Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area
Vol. 44:2 (2021) ► pp.183–208

East Tusom

A phonetic and phonological sketch of a largely undocumented Tangkhulic language

| Carnegie Mellon University
| University of Pittsburgh

East Tusom is a Tibeto-Burman language of Manipur, India, belonging to the Tangkhulic group. While it shares some innovations with the other Tangkhulic languages, it differs markedly from “Standard Tangkhul” (which is based on the speech of Ukhrul town). Past documentation is limited to a small set of hastily transcribed forms in a comparative reconstruction of Tangkhulic rhymes (Mortensen & Miller 2013; Mortensen 2012). This paper presents the first substantial sketch of an aspect of the language: its (descriptive) phonetics and phonology. The data are based on recordings of an extensive wordlist (730 items) and one short text, all from one fluent native speaker in her mid-twenties. We present the phonetic inventory of East Tusom and a phonemicization, with exhaustive examples. We also present an overview of the major phonological patterns and generalizations in the language. Of special interest are a “placeless nasal” that is realized as nasalization on the preceding vowel unless it is followed by a consonant, and numerous plosive-fricative clusters (where the fricative is roughly homorganic with the following vowel) that have developed from historical aspirated plosives. A complete wordlist, organized by gloss and semantic field, is provided as appendices.

Keywords: phonetics, phonology, clusters, placeless nasal, assimilation, language documentation, Tangkhulic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The East Tusom language
    • 1.2East Tusom and Tangkhulic
  • 2.Materials and methods
    • 2.1Speaker
    • 2.2Materials
    • 2.3Elicitation techniques
    • 2.4Recording equipment
    • 2.5Transcription methodology
  • 3.Phonetics
    • 3.1Consonant phones
      • 3.1.1Plosives
      • 3.1.2Nasal stops
      • 3.1.3Fricatives
      • 3.1.4Trills and approximants
    • 3.2Vowel phones
    • 3.3Phonetics of tone
  • 4.Phonology
    • 4.1Phonological inventory
    • 4.2Phoneme summary
    • 4.3Syllable structure
    • 4.4Stress and weight
    • 4.5Tones
    • 4.6Onsets
    • 4.7Rhymes
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.21009.mor
References
Ahum, Victor
1997 Tangkhul-Naga grammar (A study of word formation). Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. Central Institute of Indian Languages. [URL]
Arokianathan, S.
1987 Tangkhul Naga grammar. Vol. 161. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink
2020 Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. [URL] (2 January 2021).
Brown, Nathan
1837 Comparison of Indo-Chinese languages. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 61. 1023–1039.Google Scholar
Gopal, Deepthi
2016 Aspiration “dissimilation” in Tangkhul Naga prefixation. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Meeting on Phonology. Linguistic Society of America. [URL]
Gordon, Matthew
2001 A typology of contour tone restrictions. Studies in Language 25(3). 423–462. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jadoul, Yannick, Bill Thompson & Bart de Boer
2018 Introducing Parselmouth: A Python interface to Praat. Journal of Phonetics 711. 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klatt, Dennis H.
1973 Interaction between two factors that influence vowel duration. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54(4). 1102–1104.Google Scholar
Konnerth, Linda
2018 The historical phonology of Monsang (Northwestern South-Central/“Kuki-Chin”): A case of reduction in phonological complexity. Himalayan Linguistics 17(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindblom, Björn E. F. & Rapp Karin
1973 Some temporal regularities of spoken Swedish. Stockholm.Google Scholar
Maddieson, Ian
2013 Voicing and gaps in plosive systems. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. [URL]
Matisoff, James A.
2015 Sino-Tibetan etymological dictionary and thesaurus (STEDT). Berkeley: Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project. stedt. berkeley. [URL] (14 September 2018).
McCullouch, William
1859 Account of the valley of Munnipore and of the hill tribes; with a comparative vocabulary of the Munnipore and other languages (Selections from the Records of the Government of India). Vol. xxvii1. Calcutta: Bengal Printing Company.Google Scholar
McKinney, Wes
2010 Data structures for statistical computing in Python. In Stéfan van der Walt & Jarrod Millman (eds.), Proceedings of the 9th Python in Science Conference, 56–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Monsang, Sh & Sahiinii Lemaina Veikho
2018 Sound system of Monsang. Himalayan Linguistics 17(2). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mortensen, David
2003 Comparative Tangkhul. Unpublished Qualifying Paper. UC Berkeley, ms.Google Scholar
Mortensen, David & James Miller
2013 A reconstruction of Proto-Tangkhulic rhymes. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 36(1). 1–32.Google Scholar
Mortensen, David R.
2012 The emergence of obstruents after high vowels. Diachronia 29(4). 434–470. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mortensen, David R. & Jennifer Keogh
2011 Sorbung, an undocumented language of Manipur: its phonology and place in Tibeto-Burman. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 4(1). 64–114.Google Scholar
Mortensen, David R. & James A. Miller
2013 A reconstruction of proto-tangkhulic rhymes. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 36(1). 1–32.Google Scholar
Ohala, John
1983 The origin of sound patterns in vocal tract constraints. In: P. F. MacNeilage (ed.), The production of speech, 189–216. New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ohala, John & William Ewan
1973 Speed of pitch change. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 53(1). 345–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pettigrew, William
1979 Tāngkhul Nāga grammar and dictionary: With illustrative sentences. Ukhrul, Manipur: Tangkhul Naga Baptist Convention.Google Scholar
Shosted, Ryan K.
2007 A psychoacoustic basis for dissimilation: Evidence from Tangkhul Naga. In Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1937–1940. Saarbrucken: Universitat des Saarlandes.Google Scholar
Takhellambam, Bijaya Devi
2014 Descriptive grammar of Kabrang Tangkhul. Manipur: Manipur University PhD Thesis. [URL] (2 May 2021).
The pandas development team
2020 pandas-dev/pandas: Pandas. Zenodo. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thokchom, Lakhipriya Devi
2011 The Tangkhul grammar of Shangshak village. Manipur: Manipur University PhD Thesis. [URL] (2 May 2021).
Zhang, Jie
2002 The effects of duration and sonority on countour tone distribution: A typological survey and formal analysis. 1st edition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar