Sumi tone: a phonological and phonetic description of a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland

Amos Benjamin Teo

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Masters by Research (by Thesis Only)

December 2009

School of Languages and Linguistics The University of Melbourne

Abstract Previous research on Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the extreme northeast of India, has found it to have three lexical tones. However, the few phonological studies of Sumi have focused mainly on its segmental phonology and have failed to provide any substantial account of the tone system. This thesis addresses the issue by providing the first comprehensive description of tone in this language. In addition to confirming three contrastive tones, this study also presents the first acoustic phonetic analysis of Sumi, looking at the phonetic realisation of these tones and the effects of segmental perturbations on tone realisation. The first autosegmental representation of Sumi tone is offered, allowing us to account for tonal phenomena such as the assignment of surface tones to prefixes that appear to be lexically unspecified for tone. Finally, this investigation presents the first account of morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi, finding regular paradigmatic shifts in the tone on verb roots that undergo nominalisation.

The thesis also offers a cross-linguistic comparison of the tone system of Sumi with that of other closely related Kuki-Chin-Naga languages and some preliminary observations of the historical origin and development of tone in these languages are made. This is accompanied by a typological comparison of these languages with other Tibeto-Burman languages, which shows that although these languages are spoken in what has been termed the ‘Indosphere’, their tone systems are similar to those of languages spoken further to the east in the ‘Sinosphere’. Finally, a more global typological comparison of Sumi with ‘African’ and ‘East Asian’ tone languages demonstrates that Sumi displays features typically associated with both these language ‘types’. This finding suggests the need to re-evaluate this traditional dichotomy of tone systems, and the need to consider morphological structure in typologies of tone.

This is to certify that: (i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the Masters, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is approximately 36,000 words in length, inclusive of footnotes, but exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.

Amos Benjamin Teo December 2009

Acknowledgements I am indebted to a number of people responsible for my education on Nagaland and the Sumi language in particular. First and foremost, I reserve my deepest gratitude for Inotoli Zhimomi, whom I met while doing a linguistic field methods course run by Professor Nick Evans at the University of Melbourne in 2007. Without her time, energy and support for this project, there would certainly be no thesis.

Many thanks also go to Inotoli’s family – to her husband Nick Lenaghan and her sister Nikhüli Zhimomi (Anikhü) for their continued support in this project, especially for all the times when they had to mind the children or take over the preparation of food (be it the smoking of amichi or the cooking of axone ) while I bombarded Inotoli with questions about her language. (A special apology goes to Kivi and Kupo for all the times I stole their aza away from meal time and playtime.)

Certainly, I cannot thank enough the other members of the Zhimomi family: Inotoli’s parents in Vishepu; her sisters Ilika (Alika) in Hyderabad and Bokali in Zunheboto, as well as Bokali’s husband Hekato for their wonderful hospitality during my visit to India in early 2009. I owe a debt of gratitude to Jekügha Assümi and his wife Hekali for welcoming me into their home in Zunheboto, especially to Jekügha, who very kindly donated his time to be recorded and who offered me his own personal copy of Hutton’s The Sema Nagas .

During this same trip to Nagaland, I had the honour of meeting a number of esteemed members of the Sumi community, including Mr S. Rotokha, the secretary of the Sumi Literature Board and Mr Hokishe Yepthomi, who presented me with a copy of his English-Sumi dictionary. I was also given the privilege of speaking with the Reverend Yevuto who offered a brief history of the Bible’s translation into Sumi and presented me with a copy of the Sumi Bible.

Special mention must go to Bernice Dzuvichu, who was responsible for getting me the Restricted Area Permit that allowed me to legally enter the state of Nagaland (despite my not travelling as a group of four people, or as a married couple).

In the preparation of this thesis, my deepest thanks go to my supervisors Associate Professor Janet Fletcher and Professor John Hajek at the University of Melbourne. Without their invaluable feedback and guidance, both in the process of conducting the research and in the writing process, this thesis would be nothing more than a collection of badly written and ill-formed ideas.

Additional thanks go to Alec Coupe, who very kindly gave me a copy of his book A phonetic and phonological description of Ao: a Tibeto-Burman language and also lent me his copies of Geoffrey Marrison’s work.

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to all my friends and colleagues, including Sara Ciesielski, Lauren Gawne, Hywel Stoakes, Deborah Loakes, Mary Stevens, Belinda Ross and Thomas Harris. In particular, I must thank Aung Si, who kindly proofread much of the final draft and provided me with the Burmese examples used in this thesis. I am also very grateful to Olga Maxwell, who assisted both in the proofreading of my earlier drafts and in the provision of much appreciated cocoa products.

Table of contents List of abbreviations used...... 1 1 Introduction ...... 2 1.1 Aims of study ...... 2 1.2 Language description...... 5 1.2.1 Linguistic situation ...... 5 1.2.2 Genetic relationships ...... 8 1.2.3 Previous work on Sumi ...... 12 1.2.4 Note on orthography...... 15 1.3 Studies of tone in Kuki-Chin-Naga languages ...... 16 1.4 Lexical tone ...... 18 1.4.1 Tone languages...... 19 1.4.2 Autosegmental representation of tone ...... 20 1.4.3 Phonetic correlates of tone ...... 21 1.4.4 Tone language typologies...... 23 2 Methodology...... 28 2.1 Participants ...... 28 2.2 Recording equipment...... 28 2.3 Carrier phrases...... 29 2.4 Acoustic phonetic analysis ...... 30 2.5 Tone comparison chart ...... 33 3 Segmental Phonology...... 36 3.1 Phoneme Inventory...... 36 3.2 Consonants ...... 38 3.2.1 Plosives...... 38 3.2.2 Fricatives and Affricates...... 39 3.2.3 Nasals and Laterals...... 41 3.2.4 Approximants ...... 42 3.2.5 Trill ...... 43 3.2.6 Minimal sets ...... 43 3.3 Regular phonological processes associated with consonants...... 45

3.3.1 Palatalisation ...... 45 3.4 Vowels...... 45 3.5 Regular phonological processes associated with vowels ...... 49 3.5.1 Vowel harmony ...... 49 3.6 Glottal stop ...... 50 3.7 Cross-linguistic comparison...... 52 4 Phonotactics...... 57 4.1 Syllable structure...... 57 4.1.1 Phonetic realisations of phonological vowel combinations ...... 58 4.2 Sesquisyllables ...... 61 4.3 Word minimality and resyllabification...... 64 4.4 Cross-linguistic comparison...... 68 5 Tonal Phonology and Phonetics...... 70 5.1 Number of contrastive tones...... 70 5.2 Tone-bearing unit ...... 71 5.3 Phonetic realisation of tone ...... 72

5.4 Variation in F 0 realisation of tone ...... 79

5.4.1 Effects of vowel intrinsic F 0 on tone realisation ...... 87 5.5 Comparison of tone systems of other Kuki-Chin-Naga languages ...... 89 5.6 Lexical comparison among Naga languages...... 93 5.7 Typological comparison within the Tibeto-Burman family...... 95 6 Tone Assignment and Tone Melodies...... 98 6.1 Toneless possessive prefixes...... 98 6.1.1 Non-relational prefix a- and possessive prefixes ...... 98 6.1.2 Tone variation in possessive prefixes...... 100 6.1.3 Autosegmental analysis of tonal alternations...... 101 6.1.4 L tone assignment...... 111 6.1.5 Toneless prefixes in other Naga languages ...... 115 6.2 Tone melodies ...... 117 6.2.1 Verb roots...... 118 6.2.2 Noun roots ...... 120

6.3 Marked nature of H tone...... 123 6.4 Typological comparison of tone rules and representation...... 126 7 Morphotonemics...... 128 7.1 Nominal compounds...... 129 7.1.1 Formation of nominal compounds...... 129 7.1.2 Nominal compounds with no tone sandhi ...... 129 7.1.3 Nominal compounds with tone sandhi ...... 130 7.1.4 Nominal compounds in other Naga languages...... 131 7.2 Deverbal nominals...... 134 7.2.1 Verbal morphology...... 134 7.2.2 Formation of nominals by a- prefixation...... 135 7.2.3 Formation of deverbal nominals...... 136 7.2.4 Tone sandhi in deverbal nominals...... 138 7.2.5 Deverbal nominals in other Naga languages ...... 145 7.3 Agent nouns...... 147 7.3.1 Formation of agent nouns...... 147 7.3.2 Tone sandhi in agent nouns ...... 148 7.4 Miscellaneous morphotonological processes ...... 151 7.4.1 Reduplication...... 151 7.5 Final remarks on tone sandhi and tone rules ...... 152 8 Final Discussion ...... 153 References ...... 158 Appendix A: Tone comparison chart...... 163

List of figures Figure 1: Map of Nagaland (Coupe 2003: page xvii) ...... 6 Figure 2: Genetic classification of Kuki-Chin-Naga languages according to Bradley (1997: 28) ...... 9 Figure 3: Genetic classification according to Burling (2003: 184)...... 10 Figure 4: Map of language distribution in Nagaland and Manipur (Burling, 2003: 185).11 Figure 5: Sample annotation of atoqhe [atoq he] ‘lizard’ using the program ‘Emu Labeler’ ...... 32 Figure 6: Acoustic vowel space plotted in the F1 and F2 dimensions (female speaker) ..48

Figure 7: Acoustic vowel space plotted in the F 1 and F 2 dimensions (male speaker)...... 48 Figure 8: Spectrogram of hiye apu [ʔà.pú] kumo ‘This is not a son’ (male speaker)...... 50

Figure 9: Spectrogram of niye apu [à ̰.pú] ani ‘I have a son’ (female speaker)...... 51

Figure 10: Prosodic structure of the Sumi syllable ...... 58 Figure 11: Prosodic structure of a minor syllable in Sumi...... 62 Figure 12: Pitch trace of hiye apu [àpù] kumo ‘This is not a father’ (illustrating LL tones) ...... 73 Figure 13: Pitch trace of hiye apu [apu] kumo ‘This is not a dipper’ (illustrating MM tones) ...... 74 Figure 14: Pitch trace of hiye apu [àpú] kumo ‘This is not a son’ (illustrating LH tones) 74

Figure 15: Average F 0 realisation of L, M and H tones across a time-normalised segment (female speaker) ...... 75

Figure 16: Average F 0 realisation of L, M and H tones across a time-normalised segment (male speaker) ...... 76

Figure 17: Boxplot showing distribution of F 0 values for each tone (female speaker).....78

Figure 18: Boxplot showing distribution of F 0 values for each tone (male speaker)...... 78 Figure 19: Average F0 realisation of L tone after voiced vs. voiceless obstruents across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)...... 83 Figure 20: Average F0 realisation of M tone after voiced vs. voiceless obstruents across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)...... 84

Figure 21: Average F0 realisation of H tone after voiced vs. voiceless obstruents across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)...... 84

Figure 22: Average F 0 realisation of L tone after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)...... 86

Figure 23: Average F 0 realisation of M tone after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)...... 86

Figure 24: Average F 0 realisation of H tone after after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)...... 87

List of tables Table 1: Comparison of transcriptions of nine Sumi words...... 14 Table 2: Typological profile of ‘East Asian’ and ‘African’ tone languages (following Evans 2008) ...... 24 Table 3: Sample of the tone comparison chart used during elicitation sessions ...... 33 Table 4: Phoneme inventory of Sumi with allophones ...... 36 Table 5: Comparison of Sumi / ɣ/ and /x/ with other Naga languages...... 53

Table 6: Comparison of Sumi /q/ and /q h/ with other Naga languages ...... 54 Table 7: Phonotactic distribution of syllable constituents...... 58 Table 8: Phonetic output of phonological vowel combinations in Sumi...... 59 Table 9: Phonotactic distribution of minor syllable constituents ...... 62 Table 10: Sesquisyllables in Sumi...... 63 Table 11: Resyllabified sesquisyllables in Sumi ...... 63 Table 12: Nasal minor syllables in Sumi...... 64 Table 13: Cross-linguistic comparison of phonotactic constraints and segmental features in Naga languages...... 69

Table 14: Mean F 0 realisations of tone...... 76 Table 15: Distribution of tones following stops ...... 79 Table 16: Distribution of tones following fricatives and affricates...... 80 Table 17: Distribution of tones following sonorants...... 81

Table 18: Comparison of F 0 after voiced vs voiceless obstruents (female speaker) ...... 82

Table 19: Comparison of F0 after voiced, voiceless unaspirated & aspirated stops (female speaker) ...... 85 Table 20: Distribution of tones on vowels ...... 88

Table 21: Comparison of F 0 of high vowels vs. low vowels (female speaker)...... 89 Table 22: Typological comparison of tone systems in the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages ...92 Table 23: Comparative word list of Sumi with other Naga languages ...... 94 Table 24: Typological profiles of three Naga languages with other Tibeto-Burman languages...... 96 Table 25: Possessive prefix paradigm for monosyllabic noun roots...... 100 Table 26: Possessive prefix paradigm for sesquisyllabic noun roots...... 104 Table 27: Possessive prefix paradigm for agi ‘face’ anga ‘child and afo ‘ older sister’ .109 Table 28: Nine possible tone permutations on disyllabic words...... 117 Table 29: Monosyllabic verb roots and deverbal forms...... 138 Table 30: Sesquisyllabic verb roots and deverbal forms...... 141 Table 31: Disyllabic verbs and deverbal forms...... 142 Table 32: Verbs specified for noun complements and deverbal forms...... 143 Table 33: Deverbal forms and agent nouns...... 149 Table 34: Typological profiles of three Naga languages with ‘East Asian’ and ‘African’ tone languages ...... 153

List of abbreviations used

AF – agent focus marker EF – event focus marker EXIST – existential verb FUT – future tense NRL – non-relational marker NZP – nominalising prefix NZR – attributive nominaliser (also possessive marker) PRES – present tense PRF – perfective aspect TM – TAM marker

1 1 Introduction

1.1 Aims of study

Sumi, also known as Sema and Simi 1, is a Naga language (of the Kuki-Chin-Naga subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman family) spoken in Nagaland, in the extreme northeast of India. Due to the geographic inaccessibility of this area and continued political instability hindering researchers from entering, the exact number of languages spoken in this linguistically diverse region is not known. Relatively few studies have been done on this group of languages as compared to other branches of the Tibeto-Burman family, such as the Bodish languages of the Himalayas. Furthermore, only a small handful of these studies (e.g. Coupe 2003; 2007) have attempted to describe the tonal phonology and phonetics of these languages beyond the cursory remark on the number of contrastive tones.

The first phonological descriptions of Sumi were provided by Sreedhar (1976; 1980), but his work focused mainly on segmental phonology. The first aim of this thesis is therefore to provide a more comprehensive description of Sumi lexical tonal phonology to fill in this gap in the research. This thesis looks not just at the number of contrastive tones in Sumi, but also the nature of the tone-bearing unit, the assignment of tones to phonologically toneless morphemes, and morphologically conditioned tone variation. In addition, this work provides the first acoustic phonetic studies of Sumi that examine the phonetic realisation of tones and the interaction between tones and segments. Consequently, in order to describe the tone system, a description of the segmental phonology and phonotactics will first be presented, serving as an update of Sreedhar’s work.

The second aim of this study will be to provide a cross-linguistic comparison of the tonal system and, to some extent, the segmental phonology and phonotactics of Sumi with that

1 Throughout this thesis I will be using the autonym ‘Sumi’. However, when making reference to older literature, I defer to the term used by the author in question. It should be noted that the exonym ‘Sema’ is still commonly used in Nagaland to refer to this group.

2 of other related Kuki-Chin-Naga languages. Some preliminary observations of the historical origin and development of tone in these languages will be made, with a view to informing our understanding of the synchronic tone system in Sumi. Furthermore, it is hoped that such comparative work will serve as further evidence for the genetic classification of Sumi within the Kuki-Chin-Naga group.

The final aim of this study is to locate Sumi and other Naga languages within a larger tone typology, looking first at its place within the Tibeto-Burman family, and then more globally in a typology that contrasts the tone systems of East Asian languages with that of African languages. Ultimately, the question is how an understanding of the tone system of Sumi and other Naga languages can contribute to our understanding of tone languages in general.

It is further hoped that the descriptive work on tone will eventually aid in the development of a standardised orthography of Sumi that marks lexical tones, setting the groundwork for data collection and transcription to aid future research on other topics in Sumi phonology, morphology and syntax. This is especially important at a time when many people in Nagaland have stopped speaking their home languages, turning instead to other languages like Nagamese, the lingua franca of Nagaland, and English.

In this introductory chapter, a description of Sumi is first given, looking at its current linguistic situation, its genetic relationships to other languages of the area, as well as a summary of previous linguistic work on Sumi. A review of previous research done on the tonal phonology and phonetics of other languages of the Kuki-Chin-Naga group will then be presented. Finally, a number of relevant theoretical concerns will be examined, such as the definition of a tone language, the representation of tone, the phonetic realisation of tone and two proposed tone language typologies.

Chapter 2 explains the methodology that was used to determine the number of tonal categories and to conduct the acoustic phonetic analysis. This chapter highlights some of the difficulties that arise when investigating lexical tone, as well as the usefulness of an

3 acoustic phonetic analysis as a supplement to phonetic transcriptions that are based on the researcher’s own auditory perception.

Chapters 3 and 4 provide a description of Sumi segmental phonology and phonotactics respectively. A cross-linguistic comparison with other Naga languages is also given to highlight a few innovations unique to Sumi, and to demonstrate how, in terms of phonological features, Sumi appears to fall midway on a continuum between languages spoken to its immediate north and those spoken to the south.

Chapter 5 describes the tone system of Sumi, looking at the number of contrastive tones, and identifying the tone-bearing unit. Acoustic phonetic studies presented in this chapter will demonstrate how tones in Sumi are realised phonetically by pitch, measured as fundamental frequency (F 0), as well as the extent to which F 0 can vary in the realisation of each tone. The interaction between segments and tone will also be explored, looking specifically at the effects of initial consonant perturbations and vowel intrinsic F 0 on tone realisation. A cross-linguistic comparison of tone systems within the Kuki-Chin-Naga subgroup is given, along with some preliminary observations on tonal correspondences among the Naga languages. Finally, the tone systems of Sumi and the other Naga languages will be situated within a tone typology proposed by Hildebrandt (2007) for the Tibeto-Burman language family.

Chapter 6 considers the assignment of tone to phonologically toneless morphemes in Sumi, relying on an autosegmental representation of tone. Within this analysis, it is proposed that verb and noun roots have underlying tone melodies associated with them, and rules that assign tones from these roots to toneless morphemes are posited. In addition, the marked nature of H tone and its effect on tone assignment is considered. Finally, a typological comparison of tone rules in Sumi with those of African and East Asian tone languages will be made.

Chapter 7 investigates the interaction between morphology and tone in Sumi, focusing on morphologically conditioned tone variation caused by nominal compounding and

4 deverbal formation. These patterns of tone variation are then compared to those found in two other Naga languages for which comparable data exist.

To conclude this work, a final typological comparison between the tone system of Sumi and that of African and East Asian tone languages will be presented in Chapter 8.

1.2 Language description

1.2.1 Linguistic situation

1.2.1.1 Number of speakers and location The majority of Sumi speakers can be found in the Zunheboto district (centred around the town of Zunheboto) of Nagaland, with a substantial number also living in the commercial capital Dimapur, as well as the political capital Kohima (all locations can be found in Figure 1). There are also known to be Sumi villages in Assam, near the border with Nagaland (Morey, p.c. ).

According to the Ethnologue website (Lewis, 2009), the 2001 census estimates 242,000 speakers of Sumi. Bradley (1997) however, gives a more conservative figure of 100,000. This number is likely to have dropped over the past 10 years with the increasing prevalence of Nagamese and English across Nagaland. In the Zunheboto district, Sumi still remains the main language, with many speakers also fluent in Nagamese and English. In the main cities Kohima and Dimapur, Sumi speakers still use Sumi at home, but communicate mainly in Nagamese outside.

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Figure 1: Map of Nagaland (Coupe 2003: page xvii)

1.2.1.2 Dialects The first mention of different dialects within the Sumi speaking community can be found in Sir George Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India Vol. 3, Part 2 (1967/1903-1928). He mentions two known dialects: Simi and Zhimomi, with the former described as not being too different from Angami. It is not known how many speakers of each dialect there are.

6 In his seminal work The Sema Nagas , Hutton (1968/1921) looks at the Zümomi dialect 2, but notes the existence of another dialect, which he refers to as the Lazemi dialect, which is spoken only in a few villages and is not widely understood by other tribe members. He makes reference to a number of dialectal differences between villages, particularly between the Lazemi dialect and that of other Sumis in the Dayang Valley and also within the Tizu Valley. He notes that speakers of the Yepothomi dialect, spoken in the Upper Tizu, are more likely to drop word final vowels like /i/, although the vocabulary used is similar to that of the Zümomi. He also notes that speakers from the Aichi-Sagami village tend to invert the order of words and syllables (e.g. the name Inakhu becomes Ikhuna ), although he admits this practice, the rules of which do not appear to be fixed, can be observed in most Sumi villages (1968/1921: 266-7).3

During a trip to Nagaland in early 2009, I was informed by native speakers that there is little difference between the Sumi spoken in the town of Zunheboto and that spoken in the main cities Kohima and Dimapur. However, my main language consultant in Melbourne, who is from the Zhimomi clan, also mentioned that there was a village (whose name eluded her) of Sumi speakers whose dialect she had difficulty understanding. In contrast, these speakers had little trouble understanding her dialect. It does seem plausible that these would be speakers of the Laremi dialect mentioned by Hutton (1968/1921). Given the nature of such anecdotal information and the lack of any recent data on Sumi, it is difficult to conclusively determine if the two previously mentioned dialects still exist. More importantly, discussions with native speaker language consultants suggest that the dialect I have investigated is the one most widely understood in the Sumi community.

2 It is unclear if the Zümomi dialect mentioned by Hutton (1968/1921) is the same as the Zhimomi dialect mentioned in Grierson (1967/1903-1928). 3 Regarding lexical dialectal variation, Hutton retells the following joke: “Seven men of different villages happened to meet by the road one evening. They asked one another what they had got with them to eat with their rice. Each mentioned a different thing – atusheh , gwomishi , mugishi , amusa , akelho , etc., including, as some understood it, dried fish, meat, and various kinds of vegetables. They agreed to pool their good things and share alike and sat down prepared for a feast, each one thinking how he had scored by agreeing to share with his neighbours. When they opened their loads, they all produced chillies.” (1921/1968: 267)

7 1.2.2 Genetic relationships

Grierson (1967/1903-1928) classifies Sumi (referred to as Sema) as one of the ‘Western sub-group’ of the Naga languages, along with Angami, Rengma and Kezhama (also known as Kezha). This was largely a geographical grouping with some reference made to shared vocabulary and syntactic features. Since then, a number of different classifications have been proposed as more language data has been collected. The most important of these include work by Marrison (1967), Bradley (1997) and Burling (2003).

Marrison (1967), in his comprehensive survey of the languages of North-east India, puts Sumi (referred to as Sema) in his ‘Type C-1’ group with Angami, Chokri, Khezama (or Khezha) and Mao. 4 He notes that Sumi is much more similar to Angami in terms of phonology, vocabulary and syntax. However, in terms of morphology it appears more similar to Mao and Maram.

A similar classification is proposed by Bradley (1997), who groups Sumi (referred to as Sema) with Angami, Chakhesang – consisting of Chokri and Khezhama (or Khezha) – and Mao, but he places them within the ‘Southern Naga’ sub-group of a larger Kuki- Chin-Naga grouping (see Figure 2).

4 Marrison’s classification was based on a comparison of: a) initial consonants; b) final consonants; c) noun prefixes; d) agentive noun suffix; e) classificatory verbal prefixes; f) 5 lexical items – ‘fire’, ‘fish’, ‘house’, ‘road’, ‘stone’; g) position of the negative particle in the syntax; and h) usage of interrogative particles.

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Figure 2: Genetic classification of Kuki-Chin-Naga languages according to Bradley (1997: 28)5

5 Note that the two main varities of ‘Ao’: Chungli and Mongsen are not distinguished here. ‘Lhota’ is now usually spelt ‘Lotha’, while ‘Khezhama’ is another name for ‘Khezha’.

9 Finally, Burling (2003), in a more conservative classification, places Sumi (referred to as Simi) in the Angami-Pochuri group, which consists of Angami and Pochuri (or southern Sangtam or eastern Rengma) as two clear nuclei, along with Rengma N. (called Ntenyi in Marrison 1967), Rengma, Chokri, Kheza (or Khezha) and Mao (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Genetic classification according to Burling (2003: 184)6

While present day classifications no longer rely on simply geographical parameters, it is still difficult to establish genetic relationships between these languages due to the sparse amount of work done in this region. However, most proposed classifications thus far would show that Angami, Mao and Chakhesang (the collective name for Chokri and Khezha) are among the languages most closely related to Sumi.

6 ‘Kheza’ here is another spelling of ‘Khezha’.

10 Figure 4 shows the geographic distribution of languages in North-east India according to Burling’s 2003 classification. One important observation to make here is that while Sumi is genetically classified as a member of the Angami-Pochuri group, it is geographically surrounded to the north, west and east by languages of the Ao group. For this reason, when making cross-linguistic comparisons between the Angami-Pochuri languages and the Ao languages, I often refer to Sumi as a ‘border language’. 7

Figure 4: Map of language distribution in Nagaland and Manipur (Burling, 2003: 185)

7 Ironically, within the Kuki-Chin-Naga group, it is the Ao languages that would be considered ‘border’ languages, given their location next to the Konyak group. The Konyak languages, though spoken in Nagaland, are only distantly related to the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages (Burling, 2003).

11 1.2.3 Previous work on Sumi

The first published work on Sumi can be found in The Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. 3 Part 2 edited by Sir George Griersen. In this work, he presents data collected by A. W. Davis (then Inspector General of Police in Assam), giving a brief account of nominal and verbal affixation and providing three annotated texts in the Simi dialect. No mention of tone is given in this account, although vowel length was transcribed by placing a macron (¯) over what had been perceived as long vowels.

Hutton (1916) provides the first sketch grammar of the language Rudimentary Grammar of the Sema Naga Language, with Vocabulary , a revised version of which is included in his published anthopological description The Sema Nagas (1968/1921), along with a revised word list. The dialect he examines is that of the Zümomi clan, spoken in the upper regions of the Kiliki river, the central part of the Sumi district and also in the Tizu Valley.

In The Sema Nagas , Hutton mentions the presence of three tones in Sumi, which he marks only in minimal sets provided in the appendix of his book (following Sir George Grierson’s transcription system for tone) e.g. ¯ka ˗ka ˍka for high, mid and low tones respectively. In his word list and in examples cited in his sketch grammar he omits tone markings, stating in a footnote in his companion book, The Angami Nagas (1969/1921) that:

“I have not attempted to mark tones, or emphasis; these can only be learnt by ear, and the beginner can always avoid mistakes by using qualifying words to render his meaning clear.” (315)

This footnote is appended to a comment he makes that:

“Many N āgās ( sic ) will tell you that there is a marked difference in the intonation of these words, but for one N āgā who clearly marks these tonal distinctions, twenty fail to do so.” (315)

12 The second most important work on Sumi comes from Sreedhar (1980), who provides the most comprehensive grammar of Sumi to date, with a significant portion of A Sema Grammar dedicated to the phonology of the language. This grammar incorporates much of the data already presented in his Sema Phonetic Reader , published earlier in 1976. His data came from a variety of sources, including villages in and around Dimapur, Kohima and Pherima (south of Zunheboto district), Zunheboto, Sakhalu and Atoizü (in Zunheboto district) and Mokokchung (north of Zunheboto district).

In his work, Sreedhar confirms Hutton’s observation that Sumi has three tones, which he calls low, high and level (1976: 75-76; , 1980: 19). Phonetically, he describes the low and high tones as falling and rising respectively, but this is not accompanied by any acoustic phonetic evidence. More importantly though, Sreedhar makes a first attempt at transcribing these tones on all words he encountered, and provides sets of words with the same tone in his Sema Phonetic Reader (1976: 74-77).8

Of special mention is Marrison’s (1969) The Classification of the Naga languages of North-East India . In this vast collection of data, he presents comparative word lists of most Naga languages, including Sumi. However, it is likely that much of his data on Sumi was derived from earlier sources, including Hutton’s work.

Table 1 provides a selection of nine words, as presented in these previous works on Sumi, along with phonetic transcriptions of my own field data. Note that Sreedhar’s work is the only one to transcribe tone across the corpus, and his orthography is based on a phonemic analysis of the language e.g. given that [ ʃ] and [s] are allophones of the same phoneme, he uses the grapheme ‘s’ to represent both, while other researchers use ‘sh’ and ‘s’ respectively. He also uses ‘c’ and ‘ch’ for the unaspirated and aspirated palato-alveolar affricates, where others have used ‘ch’ and ‘chh’.

8 My own data and feedback from my language consultants contradicts his proposed groupings of words with the same tone.

13 Table 1: Comparison of transcriptions of nine Sumi words Grierson Hutton Marrison Sreedhar Author’s own Gloss (1902) (1921) (1969) (1980) 9 data lāki laki, khe laki, khe lakhì [lak hí] one ti tivelo 10 thi, ti thi [thi] to die āzu azü azu azi [àzì] water ākivi akevi akevi akiwi [àkìvi] good āki aki aki akì [àkì] house āpu apu apu apu [àpù] father āmishi amishi amishi amsi [àm ʃì] ~ [àmì ʃì] cow che chulo chu cu [ʧù] eat nipfü anipfu anipvu - [ànìpù] wife

As can be seen, there are inconsistencies in the transcriptions with the marking of aspiration for stops, as in the words for ‘one’ and ‘to die’. Another issue involves the transcription of the vowel /i/, which is sometimes represented by ‘u’, and sometimes by ‘ü’, as in the word for ‘water’. When the high vowels like /i/ occur word-medially following /k/, as in the word for ‘good’, some sources given the vowel as ‘e’.

Sreedhar’s transcriptions of tone appear vastly different from my own – in words which he has transcribed as bearing mid tone, I often find low tone. In the word for ‘one’, he has marked the second tone as being low, while I have found a high tone. There are very few examples where his tonal transcriptions match my own findings, such as the second tone in the word for ‘house’. Given this lack of consistency with my own transcriptions, I have been reluctant to rely on his transcribed material in this investigation.

The possibility that some inconsistencies in transcription may very well be due to dialectal differences or historical change has not been discounted. One example is the word for ‘wife’: the labio-dental affricate /pf/ has not been found in my own study of Sumi, but is a common phoneme in Angami and other related languages (as noted in 3.7). Consequently, it may either be found in certain dialects of Sumi that I have not

9 Sreedhar’s phonological transcriptions (including tone) using the IPA are given. Where no diacritic is present, a mid level tone is assumed. Note that both his (1980) grammar and (1976) phonetic reader do not give a vocabulary list. 10 Hutton cites the imperative form of the verbs.

14 encountered, or it may have been found in the speech of older Sumi speakers, with subsequent merger with the phoneme /p/.

1.2.4 Note on orthography

“Semas believe they had once the secret of writing, but that dogs ate the skin on which it was recorded.” (Hutton, 1921/1968: 299)

The creation of the current practical orthography based on the Latin alphabet is attributed to the missionary Rev. W. F. Dowd and Inashe Sema, who published a primer entitled Mlali in 1909 (Sreedhar, 1976). It has since been used in translations of the Sumi Baibel , as well as in publications such as the Sumi newsletter Izatsa . This script is nearly phonemic, and uses all the letters of the English alphabet. Some phonemes, such as the aspirated stops, are written using digraphs. The script has since been modified, with the addition of the letter ‘ü’ for the close central unrounded vowel.11

A recently published dictionary by the Sumi literature board (Swu & Yepthomi, 2004) uses a further modified version of the original missionary orthography. Low tones are marked by placing ‘h’ at the end of a syllable (a convention perhaps borrowed from the standard Cantonese tonal transcription system), while high tones are marked by doubling the preceding consonant. The latter is unproblematic since there are no phonemic geminates in the language. However, since the grapheme ‘h’ is already used to indicate both aspiration after stops and the /h/ phoneme, it might sometimes be confusing to use it to indicate a low tone.

Even with the dictionary, there is still no official standard as to how and when to indicate tone. Mr Rotokha, the current Secretary of the Sumi Literature Board, informed me that these modifications should only be used to distinguish words that are potentially confusing. However, more work needs to be done to determine what words are most likely to be misinterpreted without tone marking (in any form). Literate Sumi speakers

11 Sreedhar (1979) attempted to introduce a purely orthographic system that used only one grapheme per phoneme, e.g. using ‘c’ to represent both [ ʧ] and [ts], but this has not been met with great success.

15 have also been slow to take up the new system, preferring to follow the orthography presented in the Sumi Bible, with only a small set of words written using the new system e.g. apuh ‘father’, appu ‘son’.

For the purposes of this thesis, transcriptions in the current practical orthography will be presented in addition to phonetic and phonemic transcriptions. Transcriptions in the practical orthography – which does not indicate tone – are italicised e.g. atsü ‘dog’. In phonetic transcriptions indicated by square brackets [ ] and phonemic representations indicated by slash brackets / /, low pitch is marked by a grave accent (à) and high pitch by an acute accent (á). The middle pitch level is assumed when there is no accent marked on a tone-bearing segment (a). In a few phonemic representations, where a particular morpheme is not lexically specified for tone (see 6.1 for discussion on toneless morphemes), this is marked by underlining the tone-bearing segment (a). The assignment of tones to such phonologically toneless TBUs will be discussed in 6.1. Chapter 5 provides a comprehensive phonological description of these tones.

1.3 Studies of tone in Kuki-Chin-Naga languages

A small number of grammars of Naga languages exist that include phonological analyses of these languages. A few noteworthy grammars are listed here, along with their authors: Angami (also known as Tenyidie) (Giridhar, 1980; Kuolie, 2006) 12 ; Khezha (Kapfo, 2005); Lotha (Acharya, 1983); Mao (Giridhar, 1994); Mongsen Ao (Coupe, 2007). In addition, bilingual (English) and trilingual (English and Hindi) dictionaries that mark tone on lexical items exist for some of these languages: Angami (Giridhar, 1987) and Khezha (Kapfo, 2007). These sources have been useful for cross-linguistic comparisons with Sumi. However, in many of the listed grammars one usually finds the obligatory remark about the number of lexical tones in the language, while actual tonal transcriptions of the data tend to be either missing or inconsistent, limiting their use for

12 These two works were based on the Kohima dialect of Angami. In this thesis, the term ‘Angami’ will refer to the Kohima dialect, unless specified otherwise.

16 cross-linguistic comparisons of tone. In general, only a few studies have been dedicated to the tonal phonology of the Naga languages. These are summarised below. Kapfo (1989) provides one of the first phonological studies of tone variation in a Naga language, looking at compound nouns in Khezha (see 1.2.2 for genetic relationship). He identifies a number of patterns of morphologically and phonologically conditioned tone variation and provides examples of these.

The first experimental acoustic phonetic study of a Naga language was undertaken by Blankenship et al. (1993) who examined tone and voiceless nasals in the Khonoma dialect of Angami. In their study, they present an acoustic analysis of the vowels and tones of the language, providing formant plots of the acoustic vowel space, as well as giving the mean fundamental frequency (F 0) – the typical acoustic measure of pitch – (in Hz) of the four tones of Khonoma Angami.

Coupe (2003) provides the first comprehensive phonetic and phonological description of a Naga language. His study of Mongsen Ao presents acoustic phonetic analyses of voice onset time of stops as well as pitch realisations of tone. In this study he includes the results of a perception test involving words distinguished only by differences in pitch. Much of this work was later updated and incorporated into his (2007) grammar of Mongsen Ao, which also includes an autosegmental account of tone sandhi.

Other work on Ao include Bruhn’s (2009) classification of verbs in Chungli Ao by tonal morphology and Temsunungsang’s (2008) investigation of tone and word minimality in both the Mongsen and Chungli varieties of Ao. In the latter work, it is proposed that verbs in Mongsen are minimally monomoraic with a single tone while nouns are minimally bimoraic and bitonal. In contrast, verbs in Chungli are minimally bimoraic and bitonal while nouns are minimally monomoraic with a single tone.

Among recent work in more distantly related Kuki-Chin-Naga languages are grammars of Karbi (Arleng) (Jeyapaul, 1987) and Meithei (Chelliah, 1997), including a phonological and phonetic description of tone. Hyman (2007a) also provides an analysis of a Kuki

17 language, Kuki-Thaadow, that highlights certain properties of its tone system that one would usually associate with African tone languages.

Given the lack of decent tonal transcriptions for many of Kuki-Chin-Naga languages, there has been little comparative work on their tone systems. The only attempt at a comprehensive cross-linguistic comparison of tone in these languages can be found in Weidert’s (1987) Tibeto-Burman typology: a comparative account . In his book, Weidert posits three historical tonal categories (referred to as TCs) for the Kuki-Naga-Chin ( sic ) languages, based on a cross-linguistic comparison of shared etyma among these languages. Unfortunately, much of the work suffers from idiosyncratic terminology and sometimes perplexing tonal transcriptions. Furthemore, given that Weidert did not provide sources for his data, much of it cannot be verified. However, despite any other criticisms of his work, it is still a useful starting point for any future work on historical Naga linguistics.

Finally, Matisoff’s (2003) Handbook of proto-Tibeto-Burman is one of the few comparative works that incorporates data from Naga languages. While some of the data were collected by Matisoff, who had previously worked with an Angami speaker and a Lotha speaker, his Sumi language data seem to largely come from Marrison (1967) who collected his data from sources that were not always reliably transcribed for tone. While the book does not attempt a reconstruction of historical tonal categories, it is still an invaluable store of information for reconstructed segments and prefixes in the Tibeto- Burman family, an understanding of which is essential for any historical work on Sumi tone in the future.

1.4 Lexical tone

Before a description of the tone system of Sumi can be given, a number of theoretical issues need to be addressed briefly. This section looks at what a lexical tone language is; how tone is represented in an autosegmental framework; the main phonetic correlates; and finally, the main parameters proposed in typologies of tone systems.

18 1.4.1 Tone languages

Defining a ‘tone language’ has not been a completely uncontroversial issue: Pike (1948) defined tone languages as having “contrastive, but relative pitch on each syllable”. This strict condition that every syllable carry a tone has since been somewhat mitigated by the the existence of toneless syllables and the possibility of word-level tones. Perhaps more useful then is Welmers’ (1973) definition that a “tone language is a language in which both pitch phonemes and segmental phonemes enter into the composition of at least some morphemes” (cited in Hyman, 2001b).

This definition however, does not distinguish ‘lexical tone’ languages from those with ‘lexical pitch accent’, where it is the absence or presence of an accent (a prominence marker realised entirely by pitch) or the position of the accent in a word, that marks a contrast between lexical items. Remijsen (2001) suggests that one crucial difference between such languages is that tones in a lexical tone language contrast with each other paradigmatically, i.e. the replacement of one tone with another often results in a different word; while lexical pitch accent contrasts are usually syntagmatic, i.e. changing the position of the accent in a word (or removing it) will result in a different word.

Much recent work has examined the boundary between a ‘tone’ language and ‘stress accent’ language (where the prominence marker is realised by a bundle of features including pitch and vowel quality), as well as the status of ‘pitch accent’ languages (Gussenhoven, 2006; Hyman, 2006). Examining the boundary between what is a tonal or non-tonal language lies beyond the scope of this work. However, it is important to note that recent work has also looked at ‘hybrid systems’ of lexical tone and lexical stress; lexical pitch accent and lexical stress, e.g. Remijsen (2001) on Maya’; and even lexical tone and lexical pitch accent e.g. Johnson (2005) on Cherokee. This last combination remains contentious, with Remijsen (2001) disputing the possibility of both lexical tone and lexical pitch accent existing in the same phonological system, arguing that if two different word-prosodic features are used in a language, the way in which they are encoded must be distinct from each other. Given that lexical tone and lexical pitch accent are both encoded by the same prosodic parameter, i.e. F 0, it is more likely that a system

19 that is difficult to classify ought to be treated as having lexical tone but with constraints on the location for tonal contrasts (as suggested in Donohue, 1997; McCawley, 1978).

1.4.2 Autosegmental representation of tone

In order to represent tone, this thesis adopts an autosegmental framework, following Goldsmith (see Goldsmith, 1979) and many others. The basic tenet of an autosegmental framework is that tones and segmental features lie on separate ‘tiers’ and are linked to each other using association lines. Later work on this has suggested that tones link to an intervening prosodic entity, such as the syllable or mora, i.e. a tone-bearing unit or TBU.

The main motivation for such a representation is its ablity to account for TBUs in Sumi that have been analysed as lexically unspecified for tone, but which nevertheless receive a surface tonal specification (see 6.1). In phonological transcriptions throughout this thesis, segments (representing potential TBUs) are underlined e.g. (a) to indicate they are underlyingly toneless at the phonological level. However, in their surface phonetic realisation, all such TBUs receive a tonal specification. The way in which tones are assigned to such toneless TBUs in Sumi will be the main topic of Chapter 6.

Underpinning autosegmental representations are also a number of well-formedness conditions: (1) Every TBU must have a tone. (2) Every tone must be associated to some TBU. (3) Association proceeds one-to-one, left-to-right. (4) Association lines must not cross.

Yip (2002) summarises these conditions, noting that they are not universals and that they can be violated within Optimality Theory. Despite the recent dominance of Optimality Theory in research on tone systems, this theoretical framework will not be used in this analysis, given that this is a first description of Sumi tone and that an autosegmental representation of tone has proven sufficient in accounting for tone spreading in Sumi (see Chapter 6). Furthermore, there is little motivation to provide an analysis using Optimality

20 Theory, given that recent descriptions of other Kuki-Chin-Naga languages, such as Coupe’s (2003, 2007) analysis of Mongsen Ao and Hyman’s (2007) analysis of Kuki- Thaadow, simply use an autosegmental approach.

1.4.3 Phonetic correlates of tone

At this juncture, it is necessary to make a few careful distinctions between the terms

‘fundamental frequency’ (F0), ‘pitch’ and ‘tone’. As Lehiste (1970) states, “pitch will be used to refer to the perceptual correlate of frequency, [while] tone will be used to refer to the feature when it functions distinctively at word level” (1970: 54). Therefore, ‘pitch’ refers to the auditory perception of the speech signal, while ‘tone’ refers to a linguistic unit that is mainly realised by pitch. In addition to these, ‘F 0’ is the acoustic component of a speech signal that can be measured in cycles per second or Hertz (Hz). However in practice, the terms ‘F 0’ and ‘pitch’ are often used interchangeably, e.g. a ‘pitch trace’ technically refers to acoustic measurements of F 0 plotted against time. The more important distinction to make is between ‘F 0’ and ‘tone’: as Xu and Wang (2001) state,

“observed F 0 contours are not linguistic units per se. Rather, they are the surface realizations of linguistically functional units such as tone or pitch accent” (2001: 321).

The primary phonetic correlate of tone is pitch (measured acoustically as F0). This is why an acoustic pitch trace is a very useful supplement to auditory impressions when investigating tone and post-lexical intonation in a new language (Gordon, 2003), particularly with the advent of portable digital sound recorders and the availability of free software to perform such acoustic analyses. These graphic representations of pitch can aid a researcher before he or she is able to reasonably perceive tonal contrasts in a new language.

However, caution must always be taken when working with F 0, since pitch in linguistic tone is always relative. One cannot use absolute F 0 values to assign tonal categories, though pitch traces may provide additional evidence to support the existence of such categories. As Yip states:

21 “A high tone does not have a fixed F 0 – it will vary from speaker to speaker, and even for a single speaker, depending on such factors as whether the speaker is male or female, young or old, calm or agitated, whether the word occurs at the start or the end of the utterance, and so on. It thus cannot be identified in isolation by pitch alone.” (2002: 21)

Bearing in mind the relative nature of pitch in linguistic tone, one assumption of this analysis is the existence of ‘pitch targets’, defined by Xu and Wang as “the smallest articulatorially operable units associated with linguistically functional pitch units such as tone and pitch accent” (2001: 321). They identify two kinds of pitch targets: static pitch targets, which have a register specification, e.g. [high], [low]; and dynamic pitch targets which specify linear movement, e.g. [rise], [fall]. Each target is not associated with an absolute F 0 value, but in realising these targets, a speaker’s F 0 will fall within a specific range for that speaker. Some factors affecting F 0 output which Xu and Wang (2001) summarise include: vowel intrinsic F 0; perturbations caused by prevocalic consonants; F 0 declination; and tonal coarticulation. The first two of these factors will be investigated in acoustic phonetic studies presented in Chapter 5.

In particular, the interaction between consonants (both prevocalic and postvocalic) and pitch over historical time is well documented, particularly in studies on the origin of tone in certain languages, or to use the term coined by Matisoff, ‘tonogenesis’. The most frequent observation is that voiced obstruents lower the pitch of the vowel that follows them, while voiceless ones raise the pitch of the following vowel (Hombert, 1978). Haudricourt (1954) in his seminal work (subsequently revised by Thurgood, 2002) demonstrated how tones in Vietnamese developed through the loss of post-vocalic consonants and the loss of a voicing contrast in pre-vocalic consonants. Similarly, the tone split undergone by the four tones of Middle Chinese is attributed to the loss of a phonological contrast between voiced and voiceless prevocalic stops, resulting in the yang (lower pitch) and yin (higher pitch) registers (Chen, 2000). The acoustic phonetic study presented in 5.4 looks for evidence of such phonetic segmental perturbations on the

22 realisation of tones within the synchronic tone system of Sumi. Such phonetic evidence will hopefully add to our understanding of historical tone changes.

Finally, in addition to pitch, some tone systems may have tones that are realised through non-modal phonation. While pitch is difficult to perceive on segments produced with non-modal phonation, some languages do contrast non-modal phonation such as creaky voice with contrastive pitch, e.g. Burmese (Okell, 1969) 13 . Note that many pitch trackers are not able to reliably estimate F 0 over stretches of such non-modal phonation (Beckman & Venditti, forthcoming; Gussenhoven, 2004). However, as long as one is aware of such limitations, they should not detract from the usefulness of acoustic pitch traces as invaluable supplements to a phonological analysis of tone.

1.4.4 Tone language typologies

Moving from the micro-phonetic aspects of tone to a more general understanding of tone systems, we note that many tone languages have been classified according to tonal behaviour considered to be characteristic of a particular geographical area. Within the Tibeto-Burman language family, Matisoff (1991) posits two such distinct geographical areas: the Indosphere and Sinosphere. Indospheric languages are typologically similar to the Indo-Aryan languages that they are in contact with, and are typically polysyllabic, atonal and display complex morphology. Sinospheric languages are typologically similar to the Chinese languages, and are typically monosyllabic and have complex tone systems but simple morphology. To this division, Hildebrandt (2007) adds a third ‘Buffer Zone’ area, based around the Tibetan Plateau. Languages of the Buffer Zone are considered ‘hybrid’ systems, displaying properties of languages from the other two spheres.

The two main parameters Hildebrandt uses in her tone typology are: the tone-bearing unit (TBU), which may be the syllable 14 or word; and the main phonetic correlate of tone. Indospheric languages such as Dolakha Newar and Limbu are atonal. Most Sinospheric languages have a syllable TBU and tone in these languages is realised entirely by pitch,

13 Okell (1969) refers to this as the ‘creaky tone’ in Burmese. 14 This includes sesquisyllables, which consist of a full syllable preceded by a reduced syllable. Sesquisyllables in Sumi will be discussed in 4.2.

23 measured as F 0. The Buffer Zone languages in contrast have a word tone, i.e. the TBU is the word, and tone is phonetically realised both by pitch as well as phonation type. However, this classification by geographic area is not unproblematic, with the language Meithei displaying tone characteristics of a ‘Sinospheric’ language, despite being spoken in India. An examination of the tone systems of Sumi and other Naga languages in 0 will reveal similar shortcomings with this proposed typology.

More generally, the most common dichotomy in tone languages contrasts ‘African’ with ‘East Asian’ (typically Sinitic) tone systems. A summary of their differences is presented in Table 2, following Evans’ (2008) typological comparison of these two language ‘types’ 15 with the Qiangic languages. Only the parameters relevant to classifying the tone systems of Sumi and other Naga languages have been selected for discussion here

Table 2: Typological profile of ‘East Asian’ and ‘African’ tone languages (following Evans 2008) ‘East Asian’ ‘African’ TBU syllable mora / syllable Level vs contour both are primary level tones primary; contours = tones sequences of level tones Tonal inventory 16 3 to 11 1 to 2 Floating tones yes yes Downstep no yes Toneless syllable predictable from prior tone + default, usually Low pitch intonation Tone spreading rare, but possible yes - direction usually Left to Right Morphological no yes tonal polarity

The following is an explanation of the parameters used in this typology, following Hyman (2001b). The first set of parameters deal with phonological contrasts:

15 Evans (2008) uses the term ‘Chinese’, which has been substituted with ‘East Asian’ to be consistent with the terminology used throughout the thesis. 16 These figures are from Evans (2008), with the implication that that output surface tones in most ‘African’ tone languages can be accounted for by applying a set of rules to a small phonological inventory of one or two tones (usually a high vs. low contrast, a high vs. zero contrast, or a low vs. zero contrast).

24 1) Tone-bearing unit (TBU): This could either be the vocalic mora or syllable. Other work by Mazaudon (1974) and Hildebrandt (2007) also highlight the possibility of the word as the TBU in a language. In addition, Voorhoeve (1973) makes a distinction between ‘non-restricted’ and ‘restricted’ tone languages: in ‘non-restricted’ tone languages, tones are assigned to individual syllables (or moras) regardless of their position in a word or morpheme, while in ‘restricted’ tone languages, tones are constrained in their position. 2) Contour vs. register tone systems: A register tone language has level tones and sometimes ‘contour’ tones which can be analysed as a sequence of level tones in a ‘tone cluster’ (Yip, 1989). In contrast, a true contour tone system has phonologically complex and contrastive contours. One common observation is that if a language has contour tones, it also has level tones (Yip, 2002). 3) Tonal inventory: Within register tone languages, the number of contrastive levels ranges between two and five. Many African languages have a small phonological tonal inventory and can often be analysed as having ‘privative tone’. For example, a language that has only two surface tones: high and low, might be analysed as having only one underlying phonological tone that contrasts with /Ø/ (Hyman, 2001a). East Asian languages generally have larger tonal inventories that include contour tones. 4) Floating tones: Within an autosegmental framework (see 1.4.2 above), some languages have been analysed as having ‘floating’ tones that are not associated to, or have been disassociated from, a TBU. These tones are not phonetically realised themselves, but affect the following tone e.g. a floating low tone can trigger downstep in a following high tone (Hyman, 2001a). 5) Automatic vs. non-automatic downstep: Non-automatic downstep involves the phonological lowering of a high tone (usually following a floating low tone) resulting in a tone that might be phonetically at the same level as a mid tone. On the other hand, automatic downstep, or downdrift 17 , is common across all languages and is considered to be a universal effect whereby pitch falls across an entire utterance.

17 According to Connell’s (2001) attempt at consolidating the current terminology, this might better be referred to as ‘declination’.

25 Exceptions to this include the formation of questions from declaratives and possibly when an important tonal contrast needs to be preserved (Hombert, 1974).

The second set of parameters looks at the proposed tone rules that operate within a language, often assuming an autosegmental representation of tone (discussed above in 1.4.2):

1) Tone spreading: Hyman (2001b), citing Chen 1992, notes that in many tone languages of East Asia, tones on one TBU never combine with that of another, but may instead trigger a paradigmatic replacement of a neighbouring tone with another tone. If spreading onto a neighbouring TBU occurs, the original tone of that TBU must first be deleted. In contrast, in tone languages of Africa, a tone might spread onto a neighbouring TBU that is already specified for tone, resulting in a phonetic contour tone, e.g. in Yoruba low tones spread onto a following high-toned vowel, resulting in a phonetic rising tone (Pulleyblank, 1986). 2) Direction of tone spreading: Left to right spreading is the expected trend in many African tone languages, which Hyman and Schuh (1974) had previously considered to be a tone universal. However, it has since been acknowledged that tonal anticipation might be more prevalent in African languages than previously thought (Hyman, 2007b). In some languages, tone may spread onto one neighbouring TBU (bounded spreading) or it might spread all the way to the edge of a word (unbounded spreading) (Hyman, 2001b). 3) Tonal polarity: In some African tone languages it has been found that affixes take the opposite tone of the adjacent tone on a base (Hyman, 2001b).

While these two language ‘types’ are often viewed as diametric opposites, recent work on non-Sinitic languages of East and Southeast Asia has in fact shown that characteristics often associated with African tone systems are also present in East Asian tone languages (Evans, 2008; Hyman, 2007a). This tone typology will be revisited at various points in this thesis, particularly in 6.4 and in the final chapter, with additional evidence from Sumi

26 suggesting that the Naga languages also share features typically associated with African tone languages.

Having discussed the main theoretical issues pertinent to this thesis, we can now look at the methodology used to determine Sumi tonal categories and the procedures used in conducting the acoustic phonetic analysis of Sumi tone.

27 2 Methodology

As mentioned in 1.4.3, an acoustic pitch trace is a useful tool in the analysis of tone and can provide supplementary evidence in the identification of tonal categories in a language. This section describes the methodology used in determining such tonal categories in Sumi, as well as in conducting an acoustic phonetic analysis of tone. In addition to the procedures used in the acoustic analysis, the development of a ‘tone comparison chart’, used as an additional means of verifying tonal categories, will be explained.

2.1 Participants

Two participants in their 30s, one female (IZ) and one male (JA), were recorded. All the recordings of IZ were done in Melbourne, Australia, while the recordings of JA were done in Zunheboto, Nagaland. Both speakers grew up in the Zunheboto district and speak a dialect understood by the majority of Sumi speakers. Given general difficulties in gaining access to more participants, only these two speakers were recorded.

The data used in this thesis was collected in Melbourne during weekly / fortnightly meetings with my primary language consultant IZ between March 2008 and August 2009. A second source of recordings and word elicitations came from JA during a meeting with him in Zunheboto, Nagaland in February 2009.

2.2 Recording equipment

A Sony TCS-580V stereo Cassette-Corder was initially used with an external ECM- MS907 electret condenser microphone. These recordings were then digitised on an analogue digital converter at a sampling rate of 96 kHz and a bit size of 24 bits per sample using the programme Wave Lab 4.0. The cassette recorder was upgraded to a Sony PCM-D50 digital recorder at the end of 2008, and all subsequent recordings were done at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a bit size of 16 bits per sample.

28 2.3 Carrier phrases

Given that phonetic realisations of tone do not correspond to absolute values, a method suggested by Pike (1948) for conducting a tonal analysis of an unknown language was used. 18 He highlights the use of tone frames, hereby referred to as ‘carrier phrases’. The investigated token is substituted into a carrier phrase, which provides a context against which level pitches (particularly on monosyllabic items) can be compared. Pike mentions the need to use multiple carrier phrases in the event that a particular phrase causes a change in the tone on the investigated word. 19

In this study of lexical tone, the following carrier phrases were used:

(1) niye____ ani nìye ____ àni 20 ‘I have a ____’

(2) hiye____ kumo hiye ____ kùmò ‘This is not a ____’

(3) noye ____ pi pi ani nòye ____ pi pì àni ‘You said ____’

A sentence-medial substitution position was chosen to avoid the effects of post-lexical phrase-final intonation. It can be deduced that carrier phrases (1) and (2) were only useful when investigating nouns (which constitute the majority of the corpus), while carrier phrase (3) was able to accommodate words from all word classes.

A phonetic transcription of pitch based on the researcher’s auditory perception was undertaken. Audio recordings of each token in the carrier phrase were made, with a minimum of two repetitions per investigated word. Given the lack of a reliable dictionary

18 Additional exercises in pitch analysis are also provided in Pike’s (1947) manual. 19 Further research into the tone system of Sumi will also examine words in isolation. 20 Note that the tones of the words in the carrier phrases themselves were only confirmed with the use of the tone comparison chart (see 2.5).

29 or extensive word list with lexical tone already marked, much of the initial work involved locating and assembling a corpus of words in Sumi that was sufficiently large in order to offer a general overview of the phonetic structures found in the language. As such, only a minimum of two repetitions were recorded in order to gain a larger collection of different words – Gordon (2003) recommends at least two repetitions in such an investigation, in the event that a recording is affected by a sudden background noise or speaker dysfluency.

One advantage of using carrier phrases over transcribing words in isolation was the reduced risk of list intonation affecting the pitch of the word being investigated. Placing the word in the middle of a carrier phrase also lowered the chance of an intonational phrase boundary affecting the pitch of the investigated word. More importantly, the carrier phrase was a useful guide in determining if a change in key had occured, i.e. if the pitch on all the words in the carrier phrase went up or down, the transcription of tone on the investigated word could be adjusted accordingly. However, finding a suitable carrier phrase and verifying that it did not cause a change in tone within the investigated word required time and patience. Investigating a new word was also time consuming, given that each recording and transcription meant recording the entire carrier phrase each time.

2.4 Acoustic phonetic analysis

Two freely available software programs were used to perform an acoustic analysis: Praat (version 5.1.11) (Boersma & Weenink, 2009) and EMU Labeler (version 2.2.3) (Cassidy & Harrington, 2001). ‘Praat’ was used initially to generate spectrograms and pitch traces to help confirm the segmental and tonal transcription of new words. As the corpus expanded, ‘EMU Labeler’ was used in conjunction with the statistical program ‘R’

(version 2.8.1) (Harrington, in press) to extract and analyse data, such as F 0 measurements, across the corpus. In addition to these, the freely available program ‘Linguist’s Toolbox’ (version 1.5.3) (Hellmuth, Myers, & Nakhimovsky, 2006) was used to create a database in which to store and organise lexical entries.

30 The acoustic analysis involved an investigation of F 0 across the entire corpus. To do this, the Pitch and Formant Tool in ‘EMU Labeler’ was used to generate spectrograms and pitch traces. Annotations done in ‘EMU Labeler’ involved two interval tiers, ‘Word’ and ‘Segment’; and one point tier, ‘Tone’. The labels ‘L’, ‘M’ and ‘H’ were used in the tone tier, indicating Low, Mid and High tone respectively. The assignment of tone label was determined by a combination of: the researcher’s own auditory perception of pitch; F 0 values, as plotted in the acoustic pitch trace; and the use of the tone comparison chart (which will be described in 2.5).

When labelling tones, a pitch target model (see 1.4.1) was assumed and the following guidelines were observed: (i) if the pitch trace was flat (as in the majority of cases), a marker was placed at a stable portion of the pitch trace; (ii) if there was a clear peak (particularly with H tones), a marker was placed at the apex; and (iii) if there was a gradual decline across the pitch trace with no clear peak, a marker was placed roughly at the mid point of the vowel segment. ‘Emu/R’ was then used to extract F 0 values, as well as formant values for vowels at regular time points in the signal. A sample annotation of the word atoqhe [atoq he] ‘lizard’ is given in Figure 5.

Acoustic pitch traces proved to be extremely useful graphical representations of pitch that supplemented the researcher’s own auditory impressions. Moreover, in this investigation it was found that in all three carrier phrases, the morpheme ye , which immediately preceded the investigated word, carried M tone (labelled M* in annotations), making it a useful visual yardstick in pitch trace displays when comparing it with any following tones.

31

Figure 5: Sample annotation of atoqhe [atoqhe] ‘lizard’ using the program ‘Emu Labeler’ From top to bottom, we have the three annotated tiers: Word (with gloss), Segment and Tone; an acoustic waveform of the utterance, a wideband spectrogram and the pitch trace. In the Tone tier, ‘M’ marks M tone on vocalic segments within the investigated word, while ‘M*’ and ‘*M’ respectively mark M tone in the parts of the carrier phrase immediately preceding and following the investigated word.

32 2.5 Tone comparison chart

In addition to audio recordings, a tone comparison chart was developed and used in the course of the research. The purpose of the chart was to provide groups of words that shared the same tone patterns or melodies, so that when a new word was encountered, the speaker could place that new word within an already established tone ‘group’.

A sample of the chart is given in Table 3. The columns in the table, from left to right, give: (1) the number of syllables in a word; (2) an orthographic representation of that word; (3) an English gloss; (4) the tone melody associated with that word; and (5) the word class (or part of speech). The symbols in the tone melody column: L, M and H represent Low, Mid and High tone respectively (an explanation of how these labels were originally assigned is given in this section below).

Table 3: Sample of the tone comparison chart used during elicitation sessions Syll Word Gloss Tone POS 2 aki house LL n aphu village LL n timi person LL n

sasü with LM postp niye I LM pron ghili about LM adv

apu son LH n aza mother LH n

eno and ML conj shiphe create ML v

aje name MM n kini two MM num khani sometimes MM adv

The full chart is provided in Appendix A. Note that all trisyllabic words are compounds of monosyllabic or disyllabic roots, though not all of these have been analysed

33 morphologically. Some words are also not lexical items, e.g. nitsülo ‘Give (it) to us’ is an inflected verb with the root tsü ‘give’, a 1 st person plural prefix ni- ‘(to) us’ and the imperative suffix -lo .

The starting point for this chart was the researcher’s phonetic transcriptions, with words transcribed for the same pitch grouped together. One language consultant (IZ) was then asked to reproduce the melody of each word without its segmental information (i.e. ‘hum’ the word melody), and to confirm that all the words in each group shared the same melody. The language consultant was then asked to confirm that the melody of each group was different from that of all other groups. Only once this was done were the tone labels L, M and H assigned to each group, based on relative pitch height. Other language consultants were also asked to verify the tone groupings to ensure that the original chart was not a representation of an idiosyncratic tone system unique to the first consultant.

Once the tone comparison chart was established, each time a new word was investigated, a language consultant would then be asked to reproduce the melody of the word without its segmental information, and to place the word in a group of words (in the chart) that shared the same melody. It was essential that the speaker consistently assigned a word to the same group each time. This was done as a way of independently confirming the researcher’s own tonal transcriptions, but more importantly, as an attempt at differentiating the tonal categories in the speaker’s mind without relying solely on phonetic output.

The tone comparison chart provided a quick and convenient way to determine the tone on new words, without having to rely on a frame or multiple frames which are both time- consuming and sometimes difficult to come up with. Although, it was sometimes difficult to use this method for longer words due to the large number of possible tone permutations, the main language consultant IZ was usually able to break up most words into separate syllables and compare them with the monosyllabic words in the chart.

34 However, a degree of caution must still be taken in interpreting these tone groupings. It was sometimes difficult for the language consultants to group a small number of words that did not appear to match any of the sets given in the tone comparison chart. These words often ended in phonetic diphthongs e.g. aghau [a ɣaù] ‘bird’, toi [tòi] ‘resemble’ or were more recent borrowings that had syllable-final sonorants (at least at the phonetic level) e.g. kurshi [kùr.ʃì] ‘horse’. In most cases, speakers were still able to reproduce the melody of these words but would have trouble placing them in a group in the chart. An acoustic analysis (described above) was then needed to verify the identity of each tone on the phonetic diphthongs and sonorant codas.

A final caveat is mentioned by Morey (2008), who makes the point that in Singpho, another language of North-east India, the functional load of tone in distinguishing words is not always clear. Similarly, little is known about the functional load of tone in Sumi, since not all items belong to tonal minimal sets 21 , and one early remark by Hutton (1969/1921) that was highlighted in 1.2.3 suggests the possibility that tone may not carry a high functional load among the Naga languages. As Morey adds, it is not always a straightforward matter to understand the underlying tone system in a speaker’s mind or that of a community of speakers.

A study of this would require a perception test, which lies outside the scope of this thesis, given the constraints of fieldwork and access to native speakers. Such a test will be incorporated in future research, but until such a time it is hoped that the findings here confirm both Hutton’s (1968/1921) and Sreedhar’s (1980) observations of three distinct tones.

21 The fact the current edition of the Sumi Bible does not mark tone on all words, but only those that are potentially confusing, e.g. apuh ‘father’ vs apu ‘son’ suggests that context does play a role in word identification in Sumi.

35 3 Segmental Phonology

Before examining the tone system of Sumi, some knowledge of the segmental phonology is required. This chapter provides a brief description of the segmental phonology of Sumi, serving as an update to Sreedhar’s (1980) analysis. In addition, a comparison will be made between the phonemic inventory of Sumi and that of other closely related Naga languages.

3.1 Phoneme Inventory

The phoneme inventory presented in Table 4 is based on the researcher’s own data collection. The practical orthography is given here in italics in angle brackets < >. However, the practical orthography is not strictly phonemic and sometimes uses two graphemes to represent two different allophones of the same phoneme. In such cases, the allophonic variants e.g. [s] and [w] are also provided in the chart, but in square brackets.

Table 4: Phoneme inventory of Sumi with allophones Labial Labio- Alveolar Palato- Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal dental alveolar Stops /p/ < p> /t/ /k/ < k> /q/ < q> /p h/ < ph > /t h/ < th > /k h/ < kh > /q h/ /b/ < b> /d/ < d> /g/ < g> Affricates [ts] < ts > /ʧ/ < ch > [ts h] / h/ ʧ Fricatives /f/ < f> [s] < s> /ʃ/ < sh > /x/ < x> /h/ < h> /v/ < v> [z] < z> /ʒ/ < j> /ɣ/ < gh > Nasals /m/ < m> /n/ < n> /ŋ/ < ng > /m ɦ/ /n ɦ/ < nh > Laterals /l/ < l> /l ɦ/ < lh > Trill /r/ < r> Semi- [w] < w> /j/ vowels

Front Central Back High /i/ < i> /i/ < ü> /u/ Low /e/ < e> /a/ < a> /o/ < o>

36 In addition to these segments, Sumi has three suprasegmental level tones: Low (L), Mid (M) and High (H). These will be further discussed in 5.1. As mentioned in 1.2.4, at the phonetic level, low pitch – corresponding to a low output (surface) tone – is marked by a grave accent (à) and high pitch – corresponding to a high surface tone – by an acute accent (á). The middle pitch level is assumed when there is no accent marked on a tone- bearing unit (a). At the phonological level, the grave and acute accents mark underlying L and H tones, while the lack of an accent marks an underlying M tone. In some instances, where a bound morpheme is not lexically specified for tone (see 6.1 for discussion on toneless morphemes), this is marked by underlining the tone-bearing segment (a). All transcriptions given in the practical orthography are italicised e.g. atsü ‘dog’.

This analysis differs from Sreedhar’s (1980) analysis, which treats the palato-alveolar fricatives [ ʃ] and [ ʒ] as allophones of the dental (alveolar in this analysis) fricatives /s/ and /z/ (see 3.2.2), and [v] as an allophone of /w/ (see 3.2.4).

More importantly, Sreedhar does not recognise the phoneme /r/ as part of the phonemic inventory, despite citing examples like kurshi (written kursi in his orthography) ‘horse’. While it is true that most words containing /r/ are arguably recent borrowings into Sumi 22 most are now considered to be part of the native lexicon. For instance, one speaker suggested the origin of the word kurshi [kùr.ʃì] ‘horse’ was a compounding of the noun root -shi ‘wild animal; game’ and onomatopoeic kur-, representing the neighing of a horse. 23

22 It would appear that the original voiced and voiceless alveolar rhotics */r/ and */r ̥/ ( rh ) underwent dorsalisation in Sumi and developed into voiced and voiceless velar fricatives / ɣ/ and /x/ (see 3.7). 23 Marrison (1967) gives kuru as the Sumi word for ‘horse’, which suggests that the current form kurshi is a compound of kuru ‘horse’ and -shi ‘wild animal’. However, rather than an onomatopoeic origin, it is more likely that kuru is a reflex of the proto-Tibeto-Burman root *kor ‘horse’ offered by Matisoff (2003), who has found reflexes of this morpheme in other related languages such as Tangkhul Naga si-kuy and Lushai sà-kŏr. Acharya (1983) also gives /kúr ə/ as the word for ‘horse’ in Lotha Naga. It is most likely that Sumi has borrowed this morpheme from another Tibeto-Burman language after the loss of its own alveolar rhotic.

37 The inclusion of /r/ in the phoneme inventory as opposed to breathy stops founds in words like bheri [b ɦeri] ‘sheep’, gadha [gad ɦa] ‘donkey’ is supported by the fact that the words containing /r/ appear to be more ‘nativised’ vis-à-vis words containing breathy stops, which speakers immediately identify as having been borrowed from Hindi or Nagamese. 24 More importantly, speakers are able to consistently place the pitch on words like khurshi ‘horse’ into tonal categories, but often have trouble doing so for loanwords containing breathy stops, reaffirming that the latter group lies outside the native lexicon. 25

3.2 Consonants

3.2.1 Plosives

/p/ is a voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop. It usually occurs in syllable-initial position and can only occur in syllable-final position word-medially. It is always realised as [p], e.g. pi [pì] ‘say’; sapüsa [sàp.sà] ‘mistreat’.

/p h/ is a voiceless aspirated bilabial stop. It is always realised as [p h] and only occurs syllable-initially 26 , e.g. pho [p hò] ‘be smoky’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph ph .

/b/ is a voiced bilabial stop. It is always realised as [b] and occurs syllable-initially, e.g. ba [bà] ‘defecate’; although it can occur in syllable final position word-medially, e.g. lhibidi [l ɦib.di] ‘forty’.

/t/ is a voiceless unaspirated alveolar stop. It usually occurs in syllable-initial position and can only occur in syllable-final position word-medially. It is always realised as [t], e.g. ta /tà/ [tà] ‘finish’; atüka [àt.ka] ‘last’.

24 Most Nagas also speak Nagamese, as well as Hindi – languages with breathy stops in their phonemic inventories – and are able to produce these sounds without difficulty. 25 The assignment of tone to these words often varies from individual to individual, suggesting that the words are not lexically specified for tone. 26 The voiceless aspirated stops do not occur in syllable-final position because they do not undergo resyllabification (see 4.3).

38 /t h/ is a voiceless aspirated alveolar stop. It is always realised as [t h] and only occurs syllable, e.g. tha [t ha] ‘ignore’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph th .

/d/ is a voiced alveolar stop. It is always realised as [d] and only occurs syllable-initially, e.g. da [dà] ‘paste’.

/k/ is a voiceless unaspirated velar stop. It usually occurs in syllable-initial position and can only occur in syllable-final position word-medially. It is always realised as [k], e.g. ka [kà] ‘rule’; akütsü [àk.tsi] ‘head’.

/k h/ is a voiceless aspirated velar stop. It is always realised as [k h] and only occurs syllable-initially, e.g. kha [k ha] ‘shut’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph kh .

/g/ is a voiced velar stop. It is always realised as [g]. It is a marginal phoneme in Sumi, occuring syllable-initially in at least one word: agi [a.gí] ‘face’.

/q/ is a voiceless unaspirated uvular stop. It is always realised as [q] and only occurs syllable-initially, e.g qü [qi] ‘spread’.

/q h/ is a voiceless aspirated uvular stop. It is sometimes realised as [q h], but is usually produced with greater frication, as [q χ]. It only occurs syllable-initially, e.g. qhi [q χi] ‘rest’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph qh .

3.2.2 Fricatives and Affricates

/f/ is a voiceless labio-dental fricative. It is always realised as [f] and only occurs syllable-initially in a small number of words, e.g. fu [fu] ‘blow’.

/v/ is a voiced labio-dental fricative. It has three variants: [v], [w] and [v j]. [v] is in free variation with [w] before the back rounded vowels /u/ and /o/. [w] is not permitted before

39 the other vowels and is often also deleted intervocalically. In the practical orthography, [w] is written as as w before the back rounded vowels and v elsewhere, e.g. awu [àwù] ~ [àvù] ~ [àù ̯], ‘chicken’; avi [avi] (*[awi]) ‘mithun (wild bison)’. /v/ is usually realised as palatalised [v j] before the front vowels /i/ and /e/ (see 3.3.1), e.g. akive [àkìv jé] ~ [àkìvé] (*[àkìwé]) ‘stomach’.

/ʃ/ is a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. It is realised as alveolar [s] before the central vowels /a/ and /i/. In all other contexts it is realised as [ ʃ] and usually occurs syllable- initially though it can occur in syllable-final position word-medially. The practical orthography distinguishes the two allophones, using sh for [ ʃ] and s for [s], e.g. ashi [à. ʃì]

‘meat’, but asa [à.sà] ‘hair’.

/ʒ/ is a voiced palato-alveolar fricative. It is realised as alevolar [z] before the central vowels /a/ and /i/. In all other contexts it is realised as [ ʒ] or [ ʤ] (which are in free variation). It usually occurs syllable-initially, although it can also occur in syllable-final position word-medially, e.g. ajukhu [a ʒ.khu] ‘cup’. Like its voiceless counterpart, the practical orthography distinguishes the two allophones, using j for [ ʒ] and z for [z], e.g. aji [à. ʒì] ~ [à. ʤì] ‘blood’, but aza [à.zá] ‘mother’. The free variation between [ʒ] and [ ʤ] has caused some confusion in the orthography in the past resulting in the use of either j or the digraph zh to represent this sound, e.g. azhi or aji ‘blood’. Recent spelling reforms have started to replace zh with j, although clan names such as Jimomi may continue to be spelt Zhimomi .

/x/ is a voiceless velar fricative. It is always realised as [x] and only occurs syllable- initially, e.g. xo [xo] ‘pick (fruit)’.

/ɣ/ is a voiced velar fricative. It is always realised as [ɣ] and usually occurs syllable- initially, e.g. ghe [ ɣè] ‘pick (in pinching manner)’; although it can sometimes occur in

40 syllable-final position word-medially, e.g. aghuloki [à ɣ.lò.kí] ‘time (period)’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph gh .

/h/ is a voiceless glottal fricative. It is always realised as [h] and only occurs syllable- initially, e.g. he [hè] ‘hit’.

/ʧ/ is a voiceless unaspirated palato-alveolar affricate. It is realised as alveolar [ts] before the central vowels /a/ and /i/. In all other contexts it is realised as [ ʧ] and only occurs syllable-initially. The current practical orthography distinguishes the two allophones, using ch for [ ʧh] and ts for [ts], e.g. achi [à. ʧì] ‘solid’, but atsa [à.tsà] ‘word’.

/ʧh/ is a voiceless aspirated palato-alveolar affricate. It is realised as [ts h] before the central vowels /a/ and /i/. In all other contexts it is realised as [ ʧh] and only occurs syllable-initially. Like its unaspirated counterpart, the current orthography distinguishes the two allophones, using chh for [ ʧh] and tsh for [ts h], e.g. chhe [ ʧhè] ‘slide (in)’, but tshü [ts hi] ‘bind’.

3.2.3 Nasals and Laterals

/m/ is a voiced bilabial nasal and is always realised as [m]. It usually occurs in syllable- initial position, e.g. ma [mà] ‘rot’, but can also occur in syllable-final position, e.g. amlo [àm.ló] ‘heart’. /m/ can be realised as a syllabic nasal in word-initial position and when followed by a stop or lateral, e.g. muku [ m̩.kú] ‘twenty’, mko [ m̩.là] ‘work’. (See 4.2 for more on syllabic nasals.)

/m ɦ/ is a voiced aspirated bilabial nasal and is realised as [m ɦ]. It only occurs syllable- initially, e.g. amhi [amɦi] ‘body hair’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph mh .

41 /n/ is a voiced alveolar nasal and is realised as palatalised [n j] before the front vowels /i/ and /e/, and [n] in other environments. It usually occurs in syllable-initial position, but can also occur in syllable-final position, e.g. aniki [an.kí] or [a ŋ.kí] ‘nose’, the latter the result of homorganic nasal assimilation to the velar stop. In quick speech, ani ‘have’ is sometimes pronounced [àn], especially before a word that begins with a consonant.

/n ɦ/ is a voiced aspirated alveolar nasal and is realised as [n ɦ]. It is realised as palatalised

[n ɦj] before the front vowels /i/ and /e/ (see 3.3.1). It only occurs syllable-initially, e.g. nha [n ɦa] ‘cover’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph nh .

/ŋ/ is a voiced velar nasal and is always realised as [ ŋ]. It occurs syllable-initially, e.g. ngo [ŋò] ‘and’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph ng .

/l/ is a voiced alveolar lateral approximant and is realised as palatalised [l j] before the front vowels /i and /e/ (see 3.3.1). In all other environments it is realised as [l]. It only occurs in syllable-initial position, e.g. lakhi [lak hí] ‘one’.

/l ɦ/ is a voiced aspirated alveolar lateral approximant and is realised as [l ɦ] or [l ̤], with breathy phonation. It only occurs in syllable-initial position, e.g. lho [l ɦò] ‘be tired’. It is represented in the practical orthography by the digraph lh .

Harris (2009) offers a more in-depth acoustic analysis of the breathy nasals and laterals in Sumi.

3.2.4 Approximants

/j/ is a palatal approximant. It is realised as [j] and found only before the front vowels /i/ and /e/. It is often deleted intervocalically, e.g. amiyi [àmìì] ‘charcoal’, but some speakers will produce these as the rearticulated syllables [à.mì.jì] when presented with the

42 orthographic representation. It is represented in the practical orthography by the grapheme y.27

For the labio-velar approximant [w], see 3.2.2 for the description of the phoneme /v/.

3.2.5 Trill

/r/ is a voiced alveolar trill. It is realised as [r] and is never found word-initially, although it can occur in syllable-initial position, e.g. murasü [mù.rá.sí] ‘snow’. It occurs syllable- finally in only a few words, e.g. kurshi [kùr. ʃì] ‘horse’.

3.2.6 Minimal sets

Words with different tones should be treated as near-minimal sets:

/p/ ~ /p h/ ~ /b/ (1) apo /àpò/ [àpò] ‘belly’ (2) apho /àphò/ [àp hò] ‘bunch’ (3) abo /abo/ [abo] ‘box’

/t/ ~ /t h/ ~ /d/ (4) ato /ato/ [ato] ‘hill’ (5) atho /àthò/ [àt hò] ‘same’ (6) ado /àdò/ [àdò] ‘time’

/k/ ~ /k h/ ~ /g/ (7) aki /àkì/ [àkì] ‘house’ (8) akhi /ak hi/ [ak hi] ‘bee’ (9) agi /agí/ [agí] ‘face’

27 Note that /i/ can occur word-initially in words like ipu [ìpú] ‘my son’ without /j/, suggesting that /j/ is a phoneme.

43 /q/ ~ /q h/ (10) aqo /àqò/ [àqò] ‘pit’ (11) aqho /àqhò/ [àq hò] ‘brain’

/k/ ~ /q/ (12) ka /kà/ [kà] ‘flick’ (13) qa /qà/ [qà] ‘cry’

/ʧ/ ~ / ʧh/

(14) chi /ʧi/ [ʧi] ‘cultivate’

(15) chhi /ʧhì/ [ʧhì] ‘be full’

/ʃ/ ~ / ʒ/

(16) ashi /àʃì/ [à ʃì] ‘meat’

(17) aji /àʒì/ [à ʒì] ~ [à ʤì] ‘blood’

/m/ ~ /m ɦ/

(18) ami /àmì/ [àmì] ‘fire’ (19) amhi /àmɦì/ [àm ɦì] ‘short hair’

/n/ ~ /n ɦ/

(20) ana /ànà/ [ànà] ‘rice’ (21) anha /ànɦà/ [àn ɦà] ‘snot’

/l/ ~ /l ɦ/

(22) ala /àlà/ [àlà] ‘path’ (23) alha /àlɦà/ [àl ɦà] ‘layer’

44 3.3 Regular phonological processes associated with consonants

3.3.1 Palatalisation

As previously noted, the front vowels /i/ and /e/ often trigger palatalisation of a preceding labio-dental fricative or alveolar sonorant:

(24) akive /àkìvé/ [àkìv jé] ‘stomach’ (25) ale /àlè/ [àl jè] ‘song’ (26) axone /àxónè/ [àxón jè] ‘fermented soya beans’ (27) akhonhe /àk hòn ɦè/ [àk hòn ɦjè] ‘knee’

3.4 Vowels

There are 6 monophthong vowel phonemes in Sumi. The vowel phonemes can be divided into two levels of height or aperture: high and non-high and three levels of backness: front, central and back. This is a useful way of classifying them since the central vowels /i/ and /a/ do not permit post-alveolar consonants to precede them (see 3.2.2).

/i/ is a high front unrounded vowel. It is always realised as [i]. It can occur in word- initial, word-medial and word-final position, e.g. ipu [ìpú] ‘my son’, akive [àkìv jé] ‘stomach’, aki [àkì] ‘house’.

/e/ is a mid front unrounded vowel. It can be realised as either close-mid [e] or open-mid [ɛ], which appear to be in free distribution. It can occur in word-initial, word-medial and word-final position, e.g. eno [enò] ‘and’, acheku [à ʧèkù] ‘corner’, ache [a ʧe] ‘sunny’.

/ɨ/ is a high central unrounded vowel. It has two allophones: mid [ ə] and high [ ɨ]. It is sometimes produced as [ ə] in word-medial position, e.g. akütsü [à.kì.tsi] ~ [à.k ə.ts ɨ]

‘head’ while [i] occurs in all other contexts. It is represented in the practical orthography

45 by the grapheme ü. It only occurs in word-medial and word-final position, as in the above example.

/a/ is a low central unrounded vowel. It tends to be realised as back [ ɑ] after uvular stops, e.g. amqa [àmq ɑ] ~ [àmqà] ‘lower back’. In all other contexts it is realised as [a]. It can occur in word-initial, word-medial and word-final position, e.g. akha [àk hà] ‘fish’, katha [kàt hà] ‘(to) cross’.

/u/ is a high back rounded vowel. It is always realised as [u]. It only occurs in word- medial and word-final position, e.g. akulho [àkùl ɦó] ‘curry, dish’, aphu [àp hù] ‘village’.

/o/ is a mid back rounded vowel. It can be realised as either close-mid [o] and open-mid [ɔ], which appear to be in free distribution. It can occur in word-initial, word-medial and word-final position, e.g. ona [ònà] ‘your rice’, axone [à.xó.n jè] ‘fermented soya beans’, alo [alo] ‘good’.

A minimal set of the six vowel phonemes is provided below. Words with different tones should be treated as near-minimal pairs:

(28) ali /àlì/ [àlì] ‘pot’ (29) ale /àlè/ [àlè] ‘song’ (30) ala /àlà/ [àlà] ‘path’ (31) alo /alo/ [alo] ‘good’ (32) alu /àlù/ [àlù] ‘field’ (33) lü /li/ [li] ‘be very hot’

Figure 6 and Figure 7 give illustrations of the acoustic vowel spaces of the female speaker (IZ) and the male speaker (JA) respectively. In these formant plots, average first formant (F 1) values (measured in Hz) were plotted on the y-axis against average second formant (F 2) values (measured in Hz) on the x-axis. All F 1 and F 2 values were taken at the

46 mid point of each vowel. These plots illustrate the different articulatory positions of the six phonemic vowels within the vowel space. In the data, the high central vowel /i/ was usually realised between high [i] and mid [ ə]. There was also some overlap observed between the two vowels /i/ and /e/, and the two back vowels /u/ and /o/.

47

Figure 6: Acoustic vowel space plotted in the F1 and F2 dimensions Figure 7: Acoustic vowel space plotted in the F 1 and F 2 dimensions (female speaker) (male speaker)

48 Blankenship et al. (1993) and Giridhar (1994) give formant plots illustrating the acoustic vowel space of the Khonoma dialect of Angami and Mao respectively. Both languages are genetically close to Sumi and all three have a six-vowel system consisting of /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ and /i/ or / ə/ – the sixth vowel in each system is typically a central vowel that can be realised between a high [i] and a mid [ ə]. The distribution of this sixth vowel is interesting, as it is in line with findings in other languages reported to have six vowels, such as Dalabon, an Australian language, that illustrate the principle of sufficient dispersion (Fletcher & Butcher, 2002).

3.5 Regular phonological processes associated with vowels

3.5.1 Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is common in Sumi, occurring in the minor syllable of sesquisyllables (see 4.2). The vowel of this minor syllable is a high vowel that typically displays harmony in terms of backness with the vowel of the major syllable. Such vowel harmony is frequently associated with the deverbal or nominalising prefix kV- (glossed ‘NZP’), where V is one of the high vowels /i/, /i/ or /u/, as seen in (34) – (39). Note that the deverbal examples here also take the non-relational prefix a-, which is sometimes added to give more phonological weight to a word (see 4.3).

(34) akipi [àkìpí] ‘act of speaking’ (cf. pi [pì] ‘speak’) (35) akiye [akijé] ‘act of writing’ (cf. ye [jè] ‘write’) (36) akütsü [àkìtsí] ‘act of rotting; rotten’ (cf. tsü [tsi]‘rot’) (37) akütsa [àkìtsá] ‘act of chewing’ (cf. tsa [tsa] ‘chew’) (38) akuchu [àkù ʧù] ‘act of eating’ (cf. chu [ ʧù] ‘eat’)

(39) akupo [àkùpò] ‘act of running’ (cf. po [pò] ‘run’)

49 3.6 Glottal stop

A phonetic glottal stop is sometimes inserted to prevent diphthongisation from occurring across nominal morpheme boundaries, such as between possessive prefixes and noun roots. This is often represented orthographically by a hyphen, e.g. a-a [à ʔà] ~ [àà]

‘place’; a-i [à ʔì] ~ [àì] ‘arum lily’, where a- is a non-relational prefix marker. Although

[ʔ] appears to contrast with other stops in this position, its status as a phoneme is challenged by the fact that it is often deleted word-internally, even in careful speech.

It was also observed that the male speaker JA inserted a prosodic glottal stop before each investigated word that commenced with a vowel. One example of this can be seen in the spectrogram of the utterance hiye apu kumo [hi.ye. ʔà.pú.kù.mò] ‘This is not a son’, shown in Figure 8.

hiye apu kumo

P a p u

L H

Figure 8: Spectrogram of hiye apu [ʔʔʔà.pú] kumo ‘This is not a son’ (male speaker) The spectrogram here illustrates the glottal stop [ʔʔʔ] between hiye and apu , which was initially treated as a pause, but subsequently found to correspond with creaky voice in the female speaker’s utterances (see Figure 9).

50 This glottal stop was originally interpreted as a pause, presumably used to demarcate the investigated word. However, it was noted that the female speaker IZ often produced a- prefixed words with no preceding pause, but the [a] segment often started with creaky phonation, entering modal voicing roughly halfway through the segment. Figure 9 provides the spectrogram for niye apu ani [nì.je.à ̤.pú.à.ni] ‘I have a son’ illustrating such creaky phonation.

creaky phonation

niye apu ani

a p u

L H

Figure 9: Spectrogram of niye apu [à ̰̰̰.pú]̰ ani ‘I have a son’ (female speaker) The spectrogram illustrates creaky voice on the initial portion of the vowel [a ̤] which enters modal phonation before the end of the vowel.

This creaky phonation was originally believed to be a strategy adopted by female speakers to achieve a low tone target, since the occurrence of creaky voice has been shown to coincide with low F 0 (Monsen & Engebretson, 1977). However, creaky phonation has also been found with a- prefixed words beginning with M tone, e.g. akhosa [a ̤khosa] ‘cat’. Furthermore, given the correspondence of creaky voice to the glottal stop

51 produced by the male speaker and its absence in word-medial and word-final L tone environments, it seems more likely that it is the realisation of a word-initial glottal stop.

It is possible that this syllable-initial glottal stop is derived from the proto Tibeto-Burman /*ʔa-/ prefix (Matisoff 2003), which the Sumi prefix a- is ultimately derived from (see

6.1.1 for more on this prefix), and it is tempting to assume the underlying form of the prefix is in fact / ʔa-/. However, creaky phonation has also sometimes been noted at the start of other vowel-initial words, such as ikujo [ì̤kù ʒó] ‘we two’ and itimi [i̤tímì] ‘child’

(though not as consistently as with a- initial nouns). It would therefore be difficult to attribute these other examples to an etymological glottal stop. For the purposes of this study and on the basis of the available evidence, the glottal stop will be treated synchronically as a prosodic element inserted at a nominal morpheme boundary.

3.7 Cross-linguistic comparison

This section looks at a few interesting phonological innovations in Sumi which, while not the central focus of this thesis, will be necessary to note in any future research on the development of tone in Sumi and the Naga languages. Much of this comparative work is in its early stages and more data will certainly be needed in order to draw more extensive conclusions. Nevertheless, a few typological observations will be made about Sumi segmental phonology that will later inform a cross-linguistic comparison of tone systems among the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages.

Among the Naga languages, Sumi is typologically unusual in having the voiced and voiceless velar fricatives /x/ and / ɣ/, as well as the uvular stops /q/ and /q h/. Languages spoken to the south like Khezha and Angami and to the north like Ao (Mongsen and Chungli) lack these phonemes, which other Nagas I have encountered associate

52 specifically with the Sumi language. 28 For example, /x/ is not found in other Naga languages and the name of the Sumi dish axone [àxón jè] ‘fermented soya beans’, a favourite in the region, is often borrowed into other languages as [akhuni]. Preliminary comparative evidence presented in Table 5 seems to confirm that the two velar fricatives are Sumi innovations.

Table 5: Comparison of Sumi / ɣɣɣ/ and /x/ with other Naga languages 29 Gloss Sumi Khezha Mongsen Ao Proto-TB (Kapfo, 2007) (Coupe, 2007) (Matisoff, 2003) bone à-ɣì è-ru [t ə]-ɹət *rus ~ *rew war a-ɣi è-ri *ran rattan / cane à-ɣìyí è-rǜ [a]-hɹə *rey ~ *rwi six tsìɣò sàrü təɹuk *d-ruk pick; cut (wood) ɣè rè ‘pluck; cut’ pick (fruit) xo rho ‘pluck’ *ruk head louse à-xì è-rhi [a]-tsh ək *s-rik

From this sample, it can be seen that there is some correspondence between the Sumi velar fricatives /x/ and / ɣ/ and unaspirated and aspirated alveolar trills /r/ and /rh/ in

Khezha. Though the relationship between them and the Ao voiced and voiceless alveolar approximants / ɹ/ and /h ɹ/ is not so clear, the proto-Tibeto-Burman reconstruction makes it clear that the velar fricatives have developed from an original rhotic whose place of articulation was alveolar. This process of rhotic dorsalisation mirrors that of some Lolo- Burmese and Karenic languages (Matisoff, 2003) 30 , as well as that of the Romance languages where it is known that languages like French have developed a uvular rhotic

28 My language consultant once told me that her friend’s husband made a comment that out of all the Naga languages, Sumi sounded the ‘ugliest’ in a way that many English speakers perceive German to be a ‘harsh-sounding’ languages due to the ‘guttural’ nature of its sounds. 29 In these transcriptions of Khezha, r and rh represent unaspirated and aspirated alveolar trills respectively, while ü represents a central lower-mid vowel, close to a schwa. In the transcriptions of Mongsen Ao, ɹ and hɹ represent voiced and voiceless post-alveolar approximants, while tsh represents an aspirated dental affricate. Nominal prefixes are separated from noun roots by hyphens and are also given in brackets for Mongsen Ao. Explanations of the tone marking systems used for other Naga languages will be given in 5.5. 30 Matisoff, relying on Marrison’s (1967) data, only suggests the sound change *r- > ɣ- but does not suggest a historical origin for the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (2003: 43-44).

53 /ʁ/ from an alveolar trill /r/ (Haden, 1955; Kostakis, 2007). The alveolar trill found in

Sumi now seems to be in the process of re-entering the phonemic inventory via presumed loanwords like kurshi ‘horse’.

While rare among the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages, Matisoff (2003) notes that postvelar stops do occur in other branches of the Tibeto-Burman family, as in the Loloish languages which tend to only contrast unaspirated /q/ and aspirated /q h/. Uvular stops, and obstruents in general, are also very common among the Qiangic languages and at least one member of this group, Qiang, has been described as having a three-way voice- onset time contrast (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated and voiced) for all oral stops, except in the uvular series which only contrasts /q/ and /q h/ (LaPolla & Huang, 2003). Sumi is similar in this regard, in that the uvular stops only contrast in terms of aspiration and not voicing.

Table 6: Comparison of Sumi /q/ and /q h/ with other Naga languages 31 Angami Mao Khezha Gloss Sumi (Giridhar, 1987) (Giridhar, 1994) (Kapfo, 2007) mother animal à-qù -kr ə (female) è-tr ǜ hundred a-qhe kriê kri è-tri moon / month à-qhì thê-khrüˆ ō-khró è-thrü brain à-qhò ú-khrû ō-khri ĕ è-thr ɵ’

Table 6 shows some correspondence between the Sumi uvular stops /q/ and /q h/ and the Angami and Mao consonant clusters /kr/ and /khr/. Matisoff (2003) does not reconstruct uvular stops for proto-Tibeto-Burman and suggests that uvular stops in other Tibeto- Burman languages like Black Lahu are descended from velar stops. This suggests that the Sumi uvulars also developed from velar stops, which have been preserved in Angami and Mao. The corresponding Khezha clusters /tr/ and /thr/ would therefore be Khezha innovations.

31 In the transcriptions of Khezha, both ü and ɵ seem to represent the central close-mid vowel, close to a schwa, though the author has not been consistent with his use of symbols. In the transcriptions of Angami and Mao, khr represents a consonant cluster comprising a voiceless aspirated velar stop followed by an alveolar trill, while ü represents a schwa. Explanations of the tone marking systems used for other Naga languages will be given in 5.5.

54 Another feature that sets Sumi apart from its immediate neighbours is the lack of phonemic alveolar / dental fricatives and affricates. Unlike other Naga languages like Khezha, Angami and Ao (Mongsen and Chungli) which have phonemic /s/, /z/, /ts/ and /ts h/32 , Sumi has merged its alveolar and palatal fricatives and affricates, in favour of the palatals. 33 Matisoff (2003) contends that a similar situation occured in Lahu, where phonetic dental fricatives and affricates only occur as allophones of their palatal counterparts when preceding the high central vowel /i/.

Following Burling’s 2003 classification (see 1.2.2), a comparison of Sumi with the other Angami-Pochuri languages to the south (e.g. Angami, Khezha, Mao) and with the Ao languages to the north and west (e.g. Mongsen Ao, Lotha), reveals that Sumi shares certain features characteristic of both language groups. For instance, Sumi is similar to the other Angami-Pochuri languages, in that the labial, alveolar and velar oral stops display a three-way contrast in voicing and aspiration. However, if we look at their frequency of occurence, we note that voiced stops are common in Angami (Kuolie, 2006) and Khezha (Kapfo, 2007), but much rarer, leaning towards marginal in Sumi. In this regard, Sumi seems to tend towards languages like Mongsen Ao (Coupe, 2007), Chungli Ao (Bruhn, 2009) and Lotha (Acharya, 1983), which lack voiced oral stops in their phonemic inventories altogether.

Sumi also lacks phonemic voiced affricates, like the Ao languages which generally only show a two way contrast in aspiration, e.g. / ʧ/ and / ʧh/34 . In contrast, affricates in the other Angami-Pochuri languages, show a three-way contrast in voicing and aspiration.

32 The Angami-Pochuri languages like Angami, Khezha and Mao also have a voiced palatal affricate /dz/. 33 LaPolla ( p.c.) mentions that the merging of alveolar and palatal fricatives and affricates is something of an areal feature, found in Burmese and other languages. 34 Acharya (1983) reports a voiced labio-dental affricate /pv/ ( sic ) in Lotha, but this only contrasts with the voiceless affricate /pf/.

55 These languages also have a labio-dental affricate series: /pf/, /pf h/ and /bv/ 35 which is missing from Sumi and Ao languages like Mongsen and Chungli 36 .

This idea of Sumi falling along a phonological continuum between the Angami-Pochuri languages to the south and the Ao languages to the north will also be important when we do a cross-linguistic comparison of their phonotactics (in 4.4) and ultimately their tone systems (in 5.5).

35 Hajek (2006) summarises various proposals that some of these labio-dental affricates developed from historical labial off-gliding of labials and velars. 36 As shown in 1.2.3, some older transcriptions of Sumi give a labio-dental affricate pf in words like anipfu ‘wife’. My data however suggests that this phoneme has since merged with the labial plosive /p/.

56 4 Phonotactics

The notion of the syllable is important in Tibeto-Burman linguistics, particularly as the domain of tone. Matisoff (2003) highlights the significance of the proto-Tibeto-Burman syllable to the development of tone, which he contends developed independently at different points in the history of the Tibeto-Burman languages. Coupe (2003) even begins his phonological description of Ao with a description of the phonotactics, quoting Matisoff, who writes in The grammar of Lahu that “the most fruitful point of departure for phonological analysis is the syllable.” (1973a: 1).

In addition, Hyman (2001b) remarks that tone languages where words are mostly monosyllabic tend to have more paradigmatic tone systems with multiple tone levels. In comparison, agglutinative tone languages tend to have more syntagmatic tone systems and usually only display a distinction between L and H tone.

This chapter therefore presents an analysis of Sumi phonotactics, along with an account of word minimality in Sumi. A cross-linguistic comparison of syllable structure with other Naga languages will also be offered.

4.1 Syllable structure

The canonical phonological syllable in Sumi minimally consists of a vowel nucleus, and can be represented linearly as:

σ = (C) V

where C = [–syll] V = [+syll]

A prosodic representation of the canonical Sumi syllable is given in Figure 10. Note that the syllable is taken to be the TBU (to be discussed in 5.2).

57 σ + T

Onset Rhyme

Nucleus

(C) V

Figure 10: Prosodic structure of the Sumi syllable

Table 7 shows the distribution of segments within a phonological syllable. At the phonological level, syllable-initial consonant clusters and syllable-coda consonants are not permissible in Sumi. However, consonant clusters and syllable-final obstruents can occur phonetically under certain conditions after vowel deletion (see 4.2).

Table 7: Phonotactic distribution of syllable constituents C V T p p h b t t h d i i u H(igh) σ k k h g q q h e a o M(id) σ ʧ ʧh L(ow) σ

m m ɦ n n ɦ ŋ f v ʃ ʒ x ɣ h l l ɦ j

Any of the six vowels can form the nucleus of a phonological syllable.

4.1.1 Phonetic realisations of phonological vowel combinations

Sumi does not have phonologically contrastive vowel length. Phonetic long vowels and diphthongs are usually the result of morphological concatenation, where the second morpheme begins with an onset-less syllable:

(40) /ì-ù/ ‘my-hand’ → [ìù] ~ [ìw] ‘my hand’

58 (41) /à-à/ ‘NRL-place’ → [àà] ~ [à Ɂà] 37 ‘place’

Long vowels can also occur with the deletion of an intervocalic glide, e.g. aghiyi /à.ɣì.jí/

[à. ɣìí] (‘NRL-thatch’) ‘thatch’.

Table 8 provides a summary of observed phonetic output when phonological vowels are combined in Sumi. This is by no means an exhaustive list of permissible vowel outputs and blank cells indicate that no examples of these combinations have been found in the data set. It is also unknown at present if vowel deletion results in tone deletion, as all instances of vowel deletion observed thus far involve sequences of vowels specified for the same tone.

Table 8: Phonetic output of phonological vowel combinations in Sumi V2 V1 /i/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /a/ /o/ /i/ - [iu] ~ [ju] [ia] ~ [ja] /i/ - [a] /u/ - [ua] ~ [wa] [uo] ~ [oo] /e/ [iu] ~[ju] - [a] /a/ [ai] - /o/ [oi] -

The vowel /a/ in V 2 position is the most stable, and when combined with other vowels, will often cause deletion of the first vowel, as in:

(42) /à. ʒì/ [à.zì] ‘sleep’ (n.) + /à/ [à] ‘place’ → [à.zà] ‘bed’

(43) /ʧì/ [tsì] ‘give’ + /à.ni/ [à.ni] ‘PRS.PROG’ → [tsà.ni] ‘be giving’ 38

37 See 3.6 for an explanation of the glottal stop in Sumi. 38 [ ʦàni] is also used an exclamation to the effect of ‘Excellent!’

59 The perfective marker va [va] ‘PRF’ also seems to be derived from a combination of the verbal marker ve /ve/ and the aspectual marker -a /-a/, suggesting that [ea] is not a possible phonetic output in Sumi either.

Finally, the combination /i/ + /a/ is often realised as [ja], with the first vowel losing its syllabic feature:

(44) /pì/ [pì] ‘speak’ + /à.ni/ [à.ni] ‘PRS.PROG’ → [pjà.ni] ‘be speaking’

While most phonetic diphthongs and long vowels that occur in Sumi are the result of morphological concatenation, there are a handful of examples that are not easily analysed morphologically from a synchronic perspective. Examples include: toi [tòi] ‘resemble’; vejoi [ve. ʒoi] ‘straight ahead’; khuu [k húù] ‘who’; kiu [kiù] ‘what’; and aghau [a ɣaù]

‘bird’.

It is reasonable to posit that these rare cases, while synchronically monomorphemic, are composed of historically monosyllabic morphemes. For example, the word aghau /a-ɣaù/

(‘NRL-bird’) ‘bird’ appears to be derived from the noun agha /a-ɣa/ (‘NRL-sound’)

‘sound; noise’ and the attributive nominaliser -wu /-vu/ ‘NZR’ 39 , with subsequent deletion of the intervocalic glide [w] (giving the literal meaning of ‘the noisy one’). A similar loss of the intervocalic glide can be seen when the possessive -wu /-vu/ is added to personal pronouns, as in /pa-vu/ [pau] ~ [pawu] (‘he-NZR’) ‘his’ and /i-vu/ [iu] ~ [iwu] (‘I-NZR’) ‘my’. These are represented orthographically as paw and iw in the Anglo-Sumi dictionary (Swu & Yepthomi, 2004), though the latter is given as iwu in the Sumi-Anglo dictionary (Sema, 1993).

39 The attributive nominaliser and possessive marker in Sumi share the same form -wu /-vu/, similar to Mandarin 的 de , which is used in both possessive and attributive constructions. For the purpose of this thesis, they will be glossed separately depending on their function.

60 Similarly, the relativiser, written as keu , seems to be morphologically derived from a verbal marker ke and the attributive nominaliser -wu . However, in actual speech it is usually pronounced [kiu] or [kju], with the former segmentally identical to the interrogative kiu [kiù] ‘what’.

Note the final element of such diphthongs is restricted to non-syllabic /i/ and /u/, and an alternative analysis might be that Sumi allows the glides /j/ and /v/ (realised as [w]) in syllable-coda position. However, given the paucity of such syllables, one can posit that the nucleus of a canonical syllable in Sumi consists of a single vowel.

4.2 Sesquisyllables

In addition to monosyllabic roots, Sumi also has a number of words (and roots) that are best described as ‘sesquisyllabic’. 40 This term, coined by Matisoff (1973b), describes an iambic structure comprising a short unstressed (minor) syllable followed by a long (major) syllable. The vowel of the minor syllable is typically a schwa or displays harmony with the vowel of the main syllable. Sesquisyllabicity has been noted across the Tibeto-Burman family, and has been described in languages like Lahu (Matisoff, 1973a) and Tai Turung (Morey, 2005). 41 Matisoff (2003) reconstructs sesquisyllabicity as a feature of proto-Tibeto-Burman, stating that old consonantal prefixes attached to the syllable of the proto language were “undoubtedly vocalized by an epenthetic schwa for ease of pronunciation.” (2003: 11)

Sesquisyllables in Sumi typically consist of a full or major syllable, preceded by a minor syllable. A prosodic representation of the minor syllable in Sumi is given in Figure 11, along with a list of possible constituents in Table 9.

40 In 7.2.3 it will be seen that monosyllabic, sesquisyllabic and disyllabic verbs behave differently when prefixed with the nominaliser kV-, lending support to an analysis that distinguishes sesquisyllabic words from disyllabic words. 41 Coupe (2003) rejects the need to posit a phonotactic class of sesquisyllabic words separate from other disyllabic words in Mongsen Ao, although he does note that the vowel in certain nominal prefixes such as /t ə/ glossed ‘NPF’ is usually phonetically realised as a schwa but can sometimes be ‘coloured’ by the vowel of the root, as in /t ə̄-ku ̄lu ̄k/ ‘NPF-brain’ which can be realised as [tu 33 ku 33 luk 33 ].

61 σmin + T

Onset Rhyme

Nucleus

C V

Figure 11: Prosodic structure of a minor syllable in Sumi

Table 9: Phonotactic distribution of minor syllable constituents C V T p t k m i i u Mid σ m̩ Low σ

A few points need to be made here. Firstly, the onset and nucleus demonstrate a much more restricted segmental inventory: only the high vowels or a syllabic bilabial nasal are allowed to occupy the nucleus position and only a few obstruents can be part of the syllable onset. 42 Secondly, minor syllables do not demonstrate the full contrastive potential for tone – they are only realised with L or M tone, never H tone. (This lack of tone-bearing potential for these minor syllables will be discussed later in 5.2.) These two observations of minor syllables in Sumi – a restricted segmental inventory and a reduced tonal contrast – have been noted for minor syllables in other languages that have been analysed as possessing sesquisyllables (Kiparsky, 2002).

Table 10 gives examples of Sumi sesquisyllables, which have been highlighted in bold typeface in this section of the thesis. Sesquisyllables in Sumi can be phonetically realised in three ways: (i) as a sesquisyllable with the vowel of the minor syllable in harmony with that of the major syllable, e.g. [kù.lò] (see 3.5 for a description of vowel harmony in

42 There is evidence, from disyllables being reanalysed as sesquisyllables (see 4.3), to suggest that most obstruents could potentially occupy this slot as long as they are unaspirated.

62 Sumi); (ii) as a single syllable with an initial consonant cluster, e.g. [klà]; or (iii) as a full syllable preceded by a syllabic nasal, [m ̩.lá].

Table 10: Sesquisyllables in Sumi Gloss Written form Phonemic representation Phonetic realisation spin (v.) kulo /kù.lò / [kù.lò] ~ [klò] marry küla /kì.là / [kì.là] ~ [klà] be easy mla /m̩̩̩.lá̩ /43 [m ̩.lá]

Vowel harmony between the vowel of the minor syllable and that of the main syllable is usually reflected in the orthographic form, even if the vowel is not phonetically present, e.g. kulo ‘spin’ (v.) and küla ‘marry’. When the minor syllable slot is occupied by a syllabic nasal, as in mla ‘be easy’, the vowel is usually omitted from the orthographic representation, except when the vowel is the high front vowel i /i/ (see below).

Table 11 gives examples of sesquisyllabic roots preceded by a prefix 44 , such as the non- relational prefix a- (see 6.1.1), showing how the minor syllable is often reanalysed as a syllable coda. Only in very careful speech is the epenthetic vowel inserted.

Table 11: Resyllabified sesquisyllables in Sumi Gloss Written form Phonemic representation Phonetic realisation head akütsü /à-kì.ʧʧʧi/ [àk.tsi] ~ [à.kì.tsi] salt amiti /à-mì.ti / [àm.ti] ~ [à.mì.ti] 45 mistreat sapüsa /ʃà-pì.ʃʃʃà/ [sàp.sà] ~ [sà.pì.sà]

Finally, the examples in Table 12 show that with nasals in minor syllable position, an epenthetic /i/ is often inserted when the vowel of the main syllable is /i/. This vowel epenthesis does not occur with the other vowels, i.e. mla ‘chest’ must be realised as [m̩.là] not *[mì.là]. The potential for this epenthetic /i/ is also reflected in the

43 In the phonemic representation, the absence of a diacritic marks M tone. 44 While the term ‘sesquisyllable’ typically refers to a type of word, I continue to use the term even with noun roots that in citation form cannot stand alone and must take a prefix such as the non-relational a-, because they can occur without any such prefixation when modified by a relative clause ending in -keu . 45 One speaker did not consider the form [sà.pì.sà] to be the correct pronunciation until shown the orthographic representation in the published English-Sumi dictionary.

63 orthographic representation, although it is unknown at present if speakers insert /i/ simply because of an orthographic bias to write the high front vowel.

Table 12: Nasal minor syllables in Sumi Gloss Written form Phonemic representation Phonetic realisation salt amiti /à-mì.ti / [à m.ti] ~ [à.mì.ti] tongue amili /à-mì.lí / [à m.lí] ~ [à.mì.lí] work mla /à-m̩̩̩
.là̩ / [m̩.là] (*[mì.là]) mourn mlo /à-m̩̩̩
.ló̩ / [m̩.ló] (*[mù.ló]) year ampe /à-m̩̩̩
.pè̩ / [à m.pè] (*[à.mì.pè]) chest amla /à-m̩̩̩
.là̩ / [à m.là] (*[à.mì.là]) heart amlo /à-m̩̩̩
.ló̩ / [à m.ló] (*[à.mù.ló])

4.3 Word minimality and resyllabification

Further evidence for the existence of sesquisyllables in Sumi can be found by examining word minimality in nouns and verbs. In citation form, verbs in Sumi are minimally monosyllabic, while nouns are minimally disyllabic 46 . This difference in minimal syllabic requirements can be seen by comparing the following examples:

(45) sü /ʃì/ [sì] ‘hurt’ (v.)

(46) asü /à. ʃì/ [à.sì] ‘wood’ (n.) (*/ ʃì/)

(47) küla /kì.là/ [kì.là] ~ [klà] ‘marry’ (v.) (48) aküsü /à.kì.ʃì/ [à.kì.sì] ~ [àk.sì] ‘hurting; pain’ (n.) (*/kì.ʃì/)

While the monosyllabic verb root sü ‘hurt’ in (45) can appear in isolation, the noun root sü ‘wood’ in (46) must take a prefix, such as the non-relational prefix a-, in order to meet the minimal requirement of disyllabicity in nouns (see 6.1.1 for the uses of this prefix) and surface as a word.

46 Noun roots themselves are minimally monosyllabic.

64 It is therefore unsurprising that sesquisyllabic verbs, such as küla /kì.là/ ‘marry’ in (47), can appear in isolation, having satisfied the minimal syllabic requirements for verbs. In contrast, an examination of the deverbal form aküsü /à.kì.ʃì/ ‘hurting; pain’, derived from the verb sü / ʃì/ ‘hurt’ by the addition of the deverbal prefix kV- (where V is a high vowel that displays harmony with the vowel of the main syllable – see 7.2.3 for more on deverbal formation), reveals that this deverbal prefix cannot be considered a full syllable: *küsü /kì.ʃì/ does not satisfy the requirement of full disyllabicity in nouns and still requires the prefix a-.47 That the prefix kV- is a minor syllable is further supported by the fact that aküsü /à.kì.ʃì/ is usually phonetically realised as disyllabic [àk.sì] in normal speech.

The noun template consisting of a syllable followed by a sesquisyllabic structure: e.g. aküsü /à. kì.ʃʃʃì/ ‘pain’ (sesquisyllabic structure highlighted in bold typeface) realised as disyllabic [àk.sì], is so common in Sumi that speakers often reanalyse a phonologically trisyllabic nominal compound as a sequence of syllable plus sesquisyllable. This occurs when the second syllable comprises an unaspirated stop or bilabial nasal followed by a high vowel, as seen in (49) and (50). This second syllable is reanalysed as a minor syllable, with its underlying vowel unrealised in casual speech. Note that this vowel does not necessarily display harmony with the vowel of the third syllable, as in (50).

(49) apu /à.pù/ ‘father’ + khu /k hu/ ‘plate’ → [àp.k hu] ‘father’s plate’ (50) sümi / ʃi.mì/ ‘Sumi’ + tsa /ʧà/ [tsà] ‘word’ → [sim.tsà] ‘Sumi language’

47 One might argue that the addition of a- here is a morphological, not phonological requirement, given that there are trisyllabic nouns in Sumi such as akhosa /a.k ho.sa/ ‘cat’ and axone /a.xó.nè/ ‘fermented soya beans’ that consist of a disyllabic noun root preceded by the non-relational prefix a-. However, there is evidence that deverbal nominals derived from sesquisyllabic verb roots only optionally take the a- prefix, with the combination of two minor syllables and a major syllable presumably satisfying the requirement for disyllabicity: e.g. kügha /kì.ɣà/ [kìɣà] ‘catch’ (v.) → kükügha /kì.kì.ɣà/ [kìkìɣà] ~ akükügha /à.kì.kì.ɣà/ [à.kì.kì.ɣà] ‘catching’.

65 In contrast, a word like aphitsü /à.p hì. ʧí/ [à.phì.tsí] ‘ankle’ does not get reanalysed as

*[àp h.tsí], since the aspirated stop /p h/ does not fit in the minor syllable (C) slot, as shown in Table 9.

Trisyllabic compounds, where the second syllable of a trisyllabic compound comprises a fricative and a high vowel, are also resyllabified into two syllables, as seen in (51) – (53).

(51) azü /à. ʒì/ [à.zì] ‘water’ + bo /bo/ ‘box’ → [àz.bo] ‘water bottle’

(52) aghi /à. ɣì/ ‘paddy’ + na /nà/ ‘grain’ → [à ɣ.nà] ‘paddy (grain)’

(53) avu /à.vù/ ‘chicken’ + du /dú/ ‘male (bird)’ → [àv.dú] ‘rooster’

This deletion of the high vowel after a fricative also occurs word-finally: azü /à. ʒì/ [à.zì]

~ [àz] ‘water’; aghi /à. ɣì/ [à. ɣì] ~ [à ɣ] ‘paddy’; and avü /a.vi/ [a.vi] ~ [av] ‘frost’. The reason for the loss of the high vowel therefore appears to be phonetic: the high vowels /i/, /i/ and /u/ are generally prone to deletion following fricatives both word-medially and word-finally. This is perhaps due to interference caused by the aperiodic energy distributed across a wide range of frequencies associated with these consonants (Ladefoged, 2006) leading to difficulty in perceiving vowel quality. This vowel deletion often leads to confusion among speakers when they try to recover the underlying vowel in these words. For example, when the word aghi ‘paddy’ was elicited, JA first gave [à. ɣì] in careful speech, while IZ gave [à. ɣì].

It is likely that high vowels following the voiceless aspirated uvular stop /q h/ (phonetically realised as [q χ]) are deleted for the same reason, resulting in similar confusion: when the word aqhi /à.q hì/ ‘moon’ was elicited, JA offered [àq χì], while IZ gave [à.q χì]. In contrast, high vowels are not usually deleted following other obstruents e.g. apu [à.pù] ‘father’ (*[àp]); aphu [à.p hù] ‘village’ (*[àp h]); aki [àkì] ‘house’ (*[àk]).

66 In all cases of resyllabification, the deleted vowel only bears L or M tone, similar to the way minor syllables in sesquisyllables only bear L or M tone. Syllables bearing H tone are never resyllabified, as demonstrated in (54) and (55).

(54) kaku /kà.kú/ ‘book’ + phi /p hi/ ‘read’ → kakuphi [kà.kú.p hi] *[kàk.p hi] ‘study’(v.) (55) totimi /to.tí.mì/ → [to.tí.mì] *[tot.mì] ‘woman’

This suggests that H tone is more marked, a topic that will be revisited later in 6.3.

As a final remark, the resyllabification of trisyllabic nominal compounds such as sümitsa [sim.tsà] ‘Sumi language’ in (50) and azübo [àz.bò] ‘water bottle’ in (51) does not generally result in a loss of morphological transparency and speakers are usually able to recover the original deleted vowel. However, a senior member of the Sumi Literature Board brought to my attention that the word ajukhu /a. ʒu.k hu/ ‘cup’ is historically a compound of aji /a. ʒi/ ‘rice beer’ and khu /k hu/ ‘plate’. Given our knowledge of resyllabification in Sumi, it is reasonable to posit the following analysis: the vowel following / ʒ/ in the second syllable of the original compound /a. ʒi.k hu/ [a. ʒi.k hu] was lost in normal speech, giving the phonetic form [a ʒ.k hu]. The word was subsequently reanalysed as a sequence of syllable plus sesquisyllable, with speakers recovering the lost vowel as /u/ instead of /i/, so that the vowel now displays harmony with the vowel of the final syllable /k hu/. This has consequently resulted in the cranberry morpheme -ju in ajukhu /a. ʒu.k hu/.

Some speakers are aware of this process of vowel deletion and reanalysis. One older speaker lamented the fact that younger speakers pronounced words like amiphoki /à-mì- phò-kì/ ‘fireplace, hearth’ – a compound of mi /-mì/ ‘fire’, pho /-phò/ ‘smoke’ (v.) and ki /-kì/ ‘house’ – as [àm.p hò.kì], deleting [i]. It was his view that with the loss of the vowel in the second syllable /mì/, speakers would eventually no longer be able to tell that [m] carried the meaning of ‘fire’.

67 4.4 Cross-linguistic comparison

Sumi is not unusual among the Naga languages in having different minimal syllabic or moraic requirements for nouns and verbs: Kapfo (1989) states that nouns in Khezha are minimally disyllabic, while lexical entries presented in his Khezha-English dictionary show that verbs are minimally monosyllabic. Temsunungsang (2008) provides supporting evidence that verbs in Chungli Ao are minimally bimoraic and nouns monomoraic, while verbs in Mongsen Ao are minimally monomoraic and nouns bimoraic.

A cross-linguistic comparison of syllable structure in other Naga languages reveals that Sumi is similar to the other Angami-Pochuri languages spoken to the south (e.g. Khezha, Mao) which only license open syllables. In contrast, the Ao languages spoken to the north (e.g. Mongsen Ao, Lotha) allow oral and nasal stops in syllable coda position.

On the other hand, Sumi is similar to the Ao languages, which do not permit consonant clusters in syllable onset position. Languages like Khezha, Angami and Mao all allow syllable-initial consonant clusters, though these are restricted to a sequence of a stop and alveolar trill e.g. /kr/, /tr/. (Preliminary comparative evidence presented in 3.7 shows a correspondence between Sumi uvular stops and these consonant clusters.)

Therefore, despite being grouped genetically with the Angami-Pochuri languages spoken to the south, Sumi does display phonological features associated with the Ao languages spoken to the north, perhaps reflecting its status as a ‘border’ language situated at the edge of the Angami-Pochuri group. As mentioned in 3.7, it is useful to think of Sumi as falling on a phonological continuum between the Ao languages and the other Angami- Pochuri languages. This is an idea that will appear again when we make a cross-linguistic comparison of tone systems. For the moment, Table 13 summarises some of the main segmental features and phonotactic constraints associated with Sumi, in comparison to both language groups.

68 Table 13: Cross-linguistic comparison of phonotactic constraints and segmental features in Naga languages Ao languages Sumi Angami-Pochuri languages closed syllables permitted only open syllables only open syllables no syllable-onset consonant no syllable-onset consonant syllable-onset consonant clusters clusters clusters permitted no phonemic voiced stops phonemic voiced stops phonemic voiced stops present, but rare present no phonemic voiced no phonemic voiced phonemic voiced affricates affricates affricates present no labio-dental affricates no labio-dental affricates labio-dental affricates (except Lotha) present

Having established the phonemic inventory and syllable structure of Sumi, and provided a comparison with those of other Naga languages, we can turn our attention to a description of the Sumi tone system proper.

69 5 Tonal Phonology and Phonetics

The chapter describes the tonal phonology of Sumi, looking first at contrastive lexical tones and the tone-bearing unit (TBU). An acoustic phonetic analysis provides graphical illustrations of tone realisation and examines variations within the phonetic realisation of the three tones. In addition, the results of two acoustic studies investigating the effect of prevocalic consonants and vowel intrinsic F 0 on tone realisation will be presented. Finally, a cross-linguistic comparison of the tone system of Sumi with those of other Kuki-Chin-Naga languages will be made, along with a typological comparison of these languages with other languages of the Tibeto-Burman family.

5.1 Number of contrastive tones

In accordance with Hutton (1921) and Sreedhar’s (1980) analyses, my findings – based on my own fieldwork – confirm three contrastive level tones in Sumi: (L)ow (à), (M)id (a) and (H)igh (á). This contrast is demonstrated by the following minimal sets:

(56) L apu /à.pù/ [à.pù] ‘father’ (57) M apu /a.pu/ [a.pu] ‘dipper; water scoop’ (58) H apu /à.pú/ [à.pú] ‘son’

(59) L akütsü /à.kì.ʧì/ [àk.tsì] ~ [à.kì.tsì] ‘black’

(60) M akütsü /à.kì.ʧi/ [àk.tsi] ~ [à.kì.tsi] ‘head’

(61) H akütsü /à.kì.ʧí/ [àk.tsí] ~ [à.kì.tsí] ‘rotten’

As can be gleaned from these examples, the Chao tone letter system (used in the International Phonetic Alphabet) has not been used to transcribe phonetic surface tones. While one reason for the use of diacritics is convenience of transcription, the main reason is that Sumi does not have phonemic contour tones, so it is not important to transcribe pitch movement across a segment.

70 Other authors such as Coupe (2003) use Chao tone numbers in their phonetic transcription of tone, e.g. /t ə -mà ŋ/ [t ə55 ma ŋ11 ] ‘NPF-dark’ 48 , where [55] is the phonetic realisation of the High tone and [11] that of the Low tone. This involves assuming a single allotone per tone for the sake of descriptive economy, as pointed out by Coupe himself (2003: 91). Given that linguistic tone is not based on absolute pitch (as pointed out in 1.4.3) and displays much more variation in its actual phonetic realisation, there is phonetically quite a bit of overlap between the phonetic realisations of pitch in Sumi, such that L and M tone may both be realised as [22] depending on a number of factors, some of which will be investigated in 5.4. However, such a narrow transcription of pitch in Sumi is not necessary in this thesis.

If one were to use the Chao tone numbers or letters, and for the sake of economy posit a single allotone for each tone, the typical pitch realisation of the tones could be summarised thus, with tone numbers and letters given in the rightmost column:

Low: /à/ → [à] alternatively, [a 11 ˩]

Mid: /a/ → [a] [a 33 ˧]

High: /á/ → [á] [a 55 ˥]

In this thesis, only tone diacritics will be used to transcribe surface tones.

5.2 Tone-bearing unit

The tone-bearing unit (TBU) in Sumi is analysed as the syllable, as is the case in many Sino-Tibetan languages and in at least two other Naga languages: Angami (or Tenyidie) (Giridhar, 1980; Kuolie, 2006) and Mongsen Ao (Coupe, 2003).

48 In Coupe (2003), ‘NPF’ refers to a nominal prefix.

71 Full syllables can display the full tonal contrast between L, M and H tones:

(62) L apu /à.pù/ [à.pù] ‘father’ (63) M apu /a.pu/ [a.pu] ‘water scoop / dipper’ (64) H apu /à.pú/ [à.pú] ‘son’

In contrast, minor syllables (including syllabic nasals) in sesquisyllabic structures have only been found to take L or M tone. Looking at (65) – (69), it can also be seen that a change of tone on the minor syllable does not in itself signal a change in lexical meaning: it is a change of tone on the full syllable that signals such a change in meaning.

(65) LL mla /m̩.là/ [m̩.là] ‘work’

(66) LM mla /m̩.la/ [m̩.la] ‘foam’

(67) MH mla /m ̩.lá/ [m ̩.lá] ‘be easy’

(68) MM piti /pi.ti/ [pi.ti] ‘burn’ (69) MH piti /pi.tí/ [pi.tí] ‘bear offspring’

H tone has never been found on a minor syllable and its limited distribution will be discussed further in 6.3.

Sumi has no phonemic contour tones, i.e contour tones do not contrast paradigmatically with the three level tones. However, there are few examples of phonetic contour tones, as in toi /tò.i/ [tòi] ‘resemble’ and aghau /a. ɣa.ù/ [a. ɣaù] ‘bird’, but these can be analysed as a series of two level tones, or ‘tone cluster’ to use Yip’s (1989) terminology.

5.3 Phonetic realisation of tone

Pitch, measured as F 0, was found to be the main phonetic correlate of tone in Sumi – phonation types such as breathy or creaky voice were not been found to correlate with any specific tone. Figure 12, Figure 13 and Figure 14 give acoustic pitch traces

72 (generated by the software Praat) of sample utterances of apu [àpù] ‘father’, apu [apu] ‘dipper’ and apu [àpú] ‘son’ respectively, as spoken by the male speaker JA. Each word appears in the frame hiye ____ kumo [hije ____ kùmò] ‘This is not a ____ ’.

300

200

150

100

Pitch (Hz) 75 hiye apu kumo

a p u

L L

0 1.668 Time (s) Figure 12: Pitch trace of hiye apu [àpù] kumo ‘This is not a father’ (illustrating LL tones)

73 300

200

150

100

Pitch (Hz) 75 hiye apu kumo

a p u

M M

0 1.746 Time (s) Figure 13: Pitch trace of hiye apu [apu] kumo ‘This is not a dipper’ (illustrating MM tones)

300

200

150

100

Pitch (Hz) 75 hiye apu kumo

a p u

L H

0 1.723 Time (s) Figure 14: Pitch trace of hiye apu [àpú] kumo ‘This is not a son’ (illustrating LH tones)

74 The auditory analysis of three nearly equidistant level tones is confirmed by an acoustic analysis: Figure 15 and Figure 16 provide an illustration of average tone realisation across a time-normalised segment, using mean F 0 values taken at intervals of 10% of the tone-bearing segment. Note that for the male speaker, the ‘rise’ in average F 0 across the first 20% of the time-normalised segment reflects pitch tracker difficulties immediately following prevocalic obstruents (Gussenhoven, 2004). The number of tokens used for each tone is given in Table 14.

Figure 15: Average F 0 realisation of L, M and H tones across a time-normalised segment (female speaker)

75

Figure 16: Average F 0 realisation of L, M and H tones across a time-normalised segment (male speaker)

Table 14 gives the mean F 0 realisations in Hertz (Hz) and standard deviations of the three tones L, M and H for the male and female speaker. As is well known, an adult male voice is generally of a lower pitch (about an octave lower) than that of an adult female voice, given that an adult male has larger vocal folds and a lower larynx compared to an adult female (Monsen & Engebretson, 1977; Ohala, 1983). It is therefore not surprising that for all tones the male speaker’s pitch was about 40 Hz lower than that of the female speaker’s.

Table 14: Mean F 0 realisations of tone Speaker Tone Mean (Hz) Standard deviation No. of tokens IZ (female) L 164 11 725 M 191 13 385 H 222 15 206 JA (male) L 119 13 229 M 152 9 115 H 186 13 75

76 In accordance with the notion of ‘pitch targets’ (Xu & Wang, 2001), three distinct tone targets, identified by the mean F 0 value for each tone, can be observed for both Sumi speakers, with the L and H tones almost equidistant from the M tone, separated by intervals of approximately 30 Hz each.

These intervals are comparable to those found in the Khonoma dialect of Angami by Blankenship et al. (1993), who show that the four level tones are separated by intervals of between 20 to 30 Hz. In contrast, Coupe (2003) finds much smaller intervals of 10 to 20 Hz for Mongsen Ao, which like Sumi has three contrastive level tones.

Klatt (1973) notes that for sounds with level F 0, the human ear is able to detect just noticeable differences (JNDs) of merely 0.3 Hz. However, most register tone languages where pitch is the primary phonetic correlate of tone tend to have intervals much larger than that and Rietveld and Gussenhoven’s (1985) findings show that pitch differences of 1.5 semi-tones (approximately 10 Hz) or more are reliably interpreted as prominence distinctions, i.e. an interval of 10 Hz is sufficiently able to distinguish two tonal categories.

However, as pointed out in 1.4.3, linguistic tone is not based on absolute pitch, and the three clear tone targets we find in Sumi belie the fact that each phonemic tone displays a fair amount of variation in its actual phonetic realisation. 49 The next section examines such phonetic variation.

49 Another acoustic analysis is planned, with the aim of calculating pitch difference between the tones as a function of the difference between each investigated token and the carrier phrase it is in, as was done in Mazaudon and Michaud’s (2008) study.

77

Figure 17: Boxplot showing distribution of F 0 values for each tone Figure 18: Boxplot showing distribution of F 0 values for each tone (female speaker) (male speaker) The thick horizontal black lines in the boxes indicate the median F 0 value The thick horizontal black lines in the boxes indicate the median F 0 value for each tone. The boxes represent 50% of all F 0 values for each tone, while for each tone. The boxes represent 50% of all F 0 values for each tone, while the area between the top and bottom whiskers represents 90% of all F 0 the area between the top and bottom whiskers represents 90% of all F 0 values for each tone. White circles indicate outliers. values for each tone. White circles indicate outliers.

78 5.4 Variation in F 0 realisation of tone

Figure 17 and Figure 18 are boxplots showing a simplified distribution of F 0 values reflecting different phonetic realisations of each phonemic tone. The thick horizontal black line represents the median F 0 value (in Hz) for each phonemic tone. From these boxplots, which give a better idea of the amount of phonetic variation, it can be seen that there is quite a bit of phonetic overlap between the realisations of the L and M tones, as well as between the M and H tones, all of which confirm previous statements about the relative nature of linguistic tone (see 1.4.3).50

Out of the four main articulatory factors identified by Xu & Wang (2001) to influence F 0 realisation of tones: vowel intrinsic F 0 (IF 0); perturbations caused by initial consonants;

F0 declination; and tonal coarticulation; the first two factors were chosen for preliminary acoustic studies. The results of these studies are presented in the next two sections.

Sumi is an ideal language to study the effects of voicing and aspiration as it has both voiced and voiceless obstruents, as well as a series of unaspirated and aspirated stops. Furthermore, all three contrastive tones in Sumi can be found after all obstruents, as illustrated in Table 15 and Table 16. Note that additional gaps in the data are due to the low frequency of the phonemes /d/, /g/, and /f/.

Table 15: Distribution of tones following stops L M H /p/ apu [àpù] ‘father’ apu [apu] ‘dipper’ apu [àpú] ‘son’

achhophe [a ʧhop he] alekiphe [àlèkìp hé] /p h/ aphu [àp hù] ‘village’ ‘broom’ ‘singing’ akhabo [àk hàbo] /b/ abi [àbì] ‘shoulder’ aghiba [à ɣìbá] ‘rattan’ ‘fish pond’ /t/ ati [àtì] ‘offspring’ amiti [àmti] ‘salt’ amiti [àmtí] ‘saliva’

50 A perception test at a later stage would be useful to see if such phonetic overlap interferes with tone identification.

79 athikishi [àt hìk ʃi] anathi [ànát hi] /t h/ küthü [kìthí] ‘three’ ‘uncooked rice’ ‘banana sp.’ /d/ ado [àdò] ‘time’ awudu [àvdú] ‘rooster’

aghuloki [à ɣùlòkí] /k/ kaku [kàkú] ‘book’ ka [ka] ‘rule’ ‘time period’ /k h/ akha [àk hà] ‘fish’ khü [k hi] ‘challenge’ lakhi [lak hí] ‘one’ /g/ agi [agí] ‘face’

amqa [àmqà] akichhiqo [àk ʧhíqó] /q/ qü [qi] ‘spread’ ‘lower back’ ‘armpit’ inaqhe [ìnàq he] /q h/ aqho [àq hò] ‘brain’ amqha [àmq há] ‘loft’ ‘morning’

Table 16: Distribution of tones following fricatives and affricates L M H afo [áfò] /f/ ‘older sister’

awo [àwò] ~ [àvò] avi [avi] ‘mithun’ /v/ vilo [vílo] ‘to’ ‘pig’ awucho [awu ʧo] ‘banana’

ashi [à ʃì] ‘meat’ shi [ʃi] ‘do’ mishithi [mì ʃít hi] ‘lemon’ /ʃ/ asa [àsà] ‘hair’ asa [asa] ‘nose bridge’ asa [àsá] ‘suburb; colony’

kije [kì ʒè] ‘big’ ju [ʒu] ‘see’ kije [kì ʒé] ‘divide’ /ʒ/ aza [àzà] ‘order’ aküzü [akizi] ‘suitable’ aza [àzá] ‘mother’ axone [àxón jè] /x/ axo [àxò] ‘smell’ xo [xo] ‘pick’ ‘fermented soya beans’

khaghi [k haɣí] /ɣ/ aghi [à ɣì] ‘bone’ aküghü [àkìɣi] ‘big leaf’ ‘long time ago’ ahu [àhù] ahu [àhú] /h/ ahu [ahu] ‘tooth’ ‘unhusked grains’ ‘measure of weight’

80 /ʧ/ acheku [à ʧèkù] ache [a ʧe] ‘sunny’ akichi [àk ʧí] ‘mouth’

‘corner’

/ʧh/ chhe [ ʧhè] ‘slide in’ akichhi [àk ʧhi] ‘breast’ akichhi [ak ʧhí] ‘full’

In addition, all three tones were found to occur after all sonorants, including the breathy nasal /nɦ/ and lateral /l ɦ/, as seen in Table 17. The gap in the data is due to the low frequency of /mɦ/. Given an insufficient number of tokens, the effects of such sonorants on F 0 realisation were not examined in the following acoustic study.

Table 17: Distribution of tones following sonorants L M H /m/ akimi [àkìmì] ‘husband’ kemu [kému] ‘despite’ küma [kimá] ‘both’ /m ɦ/ imho [ìm ɦò] ‘ferment’ alimhi [àlìm ɦi] ‘soot’

h /n/ niye [nìye] ‘I’ ghenguno [ ɣèŋúno] anathi [ànát i] ‘banana sp.’ ‘for; because of’

/n ɦ/ khetsünhe [k hèʦínɦè] ‘sun’ akünha [àkìn̤a] ‘lid’ minhe [mìn ɦé] ‘gnaw’

/ŋ/ ngo [ŋò] ‘and’ anga [a ŋa] ‘be fed up’ anga [a ŋá] ‘child’ /l/ ali [àlì] ‘pot’ lakhi [lak hí] ‘one’ liye [líye] ‘she’

/ l ɦ/ akulho [àkùl ɦò] ‘fatigue’ alhache [al ɦaʧe] ‘ant’ akulho [àkùl ɦó] ‘curry’

The free distribution of all three tones after all obstruents, regardless of voicing or aspiration, sets Sumi apart from more distantly related Tibeto-Burman languages of the Bodish branch, such as Lhasa Tibetan where voiceless unaspirated stops preceding a low tone are voiced (Tournadre & Dorje, 2003).

For this acoustic study, two specific factors were considered: 1) the effects of obstruent voicing on F 0 of the following vowel within each tonal category; and 2) the effects of stop voice-onset time (VOT) on F 0 of the following vowel within each synchronic tonal category. Given an insufficient number of tokens from the male speaker, only data from

81 the female speaker were used. Table 18 compares the mean F 0 realisation (in Hz) of each tone on the vowel 30ms after voiced and voiceless consonants.

T-tests showed only a significant difference between F 0 following a voiced vs. voiceless obstruent for M tone: t(37) = –2.5, p = 0.02. While this difference was statistically significant, the actual difference in mean F 0 was merely 6 Hz, far below the 30 Hz interval found between tones, suggesting that the difference would not interfere with the identification of tonal categories, which a perception test at a later stage might confirm.

Table 18: Comparison of F 0 after voiced vs voiceless obstruents (female speaker) Tone 30ms after voiced obstruent 30ms after voiceless obstruent Mean S.D. No. of Mean S.D. No. of (Hz) tokens (Hz) tokens L 163 15 63 166 21 200 M 190 10 23 196 14 145 H 219 15 25 225 16 76

However, despite the lack of a statistically significant difference for most of the tones, there was still a general tendency for F 0 to be lower (if only slightly) for all threes tones across up to the first 50% of a tone-bearing segment following a voiced obstruent, as illustrated by Figure 19, Figure 20 and Figure 21. These figures show average L, M and H tone realisation, respectively, across a time-normalised segment, following both voiceless and voiced obstruents. This tendency somewhat conforms to our expectation of pitch lowering following voiced obstruents.

In these figures, one may notice a fall in pitch across the segment, which would appear to contradict the analysis of a three level tone system. It should be stated that given the distribution of the investigated segments, most of the tokens were taken from the right edge of a word, which was usually immediately followed by L tone in the carrier phrase as in ani [àni] and kumo [kùmò]. It is therefore likely that the observed fall in pitch across these segments is anticipatory in nature. Furthermore, any slight downward movements

82 in pitch can be attributed to the effects of declination, a common pitch loweing phenomenon noted across languages, including Mongsen Ao (Coupe 2003: 92) 51 . That such downdrift has not been phonologised in the language can be proven by the absence of any minimal sets in Sumi that contrast level and falling tones.

Figure 19: Average F0 realisation of L tone after voiced vs. voiceless obstruents across a time- normalised segment (female speaker) The ‘voiceL’ plot refers to L tone realisation following voiced obstruents, while ‘voice0L’ refers to L tone realisation following voiceless obstruents.

51 Note that Coupe (2003) uses the term ‘downdrift’ to refer to the same phenonemon.

83

Figure 20: Average F0 realisation of M tone after voiced vs. voiceless obstruents across a time- normalised segment (female speaker) The ‘voiceM’ plot refers to M tone realisation following voiced obstruents, while ‘voice0M’ refers to M tone realisation following voiceless obstruents.

Figure 21: Average F0 realisation of H tone after voiced vs. voiceless obstruents across a time- normalised segment (female speaker) The ‘voiceH’ plot refers to H tone realisation following voiced obstruents, while ‘voice0H’ refers to H tone realisation following voiceless obstruents.

84 Looking at the effect of VOT on tone realisation, Table 19 compares the mean F 0 realisation (in Hz) of each tone measured 30ms after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops.

Table 19: Comparison of F0 after voiced, voiceless unaspirated & aspirated stops (female speaker) Tone 30ms after voiced stop 30ms after voiceless 30ms after voiceless unaspirated stop aspirated stop Mean S.D. No. of Mean S.D. No. of Mean S.D. No. of tokens tokens tokens L 163 13 22 168 20 135 159 29.0 37 M 190 10 12 196 15 60 195 11.8 60 H 220 15 12 224 13 39 230 17.7 27

A one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference between F 0 following stops with different VOTs for all three tones. However, there was a tendency for F 0 to be higher 30ms after a voiceless unaspirated stop than after a voiced stop. Interestingly, no such tendency could be observed for F 0 following voiceless aspirated stops: on vowels carrying L tone, it was lower than F 0 following both voiced and voiceless unaspirated stops, while on vowels carrying H tone, it was higher, and on vowels carrying M tone it was nearly the same. The absence of any observable trend seems to be consistent with the mixed results found in previous studies, though no phonetic explanation for this can be offered at the present time.

Figure 22, Figure 23 and Figure 24 provide plots of mean F 0 values across a time- normalised segment following each kind of stop for L, M and H tones, illustrating the tendency for tones to be realised at a lower F 0 after a voiced stop, as well as the less predictable realisation of tones following a voiceless aspirated stop.

85

Figure 22: Average F 0 realisation of L tone after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops across a time-normalised segment (female speaker) The ‘vL’ plot refers to L tone realisation following voiced stops, ‘v0L’ refers to L tone realisation following voiceless unaspirated stops, and ‘v0hL’ refers to L tone realisation following voiceless aspirated stops.

Figure 23: Average F0 realisation of M tone after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops across a time-normalised segment (female speaker) The ‘vM’ plot refers to M tone realisation following voiced stops, ‘v0M’ refers to M tone realisation following voiceless unaspirated stops, and ‘v0hM’ refers to M tone realisation following voiceless aspirated stops.

86

Figure 24: Average F0 realisation of H tone after after voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops across a time-normalised segment (female speaker) The ‘vH’ plot refers to H tone realisation following voiced stops, ‘v0H’ refers to H tone realisation following voiceless unaspirated stops, and ‘v0hH’ refers to H tone realisation following voiceless aspirated stops.

Even though the effect of voicing and aspiration was not found to have significant differences on tone realisation, tendencies corresponding to those mentioned in the literature, such as the lowering of pitch after a voiced obstruent, were still observed. The results must nevertheless be interpreted with caution as other factors, including the effects of vowel intrinsic F 0 were not controlled for.

5.4.1 Effects of vowel intrinsic F 0 on tone realisation

The next acoustic study set out to examine the effects of vowel intrinsic F 0 (henceforth

IF 0) on tone realisation. The universality of IF 0 has been discussed by Whalen and Levitt (1995) who looked at a number of languages and found that the high vowels /i/ and /u/ were generally associated with higher F 0 than the low vowel /a/. Connell (2002) investigated a number of African register tone languages to see if the number of tones in the tonal inventory influenced speakers of such languages to adopt any methods to constrain IF 0 (assuming its existence) to prevent confusion between tonal categories. Out

87 of four languages, Connell found only one, Mambila, which did not have IF 0 (or appeared to suppress it).

In Sumi, all three tones can occur on any of the six phonemic vowels in a main syllable (the tone-bearing potential for minor syllables is discussed in 5.2.), as seen in Table 20.

Table 20: Distribution of tones on vowels L M H

/i/ aki [àkì] ‘house’ akichhi [àk ʧhi] ‘breast’ akichi [àk ʧí] ‘mouth’

/e/ acheku [à ʧèkù] ‘corner’ ayeghi [aje ɣí] ‘and’ alhache [al ɦɦɦaʧé] ‘ant’

/i/ asü [àsì] ‘wood’ asü [asi] ‘millet’ asü [àsí] ‘grandfather’ /a/ ala [àsà] ‘hair’ asa [asa] ‘nose bridge’ asa [àsá] ‘colony’ /u/ apu [àpù] ‘father’ apu [apu] ‘dipper’ apu [àpú] ‘son’ /o/ axo [àxò] ‘smell’ ato [ato] ‘hill’ amlo [àmló] ‘heart’

Following Whalen & Levitt’s analysis which merges /i/ and /u/ into a single group, Table 52 21 gives a comparison of the F 0 realisation of word-final /i/ and /u/ with word-final /a/. Word-final position was chosen to minimise variation as a result of declination across a word. This environment was chosen over the word-initial environment, mainly because most tonal contrasts appeared on the final syllable, e.g. word-initial H is very rare in Sumi. Given an insufficient number of tokens from the male speaker, only data from the female speaker (IZ) were used for this analysis.

52 T-tests showed no significant difference between the female speaker’s realisation of F 0 in word-final /i/ vs /u/ for any of the three tones. These findings agree with Whalen & Levitt’s (1997) hypothesis that the front / back dimension of vowels does not influence IF 0.

88 Table 21: Comparison of F 0 of high vowels vs. low vowels (female speaker) Tone Word-final /i/ + /u/ Word-final /a/ Mean S.D. No. of Mean S.D. No. of (Hz) tokens (Hz) tokens L 162 10 95 156 9 39 M 191 11 54 183 8 18 H 224 14 94 213 14 14

T-tests showed a significant difference between the speaker’s pitch realisation in /i/ and /u/ vs. /a/ for all three tones – L tone: t(80) = 3.8, p < 0.01; M tone: t(39) = 3.1, p < 0.01; and H tone: t(17) = 2.9, p < 0.01.

The results indicate that IF 0 was present in all three tones, suggesting that the speaker was not controlling for IF 0 in her production of tone. However, even though there was a statistically significant difference in F 0 realisation on high vs. low vowels, the difference in mean F 0 values was less than 10 Hz for the L and M tones and about 12 Hz for H tone.

The results therefore help to account for some of the F 0 variation we have observed in the realisation of tones in Sumi. Furthermore, they support Whalen and Levitt’s (1995) hypothesis for the universality of IF 0.

5.5 Comparison of tone systems of other Kuki-Chin-Naga languages

Having examined the tone system of Sumi and the phonetic realisation of its tones, we can now look at a cross-linguistic comparison of tone systems in other Kuki-Chin-Naga languages. It was already noted that the average interval of about 30 Hz between tones in Sumi is comparable to that of Khonoma Angami (Blankenship et al., 1993), while the average interval between tones was much smaller in Mongsen Ao (Coupe, 2003). However, given the paucity of such acoustic phonetic studies of tone in other Kuki-Chin- Naga languages, a cross-linguistic study must compare the phonological tone systems of these languages.

89 Burling (2003) notes that most languages in this branch have at least three contrastive tones. The following is a summary of some of these tone systems and the transcription conventions developed for each language.

Among the other languages of the Angami-Pochuri group, to which Sumi belongs (following Burling’s 2003 classification), Kapfo (2005) also finds three contrastive level tones in Khezha: High, Mid and Low, as exemplified here:

High só ‘repeat’ Mid so ‘drink’ Low sò ‘count’; ‘to bribe’

Kapfo (1989) also notes that in nominal compounding (examples given in 7.1.4), High tone is most resistant to tone sandhi, suggesting that High is more marked than the other tones.

Giridhar (1994) reports four level tones in Mao, another member of the Angami-Pochuri grouping: High, Lower High, Mid and Low.

High ōdó ‘art, techniques of politeness’ Lower High ōdŏ ‘show, splurge’; ‘trick’ Mid ōdō ‘paddy field’; ‘notch’ Low ōdò ‘field ridge’

Similarly, Blankenship et al. (1993) find four level tones in the Khonoma dialect of Angami (as mentioned above). In contrast, the Kohima dialect of Angami has been found to have five contrastive tones. Giridhar (1980) refers to them as High, Mid, Mid Falling, Low Falling and Low:

90 High pé ‘to incline’ Mid pē ‘to be fat’ Mid Falling pe ̚ ‘bridge; drill’

Low Falling pê ‘tremble’ Low pè ‘to shoot; to flick an object’

Kuolie (2006) also finds five tones for Kohima Angami, which are referred to as High, High-low, Mid, Low-high and Low and represented using slightly different diacritics:

High pé ‘to incline’ High-low pĕ ‘fatty’ Mid pē ‘bridge’ Low-high pê ‘to tremble’ Low pè ‘to hit / shoot’

Finally, in the Ao languages spoken to the north and west of Sumi, Coupe (2003; 2007) and Bruhn (2009) describe 3 contrastive level tones for the Mongsen and Chungli varieties of Ao respectively: High ( ), Mid ( ¯) and Low ( ).

Acharya (1983) gives three contrastive tones for Lotha, another Ao language: Rising, Falling and Level (presumably a mid tone), but does not provide any indication of their phonetic realisations.

Rising lá ‘vomit (Imp)’ Falling là ‘cheap price’ Level lā ‘cut flesh (Imp)’

Further afield but still within the Kuki-Chin-Naga group, Jeyapaul (1987) reports three tones in Karbi (or Arleng): High, Level (presumably a mid tone) and Low:

91 High mé ‘sister’s husband’ Level me ‘be good’ Low mè ‘fire’

Chelliah (1997) finds two tones in Meithei: High and Low, the only language in this survey to have less than three contrastive tones.

A summary of the main features of these tone systems is presented in Table 22. Note that for all languages, pitch is reported to be the only phonetic correlate of tone, with no mention of any correlation between tone and phonation type such as breathy voice or creaky voice.

Table 22: Typological comparison of tone systems in the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages Angami-Pochuri languages 53 Ao languages

Sumi Khezha Mao Angami (Khonoma) Angami (Kohima) Lotha Ao (Mongsen) Ao (Chungli) / Karbi Arleng Meithei no. of 3 3 4 4 5 3 3 3 3 2 contrastive tones phonemic no no no no yes yes no no no no contours (2) (2)

From a genetic point of view, Sumi is considered more closely related to Khezha, Mao and Angami (see 1.2.2), which have between three and five contrastive tones respectively. While most of these languages have level tone systems, Kohima Angami also seems to have developed two phonological contour tones. On the other hand, geographically, Sumi is spoken in an area bordering the Ao languages, where a three-tone system is common. The presence of a three-tone system in Sumi might then be the result of influence from these languages. Certainly, this statement needs to be supported by data from more languages. However, it is not an unreasonable proposal, given that the

53 The Kohima dialect is taken to be the standard for Angami.

92 segmental phonology and phonotactic constraints of Sumi often display features from both Angami-Pochuri languages and Ao languages, reflecting its status as a ‘border’ language.

At this juncture, a cross-linguistic comparison of tone in lexical cognates across the Naga languages might offer some perspective on the historical origin of these tone systems, which will be useful in assessing a Naga tone typology.

5.6 Lexical comparison among Naga languages

Table 23 provides a small sample of words in six Southern Naga languages: Sumi, Khezha, Angami, Mao, Mongsen Ao and Lotha. The method of tonal transcription follows that of the original researchers (explained in 5.5 with sample transcriptions). For the purposes of this comparison, the High and Lower High tones of Mao are referred to as ‘high’, the High and the Mid tones of Angami (as described by Giridhar, 1980) are ‘high’ and the Low Falling and Low are ‘low’. The Rising, Falling and Level tones of Lotha are treated as ‘high’, ‘low’ and ‘mid’ respectively since these correspond to their tone targets. The accuracy of all tonal transcriptions is taken for granted here.

A few noteworthy observations can be made from this preliminary comparison. Looking at items (1) to (8), we can see a mirroring of low and high tones between the Angami- Pochuri and Ao groups: what is low or mid in one group is often high or mid in the other. Specifically, the tone sequence HH in Mongsen Ao -məkhá ʔ ‘chin’, corresponds to a LL tone sequence in Sumi -m̩khì – it is interesting to note that that despite being analysed as the marked tone in Mongsen Ao, sequences of HH tones are also permitted within lexical roots. This mirroring of high and low tones is also obvious if we compare the numerals ‘three’, ‘four’, ‘five’ and ‘twenty’ in Lotha with those of Sumi and Khezha. The high tone on the final syllables of the Sumi and Khezha numerals correspond exactly to a low tone in the Lotha numerals.

93 Table 23: Comparative word list of Sumi with other Naga languages Angami-Pochuri group Ao group Proto-TB Gloss Khezha Angami Mao Mongsen Ao Lotha Sumi (Matisoff, 2003) (Kapfo, 2007) (Giridhar, 1987) (Giridhar, 1994) (Coupe, 2007) (Acharya, 1983) 1 pig à-vò è-vo thê-vò ō-vò [a]-úk wókò *wak 2 chin à-m̩k hì mèkh ɵ ú-mêpf ǜ bòkhò ~ bòkh ŏ [t ə]-mə khá ʔ *m-ka 3 father à-pù èpfü â-puô ō-pè ~ ō-pf ŏ [t ə]-pa ʔ ō-pó *pa 4 two kini kènhi kêni ē an ət ēnì *g-nis 5 three kìthí ketsh ǘ sē as əm ēthəm *g-sum 6 four bìdí pedí di ē ph əli mēžə *b-liy 7 five pù ŋú pa ŋɵ pêngù pha ŋa mūŋ ò *b-ŋa 8 twenty m̩kú mekí mêpf ǖ məki my ūkyù *m-kul 9 blood à-ʒì è-žì thê-zié [a]-jí ʔ *hyw əy 10 lung à-phè è-pfhò ú-phié ō-fŭ 11 hair (body) à-mɦì è-mhì ú-mié *mil à- à 12 hair (head) ʃ è-thè ú-thá *sam [à-sà] 13 moon à-qhì è-thrü thê-khrüˆ ō-khró 14 excrement à-bà è-bɵ thê-bu ō ō-bó *ba:l 15 heart à-m̩ló melí ú-mêloû [t ə]-məlu ŋ-ʧaŋ 16 saliva à-mìtí mecí ú-mêtá məts ə *m-til 17 fire à-mì è-mìe ~ è-mè mí ō-mī mi ~ m əzəʔ *mey 18 house à -kì è-kìe kí ō-cĭ [a]-ki ō-kì 19 person tì-mì è-mi th ē-miê ō-mə̌i [a]-mi ʔ ō-mī *mi

94 Looking at items (9) to (14), such mirroring of tones happens even within the Angami- Pochuri group: Sumi and Khezha low or mid tones can also correspond to high or mid tones in Angami and Mao, making them more similar to their Ao and Lotha counterparts. For example, the Angami root for ‘blood’ -zié bears high tone like its Ao cognate -jí ʔ, while Sumi has -ʒì and Khezha -žì.

Finally, items (15) to (19) show that these highlighted differences do not always correspond across language divisions – while Sumi and Khezha words show the greatest similarity for tone, their cognates in Ao languages do not predictably mirror their tones. For example, the root for ‘house’ has low tone in Sumi -kì , Khezha -kìe and Lotha -kì , but mid tone in Mongsen Ao -ki . Angami and Mao also do not predictably mirror tones: high tones in the noun roots for ‘heart’ and ‘saliva’ correspond to Sumi and Khezha high tones, but in the roots for ‘fire’, ‘house’ and ‘person’ they correspond to low tones.

It must be reiterated that only a small set of the data has been compared here to offer some perspective on the historical origin and development of tone in Sumi and the other Naga languages. The three-way division of the data presented here also does not vindicate Weidert’s (1987) analysis of three historical tonal categories for the Naga languages, but it does point to the complex nature of tone development in these languages. Future work in this area might clarify the historical tone categories posited by Weidert and lead to a better understanding of the synchronic tone systems that are now found in each language.

5.7 Typological comparison within the Tibeto-Burman family

In order to situate Sumi and the other Naga languages within a larger Tibeto-Burman tone typology, we must first consider the three geographic spheres posited by Hildebrandt (2007), based on Matisoff’s (1991) work: the Indosphere, Sinosphere and Buffer Zone (as described in 1.4.4). Across these languages, two parameters are considered: the tone- bearing unit or TBU and the phonetic correlates of tone.

95 From a geographic point of view, the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages (of which Meithei was considered in Hildebrandt’s typological proposal) could be considered to be located within the Indosphere, since most of them are in contact with Indo-Aryan languages such as Assamese and Bengali. However, their position on the Himalayan spine extending down between India and Burma could equally place them in the Buffer Zone.

Table 24 presents the typological profiles of three Naga languages alongside those of the three geographically defined groupings: the Buffer Zone, Sinosphere and Indosphere.

Table 24: Typological profiles of three Naga languages with other Tibeto-Burman languages Sumi Khezha Mongsen Buffer Zone Sinospheric Indospheric Ao languages languages languages TBU type syllable syllable syllable word generally atonal syllable / sesquisyllable Phonetic F0 only F0 only F0 only F0 with generally F 0 atonal correlates phonation of tone differences

Note that since Hildebrandt (2007) only contrasts TBUs that reference purely prosodic units, i.e. syllables, with TBUs that reference prosodically and morphologically defined units, i.e. words, in her typology, the analysis of a syllabic TBU in Sumi places it and the other Naga languages among the Sinospheric languages.

Looking at phonetic realisation, Sumi is viewed as a ‘pure’ pitch-based tone language, which Hildebrandt (2007) describes as a language which has phonologised tone to the extent that it is purely a function of F 0 and not correlated with a particular phonation type on the vowel or the preceding consonant. Again, Sumi and the Naga languages fit the typological profile of the Sinospheric languages but not those of the Buffer Zone or the Indosphere.

That these Naga languages do not fit the expected typological profile suggests that a typological classification based on areal geography is insufficient, given that ‘Sinospheric’ tone languages are now found in the Indosphere. One needs to take into

96 account the historical origins of tones in these languages – Mazaudon (1977) hypothesises that tone developed on polysyllabic words in the Bodish languages, which Hildebrandt has placed in the ‘Buffer Zone’ area, while it developed in most languages of the Sinosphere at a stage when the languages were still monosyllabic (via the loss of syllable finals and phonologically contrastive initials). It therefore seems plausible that Sumi and the other Kuki-Chin-Naga languages developed tone before coming into contact with Indo-Aryan languages, and also at a time when the languages were still monosyllabic.

Furthermore, the classification by TBU type, as defined by Hildebrandt, is also problematic since it contrasts syllablic TBUs with word and morphemic TBUs. In many Sinospheric languages, the monosyllabic nature of most morphemes (a phenomenon Bickel (2003) terms ‘tautomorphemicity’) belies the fact that a syllablic TBU often implies a morphemic TBU and viceversa.

Certainly, if we are to adequately describe a typology of tone for the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages, a few more parameters are needed. However, given the present lack of good tonal transcriptions and analyses of these languages, we are still a long way from defining these parameters.

In view of this, a more comprehensive typological comparison of Sumi with ‘African’ and ‘East Asian’ tone languages will be offered at the end of this thesis in Chapter 8.

97 6 Tone Assignment and Tone Melodies

Having established that the TBU in Sumi is the syllable and compared its tone system with that of other Tibeto-Burman languages, a description of its tone system must now also account for tonal phenomena occurring Sumi, including tone spreading. This chapter presents an analysis of tone assignment to pronominal possessive prefixes that are phonologically toneless, using an autosegmental representation of tone, the basic tenets of which have been explained in 1.4.2. In this analysis, verb and noun roots will be analysed as having underlying tones or tone melodies associated with them, and rules that assign tones from these roots to toneless morphemes will be posited. The marked nature of H tone and its effect on tone assignment will be considered, before a final typological comparison of tone rules in Sumi with those of African and East Asian tone languages is presented.

6.1 Toneless possessive prefixes

Before looking at how phonologically toneless possessive prefixes are assigned tone, a basic explanation of Sumi nominal morphology is required. Possession in Sumi is generally marked by adding a pronominal prefix to the possessed noun root. These pronominal prefixes may or may not be specified for a tone, and noun roots can effect changes in the tone on these prefixes.

6.1.1 Non-relational prefix a- and possessive prefixes

In citation form, the majority of nouns take the non-relational (NRL) prefix a-:

(70) asa /à-ʃà/ ‘NRL-hair’ [à.sà] ‘hair’

(71) apu /à-pù/ ‘NRL-father’ [à.pù] ‘father’ (72) ana /à-nà/ ‘NRL-cooked.rice’ [à.nà] ‘(cooked) rice’

While the functions of this a- prefix are numerous and yet to be described in exact terms, it should be noted that a- simply marks the lack of a possessor, hence the choice to gloss it as a ‘non-relational’ marker. Only a few nouns in Sumi do not take this prefix, e.g.

98 sünizü /ʃìnì ʒì/ ‘tea’, ghajuku / ɣàʒukù/ ‘yam leaf’, while some nouns in citation form are optionally prefixed, e.g. kighinoli ~ akighinoli ‘innards’.

Among the Naga languages, the Sumi prefix a- appears to be cognate with Khezha e-, Mao Naga o-, and Mongsen Ao a-. Matisoff (2003) reconstructs this prefix as having the basic form *ʔa-, with other variants including: *( ʔ)ə- / *ʔə- / *ʔaŋ- / *ʔak-. The semantic functions of the reflexes of this prefix include: marking kinship terms and the third person possessive. 54 It can also function as a verb nominaliser (see 7.2.2 for examples) or it can simply provide noun roots with “a bit more phonological bulk, providing them with the salience to serve as constituents in larger constructions” (Matisoff 2003: 107). 55 Kapfo (1989) suggests that the prefix is added to monosyllabic noun roots in Khezha to fulfill the requirement that words are minimally disyllabic. 56 There is evidence of a similar requirement for nominals in Sumi, as described in 4.3.

When possession is marked on nouns, the prefix a- is dropped and replaced with a pronominal prefix. For instance:

(73) isa /ì-ʃà/ ‘my-hair’ [ì.sà] ‘my hair’

(74) nipu /ni-pù/ ‘our-father’ [ni.pù] ‘our father’ (75) ona /ò-nà/ ‘your.sg-rice’ [ò.nà] ‘your (sg) rice’

The prefix a- on a possessed noun is also dropped and replaced when the possessor noun is a common noun or proper noun:

(76) atsü ‘dog’ + agi ‘face’ → atsü gi ‘the dog’s face’ (77) Inotoli ‘(name)’+ apu ‘dipper’ → Inotoli pu ‘Inotoli’s dipper’

54 Hutton (1921) suggests this is the historical origin of the a- prefix in Sumi. 55 LaPolla (p.c.) notes that in many East and Southeast Asian languages, syllables that do not add meaning are ofen added in certain contexts in order to satisfy a particular sense of rhythm. While this appears to be the case for nouns in Sumi, it does not appear to be a requirement with verbs. 56 This is supported by the fact that both monosyllabic noun roots in a nominal compound in Khezha lose their e-prefix once they are compounded.

99 In such cases, the noun root arguably behaves like a clitic since it cannot stand alone as a phonological word and needs to attach itself to the preceding noun.

The prefix a- is also dropped in the formation of compounds, but these are usually represented orthographically as a single word (this will be discussed further in 7.1):

(78) amishi ‘cow’ + ashi ‘meat’ → amishishi ‘beef’ (79) akha ‘fish’ + abo ‘container’ → akhabo ‘fish pond’

6.1.2 Tone variation in possessive prefixes

A subsection of the possessive prefix paradigm is given below in Table 25.

Table 25: Possessive prefix paradigm for monosyllabic noun roots /a-/57 /i-/ /o-/ /pa-/ /lí-/ /ni-/ /no-/ /panó-/ non- ‘my’ ‘your ‘his / ‘her’ ‘our’ ‘your ‘their’ relational 58 (sg)’ her’ (pl)’ ‘father’ apu à.pù ì.pù ò.pù pa.pù lí.pù 59 ni.pù no.pù pa.nó pa.pù 60 ‘dipper’ apu a.pu i.pu o.pu pa.pu lí.pu ni.pu no.pu pa.nó.pu ‘son’ apu à.pú ì.pú ò.pú pa.pú lí.pú ni.pú no.pú pa.nó.pú

Looking at the data, we find three patterns of tone variation for pronominal prefixes, which can be grouped thus:

Group 1: a- ‘NRL’; i- ‘my’; o- ‘your(sg)’ Group 2: pa- ‘his / her’; ni- ‘our’; no- ‘your(pl)’ Group 3: li- ‘her’; pano- ‘their’

57 The non-relational, ‘my’ and ‘your(sg)’ prefixes are underlined here to show that they are lexically specified for tone. 58 This is the citation form of each noun. 59 One speaker gives this form as li papu [lí papù] lit. ‘she her father’. The prefix pa- ‘his / her’ is used in possessive constructions when the ‘possessed’ noun denotes a senior family member. 60 This is literally ‘they his father’ – the additional pa- ‘his’ is often prefixed to nouns denoting a more senior family member.

100 The two pronominal prefixes of Group 3 do not display any tone variation. The H tone on both li- ‘her’ and pano- ‘their’ remains stable for all noun roots. It is therefore reasonable to posit that li- and pano- are both specified for H and MH tone: /lí-/ and /panó-/61 .

The Group 2 pronominal prefixes are similar in that they do not display tone variation. It would therefore be reasonable to posit that pa- ‘his / her’, ni- ‘our’ and no- ‘your (pl)’ are all specified for M tone: /pa-/, /ni-/ and /no-/.

In contrast to these two groups, the Group 1 prefixes, which include the ubiquitous a-, seem to display the greatest amount of tone variation. It would be reasonable to suggest that these prefixes are not specified for any underlying tone, but obtain their surface tone from the noun root or by other means. The challenge then is accounting for tone variation in the prefixes in the first group.

6.1.3 Autosegmental analysis of tonal alternations

Noun roots are always specified for tone: in general, monosyllabic noun roots are specified for one tone, which is pre-linked to the noun root. Similarly, the tones specified for Group 2 and 3 possessive prefixes are pre-linked to their morphemes. (80) – (83) show sample analyses of prefixation on the three noun roots -pu /pù/ ‘father’; -pu /pu/ ‘dipper’; and -pu /pú/ ‘son’, using pa- /pa-/ ‘his / her’ and li- /lí-/ ‘her’ to represent prefix Groups 2 and 3 respectively.

(80) Noun root: /-pù/ ‘father’

M L H L | | | | σ σ σ σ | | | | pa pu li pu

[pa.pù] ‘his / her father’ [lí.pù] ‘her father’

61 The prefix pano- /panó-/ appears to be an amalgamation of /pa-/ ‘his/her’ and /-nó/, the collective possessive marker, which may historically have been a plural marker.

101 (81) Noun root: /-pu/ ‘dipper’

M M H M | | | | σ σ σ σ | | | | pa pu li pu

[pa.pu] ‘his / her dipper’ [lí.pu] ‘her dipper’

(82) Noun root: /-pú/ ‘son’

M H H H | | | | σ σ σ σ | | | | pa pu li pu

[pa.pú] ‘his / her son’ [lí.pú] ‘her son’

When the possessive prefix is unspecified for tone, the tone of the noun root spreads leftward, as shown in (83) and (84).

(83) Noun root: /-pù/ ‘father’

L L | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | a pu a pu

[à.pù] ‘father’

L L | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | i pu i pu

[ì.pù] ‘my father’

102 (84) Noun root: /-pu/ ‘dipper’

M M | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | a pu a pu

[a.pu] ‘dipper’

M M | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | i pu i pu

[i.pu] ‘my dipper’

However, this still does not account for L tone in forms like apu [àpú] ‘son’, as well as to i- and o- in [ìpú] ‘my son’ and [òpú] ‘your (sg) son’. The assignment of tone in these forms will be discussed in 6.1.4.

A quick summary of tone association rules at this stage gives:

(1) Tones are pre-linked to the TBU in the morpheme they belong to. (2) L and M tones spread leftwards onto TBUs that are unspecified for tone.

Table 26 provides examples of possessive prefixation with sesquisyllabic noun roots. Sesquisyllabic noun roots are specified for two tones that are also pre-linked to the noun root, with sample analyses given in (85) – (88).

103 Table 26: Possessive prefix paradigm for sesquisyllabic noun roots /a-/ /i-/ /o-/ /pa-/ /lí-/ /ni-/ /no-/ /panó-/ non-relational ‘my’ ‘your (sg)’ ‘his / her’ ‘her’ ‘our’ ‘your (pl)’ ‘their’ ‘chest’ amla àm.là ìm.là òm.là pam.là lí m.là nim.là nom.là pa.nó m.là àm.ti ~ ìm.ti ~ òm.ti ~ pam.ti ~ lí m.ti ~ nim.ti ~ nom.ti ~ pa.nó m.ti ~ ‘salt’ amiti à.mì.ti ì.mì.ti ò.mì.ti pa.mì.ti lí.mì.ti ni.mì.ti no.mì.ti pa.nó.mì.ti ‘heart’ amlo àm.ló ìm.ló òm.ló pam.ló lí m.ló nim.ló nom.ló pa.nó m.ló àk.tsi ~ ìk.tsi ~ òk.tsi ~ pak.tsi ~ lík.tsi ~ nik.tsi ~ nok.tsi ~ pa.nók.tsi ~ ‘head’ akütsü à.kì.tsi ~ ì.kì.tsi ò.kì.tsi pa.kì.tsi lí.kì.tsi ni.kì.tsi no.kì.tsi pa.nó.kì.tsi

‘banana’ awucho au. ʧo ~ iu. ʧo ~ ou. ʧo ~ pau. ʧo ~ líu. ʧo ~ niu. ʧo ~ nou. ʧo ~ pa.nóu. ʧo ~

a.wu. ʧo ~ i.wu. ʧo ~ o.wu. ʧo ~ pa.wu. ʧo ~ lí.wu. ʧo ~ ni.wu. ʧo ~ no.wu. ʧo ~ pa.nó.wu. ʧo ~

av. ʧo iv. ʧo ov. ʧo pav. ʧo lív. ʧo niv. ʧo nov. ʧo pa.nóv. ʧo

Shading indicates forms which speakers reported to be rarely used.

