trans-Himalayan. Trans-Himalayan Linguistics 2661: 11–40.Google Scholar
Giridhar, Puttushetra Puttuswamy
1994 Mao Naga Grammar. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.Google Scholar
Jacques, G.
2004 Phonologie et morphologie du japhug (rGyalrong). Doctoral dissertation, Université Paris-Diderot-Paris VII1.Google Scholar
Kapfo, Kedutso
2005 The ethnology of the Khezhas and the Khezha grammar. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.Google Scholar
Kuolie, Duovituo
2006 Structural description of Tenyidie: a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland. Kohima: Ura Academy Publication Division.Google Scholar
Lahaussois, Aimée
2002 Aspects of the grammar of Thulung Rai: An endangered Himalayan language. Berkeley: University of California, Doctoral dissertation.Google Scholar
Levy, E. S. & F. F. Law
2010 Production of French vowels by American-English learners of French: Language experience, consonantal context, and the perception-production relationship. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128(3): 1290–1305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewis, M., Paul, Gary F. Simons & Charles D. Fenning
2018 Ethnologue. [URL]. [URL] (Accessed on 25 May, 2018).
Lobanov, B. M.
1971 Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49(2B): 606–608. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maddieson, Ian
2013 Front rounded vowels. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at [URL], Accessed on 2017-08-07.)
Moran, Steven, Daniel McCloy & Richard Wright
(eds) 2014 PHOIBLE Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at [URL], Accessed on 2016-07-02.) [URL]
Post, Mark W. & Robbins Burling
2017 The Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India. In Graham Thurgood & Randy LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 213–242. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ravindran, N.
1974 Angami phonetic reader. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.Google Scholar
Sarmah, Priyankoo & Charles Redmon
2013 Acoustic separation of high-central vowels in Bodo, Rabha and Korean. Proceedings of Acoustics 2013, CSIR – National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi.Google Scholar
Sarmah, Priyankoo & Caroline Wiltshire
2009 An acoustic study of Dimasa tones. In S. Morey & M. Post (eds.), North East Indian Linguistics 21: 25–44.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Jean-Luc, Louis-Jean Boë, Nathalie Vallée & Christian Abry
1997 The dispersion-focalization theory of vowel systems. Journal of Phonetics 25(3): 255–286. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Jeff
1985 Koines and koineization. Language in Society 14(3): 357–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Teo, Amos B.
2014 A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics.Google Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. & Tyler Kendall
2007 NORM: The vowel normalization and plotting suite. Online resource: [URL].
Veikho, Sahiinii Lemaina
2014 Generative approach to the study of Poula phonology. Shillong: North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. MPhil thesis.Google Scholar
Veikho, Sahiinii Lemaina & Barika Khyriem
2015 Poula phonetics and phonology: An initial overview. In Linda Konnerth, Stephen Morey, Priyankoo Sarmah & Amos Teo (eds.), North East Indian Linguistics 71: 47–62. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics Open Access.Google Scholar
Xu, Yi
2004 Understanding tone from the perspective of production and perception. Language and Linguistics 5(4): 757–797.Google Scholar
Yip, M.
2002 Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar