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Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 44:1 (2021) ► pp.1–26

The sounds of Tawrã (Digaru-Mishmi), a Tibeto-Burman language

| Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
| Advocate, Arunachal Pradesh, India
The present study is a phonological analysis of the segments and tones of the Tawrã language (ISO 69-3: mhu; Glottolog: Diga1241), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Tibet, China. This paper, the first collaboration between a Tawrã-speaking non-linguist and a non-Tawrã-speaking linguist, attempts to clear up some confusion in the existing literature. For example, previous studies did not note that stop codas /-p, -k/ are in free variation with glides [-w, -j, ɰ], and that the morpheme, rather than the syllable, is the tone-bearing unit. Acoustic analyses provide justification for the phonemic representation of the vowels and the tones. Finally, the paper is designed to introduce Tawrã speakers to the recently standardized (2020) orthography, and to show how the letters and letter combinations function together as a system.
Keywords: Taraon, Digaru, Mishmi, phonology, tone, Arunachal Pradesh
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Consonants
    • 2.1Initial single consonants
    • 2.2Consonant clusters
    • 2.3Geminate consonants
    • 2.4Codas
  • 3.Vowels
    • 3.1Vowels and nasality
  • 4.Syllable structure
  • 5.Tones
  • 6.Orthography
  • 7.Conclusions and further directions
  • 8.Bidialectal wordlist
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 11 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.20013.eva
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