104 (85) Noun root: /-m̩.là/ ‘chest’ 62

M L L H L L | | | | | | σ σ σ σ σ σ | | | | | | pa m la li m la

[pam.là] ‘his / her chest’ [lí m.là] ‘her chest’

(86) Noun root: /-m̩.ti/ ‘salt’

M L M H L M | | | | | | σ σ σ σ σ σ | | | | | | pa m(i) ti li m(i) ti

[pam.ti] ~ [pa.mì.ti] [lí m.ti] ~ [lí.mì.ti] ‘his / her salt’ ‘her salt’

(87) Noun root: /-m̩.ló/ ‘heart’

M L H H L H | | | | | | σ σ σ σ σ σ | | | | | | pa m lo li m lo

[pam.ló] ‘his / her heart’ [lí m.ló] ‘her heart’

62 According to the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), only the mora of the main syllable should be pre- linked for L tone. The tone then spreads leftward onto the mora of the minor syllable. However, since it has been shown that the OCP can be violated (Yip 2002), and given that other sesquisyllabic roots are specified for two tones: LM, LH etc, it seems reasonable to assume two L tones here.

105 (88) Noun root: /-vu.ʧo/ ‘banana’

M M M H M M | | | | | | σ σ σ σ σ σ | | | | | | pa vu ʧo li vu ʧo

[pav. ʧo] ~ [pa.wu. ʧo] [lív. ʧo] ~ [lí.wu. ʧo] ~ [pau. ʧo] ~ [líu. ʧo] ‘his / her banana’ ‘her banana’

As with monosyllabic noun roots, when the possessive prefix is unspecified for tone, the leftmost tone of the sesquisyllabic noun root spreads leftward, as shown in (89) – (92).

(89) Noun root: /-m̩.là/ ‘chest’

L L L L | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | a m la a m la

[àm.là] ‘chest’

L L L L | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | i m la i m la

[ìm.là] ‘my chest’

(90) Noun root: /-mì.ti/ ‘salt’

L M L M | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | a mi ti a mi ti

[àm.ti] ~ [à.mì.tì] ‘salt’

106

L M L M | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | i mi ti i mi ti

[ìm.ti] ~ [ì.mì.ti] ‘my salt’

(91) Noun root: /-m̩.ló/ ‘heart’

L H L H | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | a m lo a m lo

[àm.ló] ‘heart’

L H L H | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | i m lo i m lo

[ìm.ló] ‘my heart’

(92) Noun root: /-vu.ʧo/ ‘banana’

M M M M | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | a vu ʧo a vu ʧo

[av. ʧo] ~ [a.wu. ʧo] ~ [au. ʧo] ‘banana’

M M M M | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | i vu ʧo i vu ʧo

[iv. ʧo] ~ [i.wu. ʧo] ~ [iu. ʧo] ‘my banana’

107 In examples (85) – (87), pitch can still be perceived on a syllabic nasal, given its sonorant nature. When the vowel of the prefix and nasal both carry the same tone, it is perceived as a single tone across the whole syllable. However, it is clear from examples (85) and (87) that the nasal does in fact bear its own tone. Similarly, a minor syllable comprising /vu/, which can be phonetically realised as [u] is shown to carry its own tone only when the prefix carries a different tone, as seen in (88).

In cases where the minor syllable comprises a non-sonorant consonant, the tone on its syllable is only phonetically realised if an epenthetic vowel is inserted after it, as shown in (93). However, it is not entirely ‘lost’ if it spreads leftward onto the toneless prefix.

(93) Noun root: /-kì.ʧi/ ‘head’

L M L M | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | a ki ʧi a ki tsi

[àk.tsi] ~ [à.kì.tsi] ‘head’

L M L M | | | | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | i ki ʧi i ki tsi

[ìk.tsi] ~ [ì.kì.tsi] ‘my head’

When the possessive prefix is specified for tone, the tone on the minor syllable is then possibly not phonetically realised at all, though it is still present in the underlying representation, as in (94):

108 (94) Noun root: /-kì.ʧi/ ‘head’

M L M H L M | | | | | | σ σ σ σ σ σ | | | | | | pa ki ʧi li ki ʧi

[pak.tsi] ~ [pa.kì.tsi] [lík.tsi] ~ [lí.kì.tsi] ‘her head’ ‘his / her head’ ‘her head’

Finally, special mention must be made for three monosyllabic noun roots that display the tone patterns presented in Table 27. These are exceptional noun roots that do not fit any of the described patterns.

Table 27: Possessive prefix paradigm for agi ‘face’ anga ‘child and afo ‘ older sister’ /a-/ /i-/ /o-/ /pa-/ /lí-/ /ni-/ /no-/ /panó-/ non- ‘my’ ‘your ‘his / ‘her’ ‘our’ ‘your ‘their’ relational (sg)’ her’ (pl)’ ‘face’ agi a.gí i.gí o.gí pa.gí lí.gí ni.gí no.gí pa.nó.gí ‘baby’ anga a. ŋá - - pa. ŋá lí. ŋá ni. ŋá no. ŋá pa.nó. ŋá ‘older lí.fò ~ afo á.fò í.fò ó.fò pá.fò ní.fò nó.fò pa.nó pá.fò 63 sister’ lí pá.fò

Note that the forms *inga ‘my baby’ and *onga ‘your (sg) baby’ never occur. Instead, the first and second person plural forms ninga and nonga are used, where in English one would say ‘my baby’ and ‘your (sg) baby’. 64 It is plausible that the M tone on a- in anga [a ŋá] ‘baby’ is derived by analogy with the forms ninga [ni ŋá] ‘my / our baby’ and nonga [no ŋá] ‘your baby’, which both have MH melody, since these are the most commonly used forms. On the other hand, this analogy would not explain the MH melody on agi [agí] ‘face’.

63 The third person singular pa- ‘his / her’ is used with nouns denoting senior family members. 64 anga belongs to a group of nouns in Sumi that are usually specified for a plural possessor, but allow third person singular pronominal prefixes.

109 The MH melody appears on most forms of -gi , with the exception of the Group 3 prefixes, and the HL melody appears on all forms of -fo . While the HL melody is highly marked and unique to -fo , the MH melody is actually quite common on sesquisyllabic verb and noun roots (see 6.2). It seems plausible that the noun roots -gi ‘face’ and -fo ‘older sister’ are in fact specified for two bitonal melodies: MH and HL. In an autosegmental analysis of -gi ‘face’, it would seem that while the usual right to left linking of tones to TBUs occurs, the leftmost tone is only linked if the TBU to the left is empty, as proposed in (95). This gives rise to an analysis where the first element in the melody MH is a floating tone that is only realised in the presence of a TBU that is lexically unspecified for tone. At present, it is unclear whether pre-linking of the tone to the noun root in such exceptional cases should be posited.

(95) Noun root: /- gí/̄ 65 ‘face’

M H M H | σ σ → σ σ | | | | a gi a gi

[a.gí] ‘face’

H M H H M H | | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | li gi a gi

[lí.gí] ‘her face’

In contrast, the noun root -fo ‘older sister’ appears to impose the melody HL on all of its possessed forms, even when the prefix is already specified for tone, e.g. pa /pa-/, suggesting that the leftmost H causes delinking of M tone to the prefix, as shown in the following autosegmental representation:

65 The macron ( ̄) is used here to represent M tone when it is first member of a bitonal melody associated with a particular morpheme, e.g. MH.

110 (96) Noun root: /-´fò/ ‘older sister’

H L H L | σ σ → σ σ | | | | a fo a fo

[á.fò] ‘older sister’

M H L M H L | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | pa fo pa fo

[pá.fò] ‘his / her older sister’

Positing floating tones here suggests that there was once segmental material associated with these tones that has since been lost. More historical work is therefore needed to confirm this analysis. However, for now it is certainly worth noting the possibility of a bitonal specification on some monosyllabic noun roots. When we look at tone sandhi in deverbal formation in 7.2.4, we will see more examples of such bitonal melodies MH.

6.1.4 L tone assignment

Returning to the prefixes a- ‘NRL’, i- ‘my’ and o- ‘your (sg)’, we have seen that they usually take the same tone as the leftmost tone specified on a noun root, as in ipu [ìpù] ‘my father’ and ipu [ipu] ‘my dipper’. We have therefore assumed that these prefixes are all phonologically toneless. However, this does not account for why the prefixes in words like apu [àpú] ‘son’, ipu [ìpú] ‘my son’ and opu [òpú] ‘your (sg) son’ are realised with L tone, nor does it explain why the majority of a- prefixes are in fact realised with L tone. 66

One possible analysis is that these prefixes are in fact specified for L tone. However, in order to account for forms like ipu [ipu] ‘my dipper’ and awucho [awu ʧo] ‘banana’, the

66 Out of a sample of 307 nouns, 211 had L tone, 95 had M tone and only 1 had H tone on the prefix.

111 analysis would require that after all morphemes are pre-linked to their specified tones, L tone is then delinked from the possessive prefix before M tone on the noun root can be reassociated leftwards. This is demonstrated here in (97):

(97) Noun root: /-pu/ ‘dipper’

L M L M L M | | | | | σ σ → σ σ → σ σ | | | | | | i pu i pu i pu

[i.pu] ‘my dipper’

This analysis can be rejected on the grounds of economy, since it requires two hitherto unnecessary rules to delink L tone and reassociate M tone. Consequently, only two analyses remain plausible:

(1) noun roots like -pu ‘son’ are specified for two tones: LH; or (2) noun roots like -pu ‘son’ are specified only for H tone, tone on phonologically toneless prefixes is assigned by other means.

If we take up the first assumption, we arrive at an analysis presented here in (98):

(98) Noun root: /-`pú/ ‘son’

L H L H | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | a pu a pu

[à.pú] ‘son’

112 L H L H | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | i pu i pu

[ì.pú] ‘my son’

M L H H L H | | | | σ σ σ σ | | | | pa pu li pu

[pa.pú] ‘his / her son’ [lí.pú] ‘her son’

While this is plausible, one issue is that almost all monosyllabic noun roots analysed thus far are specified for one tone and all sesquisyllabic roots specified for two tones. There are monosyllabic noun roots that appear to be specified for two tones, but these are extremely rare. In contrast, nouns with a LH melody like apu [àpú] ‘son’ are very common and there is much less impetus to posit that the root -pu ‘son’ is specified for anything more than a single H tone.

The second and more plausible analysis assumes that noun roots like -pu ‘son’ are specified only for H tone. Unlike L and M tone, H tone does not spread leftwards – a discussion of the marked nature of H tone is given in 6.3. To account for L tone on the phonologically toneless prefix, we then need a default rule that assigns L tone to all toneless TBUs, as shown in (99).

Note that polarity is rejected here on the grounds that a toneless TBU preceding a TBU carrying L tone does not receive H tone.

113

(99) Noun root: /-pú/ ‘son’

H L H | | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | a pu a pu

[à.pú] ‘son’

H L H | | | σ σ → σ σ | | | | i pu i pu

[ì.pú] ‘son’

This analysis is superior to the previous one in that it requires one less rule. Furthermore, this constraint against leftward spreading of H tone is consistent with other observations about the marked nature of H tone in Sumi, which will be discussed in 6.3. For the moment, a summary of the amended tone assignment rules gives:

(1) Tones are pre-linked to the TBU in the morpheme they belong to. (2) L and M tones spread leftwards onto TBUs that are unspecified for tone. (3) L tone is assigned to any remaining TBUs that are unspecified for tone.

Default rules like the one posited are not uncommon in analyses of tone in African languages. Pulleyblank (1986) argues for default rules assigning L tone in Tiv, which has two surface tones, and M tone in Yoruba, which has three surface tones. In such cases, the default or unmarked tone is often analysed as underlyingly / Ø/, and the language is said to have privative tone (Hyman, 2001a). However, this analysis of privative tone is not possible for Sumi – the phonological tone inventory cannot be reduced to /H/, /M/ and / Ø/, since /L/ tone still needs to be specified to account for words like akütsü /à-kì.ʧi/

[à.kì.tsi] ‘head’, as seen in (93). Without /L/ tone, M tone would spread leftwards, giving the incorrect output *[a.ki.tsi].

114 There is additional diachronic evidence to support such a default rule in Sumi, looking at a cross-linguistic comparison of tone assignment to cognate prefixes in other Naga languages.

6.1.5 Toneless prefixes in other Naga languages

Coupe (2007) notes at least two nominal prefixes in Mongsen Ao that can be described as tonally unspecified: the non-relational prefix a-, used with other noun roots denoting cultural artefacts and entities associated with the biosphere; and the relational prefix tə-, used with noun roots denoting body parts and kinship terms. (100) and (101) show how the adjacent H tone on the noun root is assigned to prefixes, while (102) and (103) show how M tone is assigned to the prefixes.

(100) á-sá ʔ (NRL-meat) ‘meat’

(101) tə -kh ə t (RL-hand/arm) ‘hand, arm’ (102) a-zu (NRL-hail) ‘hail’ (103) tə-hr ə (RL-intestines) ‘intestines’

Coupe notes that these prefixes never take L tone simply because none of the nouns belonging to these semantic classes are specified for L tone on their root-initial syllable. Mongsen Ao also differs from Sumi by allowing H tone on a noun root to spread leftwards onto the prefix. However, both languages are still fundamentally similar in that the noun root is always specified for tone and provides tone in the presence of a phonologically toneless prefix. This process, like in Sumi, involves a leftward spreading of tone.

Kapfo (1989) notes that the Khezha e- prefix (cognate with Sumi a-) usually carries L tone, M tone in some cases, but never H tone. Some examples of L tone include: èkè ‘house’; èvo ‘pig’; and èžú ‘rat’. M tone occurs in examples like: eso ‘jungle rat’ and elí ‘buffalo’, but is much less common.

115 One crucial difference between Sumi and Khezha is that the latter tolerates the tone melody LM on nouns. Given the very few examples of M tone on e-, it seems reasonable to posit an underlying L tone associated with this prefix.

How does this then assist an analysis of L tone assignment in Sumi? Sumi a- is similar to Khezha e- in that it is marked for L tone in the majority of nouns. The most common exception to this is when the noun root is specified for M tone, in which case Sumi a- copies the tone of the noun root, behaving more like Mongsen Ao a-. From a diachronic perspective, it would appear that Sumi a- was originally specified for L tone like in Khezha, but perhaps under influence from languages like Ao, has started to behave like a toneless prefix that copies the leftmost tone of the noun root.

This hypothesis is tentatively supported by the reconstructed syllable-initial glottal stop for this prefix (Matisoff 2003) that could have triggered glottalisation, resulting in pitch lowering on the following vowel. This effect of glottalisation can still be observed in the initial creaky ‘phase’ associated with this prefix in Sumi (see 3.6). 67 Consequently, what is posited as a synchronic default L tone rule might simply reflect the original L tone specified on the a- prefix, which has since begun to behave like a toneless prefix. 68 Again, much more comparative evidence is needed to support such an analysis.

Certainly, this analysis of tone spreading assumes that although tones dock onto the syllable in Sumi, it is the morpheme that is the main domain of tonal specification. As Coupe (2003: 114) points out, the treatment of tone on tonally unspecified nominal prefixes remains problematic in all Tibeto-Burman languages reported to have such

67 The other phonologically toneless prefixes in Sumi i- ‘my’ and o- ‘your (sg)’ also do not have consonant onsets. This sets them apart from the other pronominal prefixes, and it is likely that they may once have also had a syllable-initial glottal stop. 68 While glottalisation is often associated with H tone, Kingston (2005) argues that the reason why some Athabaskan languages developed L tone where others developed H tone under the influence of a word-final glottal stop, is that glottalisation of the preceding vowel led to either tense voice and eventually H tone in some languages, or creaky voice and eventually L tone in others.

116 prefixes, 69 suggesting that we need to know more about their historical origin if we are to understand the status of tone on these prefixes.

Given that in many cases it is the noun root which assigns tone to the prefix, Coupe (2003) also proposes the existence of two systems: a system of ‘word tone’ for such words consisting of a nominal prefix and root coexisting with a system of ‘syllable tone’ for all syllables lexically specified for tone. The next section considers the likelihood of such a synchronic analysis in Sumi.

6.2 Tone melodies

First of all, it is clear from examples presented in Chapter 5 that Sumi has three tones that contrast paradigmatically on the syllable. There is little evidence for Sumi as having ‘word tone’, i.e. the TBU is the word, which is the current analysis for a number of Bodish languages of Hildebrandt’s ‘Buffer Zone’ (as discussed in 5.7). Table 28 illustrates how disyllabic words in Sumi can take any one of the nine possible permutations of L, M and H tone, mostly as a result of adding nominal prefixes that are specified for their own tone.

Table 28: Nine possible tone permutations on disyllabic words T2 T1 L M H L [ì.pù] ‘my father’ [e.nò] ‘and’ [ì.pú] ‘my son’ [pa.pù] [pa.pu] [pa.pú] M ‘his / her father’ ‘his / her dipper’ ‘his / her son’ [lí.pu] H [lí.pù] ‘her father’ [lí.pú] ‘her son’ ‘her dipper’

69 Coupe’s (2003) comment refers specifically to prefixes containing phonologically reduced vowels, but it equally applies to the Sumi possessive prefixes i- ‘my’, o- ‘your’ and the deverbalising prefix kV- which are not lexically specified for tone. Matisoff (2001: 98) also makes a note that while he has treated the unstressed prefix ɔ- in Lahu as having a low-falling tone, it should actually be considered toneless.

117 The fact that all three tones may occur anywhere within a word suggests that Sumi is closer to a ‘non-restricted’ tone language, to use Voorhoeve’s (1973) term, i.e. tones are assigned to individual syllables regardless of their position in a word or morpheme.

However, the free distribution of tones at the word level belies any constraints on tone distribution at the morpheme level. With regards to morphemes in Sumi, the analysis presented in 6.1 proposes that noun roots in Sumi might be specified for one or two tones. A closer examination of Sumi verb and noun roots in the following section will reveal that only a certain number of tone patterns or ‘melodies’ are found on such morphemes. Furthermore, it will be seen that H tone in particular is slightly more restricted in his distribution than L and M tone.

6.2.1 Verb roots

Verb roots in Sumi are minimally monosyllabic. Monosyllabic verbs usually carry L or M tone:

(104) L lho /l ɦò/ [l ɦò] ‘be tired’

(105) L sü /ʃì/ [sì] ‘hurt’

(106) M lho /l ɦo/ [l ɦo] ‘cook’

(107) M sü /ʃi/ [si] ‘swim’ 70

Only one verb root has been found to be specified for H tone: sü / ʃí/ [sí] ‘put’. 71

Sesquisyllabic verbs are associated with the following tone melodies:

(108) LL mla /m̩.là/ [m̩.là] ‘work’

70 This verb only occurs with the noun complement azü ‘water’ to give azüsü ‘swim’ (lit. ‘water-swim’). 71 In this sample of 141 monosyllabic verb roots, it was found that 69 carried L tone, 71 carried M and 1 carried H tone.

118 (109) LM mla /m̩.la/ [m̩.la] ‘foam’

(110) LH mlo /m̩.ló/ [m̩.ló] ‘mourn’

(111) MM piti /pi.ti/ [pi.ti] ‘burn’ (112) MH mla /m ̩.lá/ [m ̩.lá] ‘be easy’

(113) MH piti /pi.tí/ [pi.tí] ‘bear offspring’

Unlike monosyllabic verbs, sesquisyllabic verbs can take H tone on the main syllable, but only L or M tone on the minor syllable, as mentioned earlier in 4.2. Consequently, no sesquisyllabic verb root has the melody HH. One addition observation is that where one tone is higher than the other, the higher tone always occurs on the main syllable – no example of a sesquisyllabic verb root specified for the tone melody ML has been found.

At this point, all verb roots presented in this section have been monomorphemic. 72 In contrast, bimorphemic verbs are minimally disyllabic in Sumi, usually consisting of a directional prefix like i- in ithu ‘wake up’ or a prepound like he- ‘hit’ in heqhi ‘kill’. 73 The following tone melodies have been observed (hyphens between tones indicate morpheme boundaries):

(114) L-L saphe /sà-phè/ [sà.p hè] ‘lead’ (115) L-M heqhi /hè-qhi/ [hè.q hi] ‘kill’ (116) M-L botha /bo-thà/ [bo.t hà] ‘enclose’ (117) M-M anga /a-ŋa/ [a. ŋa] ‘be fed up’

72 Matisoff (2003) suggests a prefixal origin for many of the minor syllables found in sesquisyllabic structures in Tibeto-Burman languages, but synchronically these sesquisyllabic roots in Sumi are longer morphologically analysable. 73 One test to show a verb is bimorphemic is to see how its deverbal nominal is formed. In monomorphemic sesquisyllabic verbs like püghü /pì.ɣi/ [pìɣi] ‘(to) plan’, the deverbal prefix kV- is added before the entire sesquisyllabic verb root to obtain the form aküpüghü /à-kì-pì.ɣi/ [àkìpìɣi] ‘planning, programme’. If a verb is bimorphemic, the deverbal prefix kV- will come right before the second morpheme, as in heqhi /hèq hi/ /hè-qhi/ ‘kill’ and hekiqhi / hè-kì-qhi/ [hèkìq hi] ‘killing; murder’ (n.) (*akiheqhi ). Deverbal formation is dealt with in greater depth in 7.2.3.

119 Given that monosyllabic verb roots, with only one exception, carry L or M tone, it seems reasonable to assume that compound verbs formed from two monosyllabic verb roots, will not bear H tone either – Sumi does not display much tone sandhi in nominal compounding (to be demonstrated in 7.1) and this appears to be the case for verb compounding as well. Admittedly, more compound verbs need to be identified and analysed to test this hypothesis. In any case, the aim of this section is simply to identify tone patterns in monomorphemic verb roots. 74

6.2.2 Noun roots

While Sumi nouns are minimally disyllabic (as noted in 4.3), noun roots are minimally monosyllabic. In citation form, monosyllabic noun roots necessarily take the non- relational prefix a-. In general, monosyllabic noun roots may take any one of the three tones:

(118) (L)L 75 apu /à-pù/ [à.pù] ‘NRL-father’ (119) (M)M apu /a-pu/ [a.pu] ‘NRL-water scoop / dipper’ (120) (L)H apu /à-pú/ [à.pú] ‘NRL-son’

In addition, the MH melody has been found with two nouns: agi [agí] ‘face’ and anga [a ŋá] ‘baby’. The HL melody occurs on only one example: afo [áfò] ‘older sister’. At present, it would appear that these noun roots are lexically specified for two tones.

Sesquisyllabic noun roots display the following melodies 76 :

74 Verbs longer than two syllables have also been found, but there are too few examples to observe any general patterns. A few are listed here for the reader’s reference: LLL sapüsa [sàpìsà] ‘mistreat’ (sequence of major syllable and sesquisyllable) LLM kimiye [kìmìjè] ‘love’ (sequence of two minor syllables and one major syllable) LML ithulu [ìt hulù] ‘see’ 75 The tone on the prefix a- is given in parentheses. 76 Like the sesquisyllabic verb roots, the sesquisyllable noun roots presented here would appear to be synchronically monomorphemic, derived from historical bilabial nasal and velar stop prefixes (Matisoff, 2003), as opposed to morphologically transparent nominals like akishe /à-kì.ʃé/ [àk. ʃé] ‘praise’ (n.), derived from the verb root she / ʃe/ [ ʃe] ‘praise’ with the addition of the phonologically toneless deverbal prefix kV- (see 7.2.3) and the a- prefix (see 6.1.1).

120 (121) (L)LL akishe /a-kì. ʃè/ [àk. ʃè] ~ [à.kì. ʃè] ‘NRL-porch’

(122) (L)LM amiti /à-mì.ti/ [àm.ti] ~ [à.mì.ti] ‘NRL-salt’ (123) (L)LH amiti /à-mì.tí/ [àm.tí] ~ [à.mì.tí] ‘NRL-saliva’ (124) (L)LH akuhu /à-kù.hú/ [à.kù.hú] ‘NRL-plant root’ (125) (M)MM akishe /a-ki. ʃe/ [ak. ʃe] ~ [a.ki. ʃe] ‘NRL-forehead’

(126) (M)MH akuhu /a-ku.hú/ [ak.hú] ~ [a.ku.hú] ‘NRL-bed bug’

One interesting observation here is that the melody ML, which was absent in sesquisyllabic verbs, is also absent in sesquisyllabic noun roots.

The majority of noun roots in Sumi are monosyllabic or sesquisyllabic and it is often difficult to determine if a disyllabic noun stem is a monomorphemic noun root or a bimorphemic compound. In the few disyllabic noun stems that appear to be morphologically unanalysable, the following melodies have been observed:

(127) (L)LL acheku /à-ʧè.kù/ [à. ʧè.kù] ‘dream’

(128) (M)MM akhosa /a-kho. ʃa/ [a.k ho.sa] ‘cat’

(129) (M)MH alhache /a-lɦa. ʧé/ [a.l ɦa. ʧé] ‘ant’

Again, these seem to be consistent with tone patterns found on sesquisyllabic noun roots and verb roots, with H tone found only on the final syllable.

Bimorphemic noun stems (i.e. compound nouns), like bimorphemic verbs, display a lot more variety in the number of permitted melodies, with examples such as the following (hyphens indicate morpheme boundaries):

(130) (L)LL akimi /à-kì-mì/ [à.kì.mì] ‘husband’ (contains -mi ‘person’) 77

77 Some speakers analyse this as a compound of aki /à-kì/ ‘house’ and mi /mì/ ‘person’.

121 (131) (L)LM awukhu /à-vù-khu/ [à.wù.k hu] ‘egg’ (awu ‘chicken’ + -khu ‘egg’) (132) (M)ML aloshi /a-lo-ʃì/ [a.lo. ʃì] ‘liver’

(contains -shi ‘flesh; meat’) (133) (M)HM anathi /à-ná-thi / [à.ná.t hi] ‘banana sp.’ (contains -thi ‘fruit’)

This is not an exhaustive list and not all morphemes in such words have been analysed at present. In theory, all nine permutations of L, M and H tones are possible in disyllabic compound nouns. One important observation is that in these examples, H tone can be the first element in a tone melody, but it always occurs at the right edge of a morpheme boundary, as in anathi /à-ná-thi/‘banana sp.’

The noun axone /à-xónè/ [àxón jè] ‘fermented soya beans’ is the only example of a noun root with the melody (L)HL. Although the noun stem does not seem to be morphologically analysable from a synchronic point of view, it might be a historical compound containing the noun *axo , possibly cognate with Khezha [èrh ɵ] ‘soya bean’ and Lotha [ ōrhò] ‘local beans’ (a preliminary comparative study of segmental phonology presented in 4.4 showed a correspondence between /x/ in Sumi and /r/ or /rh/ in other Naga languages). It is therefore possible that H tone here falls on the right edge of a historical morpheme boundary.

The very rare melody (M)HH has been found on one disyllabic noun stem amimi [amímí] ‘butterfly’, which appears to contain a reduplicated noun root (?/a-mí-mí/ 78 ) – reduplicated morphemes in Sumi often take the same tone as the original morpheme, e.g. lakhi /lak hí/ [lak hí] ‘one’ and lakhikhi /lak hí-khí/ [lak hík hí] ‘one by one’ (see 7.4.1 for more examples of reduplication).

78 The question mark here denotes uncertainty in the analysis of the morphological boundary between the first and second /mí/.

122 This survey reveals one important constraint on the distribution of tones found on monomorphemic verb and noun roots in Sumi: in bitonal melodies (and with the single exception of afo ‘older sister’), if one tone is higher than the other, it always occurs at the right-edge of the morpheme. The melodies HL, HM and HH are not found on monomorphemic verb and noun roots, although this may be attributed to the general lack of disyllabic verb and noun roots, as well as the constraint that minor syllables in sesquisyllables may only bear L or M tone. However, this phonotactic constraint does not account for the absence of the melody ML, suggesting there is a restriction to the number of tone melodies assigned to noun and verb roots.

Returning to Coupe’s (2003) proposal for both a ‘word tone’ and ‘syllable tone’ system, there is little evidence to suggest a ‘word tone’ system for Sumi. However, restrictions to the number of tone melodies at the morpheme level (for both verbs and nouns) suggest the possibility of both a ‘morpheme tone’ and ‘syllable tone’ system. However, much more work needs to be done, particularly on the diachronic origin of nominal prefixes and minor syllables in Sumi, before any conclusions can be drawn.

One other observation from this survey of tone melodies is the constrained distribution of H tone, as opposed to L and M tone. Apart from being prohibited on minor syllables (as mentioned in 4.2 and 5.2), H tone does not occur on monosyllabic verb roots: with the sole exception of the sü /sí/ ‘put’. A final observation is that only one H tone ‘peak’ is allowed at the morpheme level in Sumi. The next section therefore considers H tone as the ‘marked’ tone in Sumi, looking in particular at its restricted syntagmatic distribution.

6.3 Marked nature of H tone

In the autosegmental analysis of tone spreading presented in 6.1, it was noted that H tone, unlike L and M tone, does not spread leftwards onto a TBU that is lexically unspecified for tone. The analysis positing that H tone behaves differently from the other two tones is supported by a number of other observations that suggest H tone is the ‘marked’ tone in Sumi.

123

In terms of text frequency, H is clearly marked: for instance, out of a sample of 141 monosyllabic verb roots, it was found that 69 carried L tone and 71 carried M, reflecting a fairly equal distribution, while only one verb root sü /sí/ ‘put’ was specified for H tone. Another observation, noted in 4.3, was that trisyllabic words in Sumi are often reanalysed as a sequence of a major syllable followed by a sesquisyllable, i.e. the second syllable is phonetically reduced, as in:

(134) apu /à-pù/ ‘father’ + khu /k hu/ ‘plate’ → [àp.k hu] ‘father’s plate’

However, if the second syllable bears H tone, it is never reduced, as in:

(135) kaku /kà.kú/ ‘book’ + phi /p hi/ ‘read’ → kakuphi [kà.kú.p hi] *[kàk.p hi] ‘study’(v.)

In terms of syntagmatic distribution, there is a general tendency for H to avoid word- initial position. The few examples of lexical items bearing H tone on their first syllable are the verb sü [sí] ‘put’ and the noun afo [áfò] ‘older sister’, along with its possessed forms: ifo [ífò] ‘my older sister’; ofo [ófò] ‘your (sg) older sister’ etc. (see Table 27 for full paradigm). In addition to these two items, all nouns marked with the third person feminine prefix li- [lí] ‘her’ have word-initial H tone. The pronominal prefix li- ‘her’ itself is also marked vis-à-vis the prefix pa- [pa] ‘his / her’ which does not specify gender. In fact, in daily speech and written works such as the Bible, li- almost never appears. 79 Other examples of words with initial H tone include the interrogative pronouns khuu /k húù/ ‘who’ which is perceived as having a falling pitch, and khijehi /k híʒehi/ ‘how much’. 80 Finally, the word vilo /vílò/ ‘to’ is a postposition that could equally be treated as an enclitic case marker.

79 Coupe ( p.c. ) suggests that a third person singular feminine pronoun is a recent development in Sumi and other Naga languages, under influence from English which have third person singular pronouns that specify male and female gender. The feminine pronoun in Sumi appears to be derived from a suffix -li found in women’s names like Inotoli [ìnotoli] and Nikhüli [nìk hili] where interestingly, the suffix itself does not carry H tone. 80 An interrogative utterance is arguably more marked vis-à-vis a declarative one.

124

Sequences of HH tones are possible but rare in Sumi. One example is lipu [lípú] ‘her son’ and as mentioned earlier, amimi [amímí] ‘butterfly’. Only a single example of a sequence of HH tones within a morpheme has been found: murasü /mùrásí/ ‘snow’, but this is a rare case that appears to be a recent borrowing 81 and can be excluded from generalisations.

However, it is unlikely that H tone is a pitch accent associated with word-level prominence. As mentioned in 1.4.1, Remijsen (2001) rejects the possibility of a language having both lexical tone and lexical pitch accent 82 , and H tone in Sumi could be analysed as simply being constrained in the location where it contrasts with the other two tones. Such an analysis may help explain why H tone does not spread onto toneless syllables and hence why a default L tone rule is necessary in a synchronic description of tone in Sumi within an autosegmental framework.

A final noteworthy observation about H tone concerns two loanwords borrowed into Sumi: alu [àlú] ‘potato’ from Hindi ālū83 and kaku [kàkú] ‘book’ from Assamese kakot ‘paper’ 84 , where the location of H tone in the borrowed words corresponds to the last heavy syllable – containing a long vowel or a short vowel with a consonant coda – of the original word. This is precisely where one would expect to find an accent in Hindi words (Dyrud, 2001), and it would be interesting to see if H tone in Sumi corresponds to an accent in the Assamese loanword as well. 85 Furthermore, the same word kakot ‘paper’ appears to have been borrowed into Lotha as [kákò] ‘book’, with a low tone target – described by Acharya (1983) as a falling tone – on the second syllable. It was seen earlier in 5.6 that H tone in Sumi numerals often corresponds to a falling tone in their Lotha

81 The fact that the word contains the phoneme /r/ and does not take the non-relational prefix a- suggest that it is a recent borrowing. 82 This contradicts Johnson’s (2005) claim for such a hybrid system in Cherokee. 83 The macron in these transliterations marks a long vowel. 84 Coupe (2007) proposes Hindi kāgaz as the source of the Mongsen Ao word for ‘book’: kák ət, although the final vowel of Sumi kaku points to Assamese  kakot or  kagoz ‘paper’ as more likely sources. 85 An acoustic study looking at the relative amplitude of the three tones is planned to further investigate the possibility of H tone as a prominence marker.

125 cognates – it would be interesting to see if the falling tone is the marked tone in Lotha and if so, how this affects tone assignment. In Mongsen Ao, which is more closely related to Lotha, Coupe (2007) notes that H tone is the marked tone. However, in contrast to Sumi, sequences of H tone within a morpheme are allowed in Mongsen Ao (as noted in 5.6) and H tone can spread leftwards onto a toneless prefix (as noted in 6.1.5). From a more general typological point of view, a marked H tone in Sumi is not typological unusual, given that in most three-tone systems comprising L, M and H tone, the marked tone is typically one of the extremes, L or H (Maddieson, 1978: 341).

6.4 Typological comparison of tone rules and representation

Taking into consideration the tone typology comparing African and East Asian tone languages offered by Hyman (2001b) and presented in 1.4.4, a look at some of the tone rules and representationS of tone proposed for Sumi will highlight some of the difficulties in classifying Sumi as one of these two tone language ‘types’.

On the one hand, this analysis of Sumi posits floating tones, as well as a default L tone rule. Both of these are typically associated with African, not East Asian languages. On the other hand, downstep (triggered by a floating L tone) and tone polarity, two common tonal phenomena in African tone languages, have not been found in Sumi.

Tone spreading in Sumi is also difficult to classify, given that tone spreading is rare in East Asian languages. However, the fact that tones in Sumi spread from right to left, and only onto empty TBUs, does not sit well with a typological profile of African tone languages, where tones can spread onto TBUs already bearing a tone (resulting in a phonetic contour). This usually occurs from left to right, although right to left spreading in African languages might be more common than previously thought (Hyman, 2007b).

Caution must be taken here in making such comparisons, as this analysis of Sumi relies on an abstract level of tone representation to explain such phenomena as tone spreading onto nominal prefixes. These findings need to be viewed in light of other typological

126 parameters, and a full typological comparison of Sumi with African and East Asian tone languages that incorporates the above findings is provided in the final chapter of this thesis. Before that, an account of morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi will be presented in the next chapter.

127 7 Morphotonemics

This chapter provides a preliminary account of morphophonemic tone variation in Sumi, with a focus on nominal compounding, as well as deverbal and agentive formation. Where possible, these patterns of tone sandhi are compared with related languages, with the hope of adding to our understanding of tonal patterns in the Naga languages. Given the paucity of studies on tone sandhi in other Naga languages only two languages are used for comparative purposes here: Khezha and Mongsen Ao. Both are similar to Sumi in that they have three contrastive level tones: Low (L), represented by a grave accent (è); High (H), represented by an acute accent (é); and Mid (M), which is orthographically unmarked. The Khezha data used here comes from Kapfo (1989) and the Mongsen Ao data comes from Coupe (2007).

Chen (2000) notes that the term ‘tone sandhi’ has been used by different authors to refer to a variety of phenomena, including allotonic variation, as well as tone variation caused by intonation and morphological / syntactic processes. For the purposes of this thesis, the term is used in reference to a change in tone (usually on a morpheme) when occurring next to another tone or morpheme. As such, tone sandhi is a phonological or morphophonological process. 86 Ideally, tone sandhi should involve the replacement of one phonemic tone category with another, e.g. /L/ is replaced by /H/ and not simply realised with high pitch. However, it is not always clear how the underlying phonological tones on certain morphemes ought to be represented and transcriptions of output (surface) tones, e.g. [à] to [á], are often cited as examples of tone sandhi, with the new phonetic output often reflecting the underlying phonemic change. Given that the surface tones have been cited in the Khezha and Mongsen Ao data that will be used for a cross- linguistic comparison, surface tone transcriptions of morphemes that undergo tone sandhi will also be provided for the Sumi data. However, the reader must bear in mind that

86 In Chinese linguistics, the term biandiao ‘tone sandhi’ is usually reserved for phonologically conditioned tone changes, while morphologically conditioned tone is called bianyin ‘tone change’ (Chen, 2000: 31). In this thesis, and in line with what other researchers such as Coupe (2007: 67) have termed ‘tone sandhi’, both phonological and morphological processes will be grouped under the umbrella term ‘tone sandhi’.

128 changes to the phonetic output are meant to be a reflection of a phonological or morphophonological change in tone. 87

7.1 Nominal compounds

This section looks at the interaction between morpheme concatenation in nominal compounding and tone in Sumi, comparing it with Khezha and Mongsen Ao.

7.1.1 Formation of nominal compounds

As mentioned in 6.1.1, nominal compounds and genitival constructions in Sumi are formed by the juxtaposition of two nominals. The modifier noun comes before the head noun, which loses its a- prefix. In many cases, the orthography usually represents them as single words, as in (136) and (137). Genitival constructions are generally written as two words, as in (138) and (139).

(136) awo ‘pig’ + ashi ‘meat’ → awoshi ‘pork’ (137) akha ‘fish’ + abo ‘enclosure’ → akhabo ‘fish pond’ (138) apu ‘father’ + akhu ‘plate’ → apu khu ‘father’s plate’ (139) Kapo ‘(name)’+ apu ‘dipper’ → Kapo pu ‘Kapo’s dipper’

The transparent nature of the morphology often makes it difficult to know if a compound is lexical or formed by productive means. Even in compounds treated as ‘lexical’ by the researcher, speakers are still able to analyse the constituent noun root morphemes (see 7.1.3). For the purposes of this paper, only nominal compounds whose tonal output cannot be predicted are definitively treated as lexical.

7.1.2 Nominal compounds with no tone sandhi

Most nominal compounds and genitive constructions in Sumi encountered thus far do not display tone sandhi: the tones on both the modifier and head noun root remain the same

87 That the changes are phonological can be somewhat confirmed by my own observation that Sumi speakers are able to group a new output tone with a different tonal group from the original one when using the tone comparison chart (a description of this chart was given in 2.5).

129 even after compounding. (140) – (147) provide a few examples, with the output on the phonologically toneless prefix a- given in parentheses. Morpheme boundaries are given in the phonetic transcriptions to aid the reader, as they have been given in the Khezha and Mongsen Ao data by their respectively authors.

(140) awo ‘pig’ + ashi ‘meat’ → awoshi ‘pork’ /à-vò/ /à-ʃì/ /à-vò-ʃì/ (L)L + L → (L)LL

(141) amishi ‘cow’ + aki ‘house’ → amishiki ‘cow shed’ /à-mì ʃì/ /à-kì/ /à-mì ʃì-kì/ (L)LL + L → (L)LLL

(142) akha ‘fish’ + abo ‘container’ → akhabo ‘fish pond’ /à-khà/ /a-bo/ /à-khà-bo/ (L)L + M → (L)LM

(143) apu ‘father’ + akhu ‘plate’ → apu khu ‘father’s plate’ /à-pù/ /a-khu/ /à-pù-khu/ (L)L + M → (L)LM

(144) hekiqhi ‘murder’ + aki ‘house → hekiqhiki ‘abattoir’ /hè-kì-qhi/ /à-kì/ /hè-kì-qhi-kì/ LLM + L → LLML

(145) pukhothi ‘apple’ + azü ‘water’ → pukhothizü ‘apple juice’ /puk hot hi/ /à-ʒì/ /puk hot hi-ʒì/ MMM + L → MMML

(146) akhosa ‘cat’ + akini ‘ear’ → akhosa kìní ‘cat’s ear’ /a-khoʃa/ /à-kìní/ /a-khoʃa-kìní/ (M)MM + LH → (M)MMLH

(147) Kapo ‘(name)’+ apu ‘dipper’ → Kapo pu ‘Kapo’s dipper’ /kapo/ /a-pu/ /kapo-pu/ MM + M → MMM

7.1.3 Nominal compounds with tone sandhi

In contrast, only a small number of compounds display tone sandhi. In these few cases, L tone on the head noun becomes H tone after the modifier noun root -kichhi ‘breast’:

(148) akichhi ‘breast’ + azü ‘water’ → akichhizü ‘milk’ [à-kì ʧhi] [à-ʒì] [à-kì ʧhi-ʒí] (L)LM + L → (L)LMH

(149) akichhi ‘breast’ + aqo ‘pit’ → akichhiqo ‘armpit’ [à-kì ʧhi] [à-qò] [à-kì ʧhi-qó] (L)LM + L → (L)LMH

130 Given the infrequency of examples like (148) and (149), it seems unlikely that this type of tone sandhi is part of a productive process of nominal compounding. These final forms are most likely lexicalised compounds, though given the morphological transparency of the language, speakers will still consistently report that -zü in akichhizü ‘milk’ means ‘water’.

7.1.4 Nominal compounds in other Naga languages

At first glance, nominal compounding in Sumi therefore looks quite unexceptional: there are only a few examples of tone sandhi and these are restricted to a few lexical compounds. However, a comparison with Khezha and Mongsen Ao actually shows that this very lack of tone sandhi marks Sumi as unusual for the area.

Kapfo (1989) gives numerous examples of tone sandhi in Khezha noun constructions, particularly in compound nouns and possessive constructions. The type of tone sandhi highlighted in 7.1.3, whereby the L tone on the second noun becomes H, is much more prevalent in Khezha nominal compounding.

When the head noun root of a compound is monosyllabic and carries L tone like -kè ‘house’ and -jə ‘water’, it changes to H tone when the modifier noun is monosyllabic and carries L or M tone, as in (150) – (152). Only when the modifier noun root carries H tone does the original L tone remain on the head noun, as in (153).

(150) è-tsè ‘cattle’ + è-kè ‘house’ → tsè-ké ‘cow shed’ (151) è-tsh ə ‘wood’ + è-jə ‘water’ → tsh ə-jə ‘tree sap’ (152) è-tso ‘stone’ + è-kè ‘house’ → tso-ké ‘stone house’ (153) è-tsh ə ‘meat’ + è-jə ‘water’ → tsh ə -jə ‘tree sap’

An examination of the noun root -cə ‘baby animal’ specified for L, also shows that it becomes -cə with H tone when the modifier noun root is monosyllabic and carries L or M

131 tone, as in (154) and (155). However, it remains -cə when the modifier noun root carries H tone 88 , as in (156).

(154) è-wø ‘crab’ + è-cə ‘baby animal’ 89 → wø-cə ‘baby crab’ (155) è-the ‘deer’ + è-cə ‘baby animal’ → the-cə ‘baby deer’ (156) è-žú ‘rat’ + è-cə ‘baby animal’ → žú-cə ‘baby / small rat’

These patterns of tone sandhi in Khezha are summarised here, with the tone on the nominal prefix e- given in parentheses:

(L)L + L → LH (L)M + L → MH (L)H + L → HL

Coupe (2007) reports that tone sandhi in Mongsen Ao nominal compounds is both extensive and complex (2007: ). He offers a few examples, such as -sá ʔ ‘meat’, where the H tone on the head noun root becomes L (sometimes M) tone:

(157) á-úk ‘NRL-pig’ + á-sá ʔ ‘NRL-meat’ → áwk-sà ʔ ‘pork’

(158) a-hən ‘NRL-fowl’ + á-sá ʔ ‘NRL-meat’ → ah ən-sà ʔ ‘chicken’ alternative → ah ən-sa ʔ ‘chicken’

(159) màs əʔ ‘cow’ + á-sá ʔ ‘NRL-meat’ → màs ə-sà ʔ ‘beef’

These patterns of tone sandhi in Mongsen Ao noun roots are summarised here, with the tone on the toneless prefix a- given in parentheses:

88 Disyllabic modifier noun roots do not cause any tone sandhi: e.g. kø ̀dò ‘kind of bird’ + è-cə̀ ‘baby animal’ → kø ̀dò-cə̀ ‘baby of kødo’ lepu ‘jar’ + è-cə̀ ‘baby animal’ → lepu-cə̀ ‘small jar’ 89 This is arguably a diminutive suffix since it can be used with inanimate nouns including houses and fishing nets. However, Kapfo still treats this as an example of compounding, presumably because è-cə̀ is able to stand as an independent word meaning ‘baby animal’ and displays predictable tone sandhi depending on the phonological environment.

132 (H)H + H → HL (M)M + H → (M)ML or (M)MM LL + H → LLL

The lack of tone sandhi in most Sumi nominal compounds is therefore quite striking from a cross-Naga perspective. The presence of such tone sandhi at the word level helps provide a criterion for defining the limits of a word in these languages. This criterion, in contrast, does not apply to Sumi since most noun root morphemes maintain their original tonal specification after compounding. More importantly, this adds to support to the assertion that the domain in which tone operates in Sumi is the morpheme, not the word.

This would place Sumi closer to languages like Mandarin (particularly Southern varieties) and Burmese, where morpheme concatenation does not usually result in tone sandhi. In contrast, one Chinese language where extensive tone sandhi had originally been reported, Shanghainese, is now analysed as having word tone – the result of a shift from a tone system to an accent system (Chen, 2000). One implication of this is that Sumi is not as far along the way to developing a word-level accent as one might speculate to be the case for the other two Naga languages.

The presence of tone sandhi between certain tones in isolation and in compounds sometimes mirrors historical tone categories. Chen (2000) gives examples of this from the Jieyang and Pinghua dialects of Chinese. However, at present no tonal categories have been reconstructed for the Naga languages against which these sandhi tones can be compared – with the possible exception of Weidert’s (1987) work, mentioned in 1.3. In general, more data need to be collected, both from Sumi and other Naga languages if we are to construct a full ‘typology of tone sandhi’ for languages in the area.

133 7.2 Deverbal nominals

Another important morphological process in Sumi involves the derivation of deverbal nominals from verb roots by prefixing a nominalising prefix kV- ‘NZP’ (where V is a high vowel) to a noun root. In a large number of cases, there is accompanying tone sandhi. In addition, it will be seen that a similar process of verb nominalisation via prefixation is common in other related Naga languages, making it possible to make cross- linguistic comparisons of tone sandhi.

7.2.1 Verbal morphology

As mentioned in 4.3, most verb roots in Sumi are minimally monosyllabic: zü / ʒì/ [zì]

‘sleep’ 90 ; pi /pì/ [pì] ‘speak’; or sesquisyllabic: mla /m ̩.là/ [ mlà] ‘work’, küla /kì.là/ [kìlà]

‘marry’. In addition to these, they can be composed of a sequence of two minor syllables followed by a major syllable: kimiye /kì.mì.jè/ [kìmìje] ‘love’. Such verbs are often monomorphemic (at least from a synchronic point of view), unlike disyllabic verbs which are bimorphemic and usually consist of a prefix, often a directional prefix, followed by a verb root, e.g. ithu /ì-thù/ [ìt hù] ‘wake up’, botha /bo-thà/ [bot hà] ‘encircle’, saphe /sà-phè/ [sàp hè] ‘lead’.

A few words first need to be said about inflectional verb morphology in Sumi. Tense and aspect are usually marked by the addition of suffixes, as in (160) – (162); or with the auxiliary verbs ani /à-ni/ and cheni / ʧè-ni/ derived from verb roots originally meaning

‘exist’ and ‘come’ respectively, as in (163) and (164). Most glosses given here are provisional, reflecting the fact that more research still needs to be done on Sumi verbal morphology. 91

90 Verb roots in Sumi, like Mongsen Ao, also carry the meaning of past and verb roots should rightfully be glossed to reflect this. However, since the focus of this paper is on the lexical aspects of tone variation, this additional gloss will be omitted for ease of reading. 91 The glosses used here are: EXIST – existential verb; FUT – future tense; PRES – present tense; PRF – perfect aspect; EF – event focus; TM – TAM marker (function to be identified).

134 (160) Paye züve. pa-ye zì-ve 3sg-EF sleep-TM ‘He slept.’

(161) Paye züva . pa-ye zì-ve-a 3sg-EF sleep-TM-PRF ‘He has slept.’

(162) Paye züni. pa-ye zì-ní 3sg-EF sleep-FUT ‘He will sleep.’

(163) Paye zü ani. pa-ye zì à-ni 3sg-EF sleep EXIST-PRES ‘He is sleeping.’

(164) Paye zü cheni. pa-ye zì ʧè-ni 3sg-EF sleep come-PRES ‘He sleeps. / He is sleeping.’

Tone sandhi has thus far not been observed in these verb inflections, unlike tonal alternations that have been observed in Mongsen Ao (Coupe, 2007) and Chungli Ao (Bruhn, 2009). Further research may bring to light more examples of this phenomenon in Sumi. Understandably, this section will focus instead on tone sandhi in derivational verbal morphology.

7.2.2 Formation of nominals by a- prefixation

A small number of nouns have been derived historically by simply prefixing a- (discussed in 6.1.1) to a verb root, sometimes with no change to tone, as in (165) and sometimes with an unpredictable pattern of tone change, as in (166) – (168):

135 (165) zü [zì] ‘sleep’ → azü [à.zì] ‘sleep (n.)’ (166) ba [ba] ‘defecate’ → aba [à.bà] ‘defecation’ (167) mzü [m̩.zi] ‘be hungry’ → amzü [àm.zi] ‘sleep (n.)’

(168) mülhü [m̩.l ɦí] ‘blow’ → amülhü [am.l ɦi] ‘wind’

These forms are probably nothing more than vestigial relics of an older morphological process. However, Kapfo (2005) provides a list of nominals derived from prefixing e- (cognate with Sumi a-) suggesting that it may still be productive in Khezha. Examples from Rawang (LaPolla, 2008), as well as Lahu and Jingpho, presented in Matisoff’s (2003) reconstruction of this prefix as *ʔa-, shows that is still a productive morphological process in other Tibeto-Burman languages. Further comparative work of such languages might later be able to place the examples of tone sandhi found here within a larger historical framework.

7.2.3 Formation of deverbal nominals

Deverbal nominals are formed by adding the nominalising prefix kV- (glossed ‘NZP’) to a verb root, where V is a vowel that displays harmony along the front-back dimension with the vowel of the verb root when it does appear in careful speech, as in other sesquisyllabic structures. If the verb is monosyllabic, the non-relational a- prefix is also added to the deverbal form (phonetic transcriptions of these words will be presented later in Table 29):

(169) pi ‘speak’ → akipi ‘speaking’ (170) he ‘hit’ → akihe ‘hitting’ (171) zü ‘sleep’ → aküzü ‘sleeping’ (172) ha ‘hunt’ → aküha ‘hunting’ (173) chu ‘eat’ → akuchu ‘eating’ (174) po ‘run’ → akupo ‘running’

136 In sesquisyllabic verb roots, the non-relational prefix a- is also usually added, as in (175) and (176). However, in some deverbal forms a- is optional, as in (177) and (178), presumably because the sequence of two minor syllables followed by a major syllable fulfils the minimal requirement of disyllabicity in Sumi (as discussed in 4.3).

(175) püghü ‘plan’ → aküpüghü ‘plan, schedule’ (176) mlo ‘mourn’ → akumlo ‘mourning’ (177) kügha ‘catch; arrest’ → akükügha ~ kükügha ‘catching; arresting’ (178) küha ‘lack’ → aküküha ~ küküha ‘lacking’

In disyllabic verbs which typically comprise more than one morpheme, the prefix kV- is added immediately before the verb root located to the right, with no a- prefixation, as seen in (179) – (182).

(179) heqhi ‘kill’ 92 → hekiqhi ‘killing; murder’ (180) katha ‘cross’ → kakütha ‘crossing’ (181) huthu ‘begin’ → hukuthu ‘beginning, origin’ (182) ithulu ‘see’ → ithukulu ‘seeing’

Finally, Sumi also has compound verbs that specify a noun complement, often represented orthographically as a single word. They are different from other compound verbs since they are minimally trisyllabic: the compounded noun root takes the non- relational a- prefix, and is morphologically transparent. This group of verbs include: alephe [àlèp hè] ‘sing’ (analysed as /à-lè-phè/ ‘NRL-song-sing’) and azügha [àzìɣà]

‘swim’ (/à-ʒì-ɣà/ ‘NRL-water-swim’) 93 . In such verbs, the nominalising prefix kV- is added right before the verb root. Therefore, the deverbal forms of alephe and azügha are

92 This verb is almost certainly a compound containing the verb root he ‘hit’ and a second verb root -qhi that has yet to be analysed. 93 This is a similar to Mandarin 唱歌 chàng-gē ‘sing’ (lit. ‘sing-song’) and 游水 yŏu-shu ĭ ‘swim’ (lit. ‘swim-water’) and Burmese ေရ ကး ye kú ‘swim’ (lit. ‘water-swim’), သီ ချငး် ဆိ tachín-so ‘sing’ (lit ‘song-sing’).

137 alekiphe (‘NRL-song-NZP-sing’) ‘singing’ and azükügha (‘NRL-water-NZP-swim’) ‘swimming’.

7.2.4 Tone sandhi in deverbal nominals

The formation of such deverbal forms is often accompanied by tone sandhi, particularly in monosyllabic verbs. Table 29 gives examples of regularly occurring tone sandhi in the derivation of deverbal forms from monosyllabic verbs.

Note that the verb roots in this table have been classified according to their original tone and the tone melody of their corresponding deverbal form. The phonetic transcriptions are also based on careful speech, with the vowel of the prefix kV- inserted.

Table 29: Monosyllabic verb roots and deverbal forms Verb Tone Verb Gloss Tone Deverbal Gloss class 1 L che ʧʧʧè walk LLL akiche àkì ʧʧʧè walking L chu ʧʧʧù eat LLL akuchu àkù ʧʧʧù eating L lho lɦɦɦò be tired LLL akulho àkùl ɦɦɦò fatigue L po pò run LLL akupo àkùpò running L sho ʃʃʃò drink LLL akusho àkù ʃʃʃò drinking L sü sì hurt LLL aküsü àkìsì pain

2 L ba bà defecate MMH aküba akibá defecating L chhi ʧʧʧhì be full MMH akichhi aki ʧʧʧhí full (one) L ma mà rot (wet) MMH aküma akimá rotten (one) L phu phù search MMH akuphu akup hú searching L pi pì speak MMH akipi akipí speaking L thu thù grow MMH akuthu akuthú growth cut (with L tsa tsà MMH akütsa akitsá cutting scissors) L ye jè write MMH akiye akijé writing

3 M ha ha hunt MMH aküha akihá 94 hunting M hu hu go (away) MMH akuhu akuhú going (away) M ye je drink MMH akiye akijé drinking

94 Another variant of aküha ‘hunting’ is [àkìhá], though it remains unclear when each variant is used.

138 4 M ka ka rule LLH aküka àkìká power M lho lɦɦɦo cook LLH akulho àkùl ɦɦɦó curry; dish M nu nu laugh LLH akunu àkùnú laughing M phi phi read LLH akiphi àkìp hí reading M she ʃʃʃe praise LLH akishe àkì ʃʃʃé praise (n.) M shu ʃʃʃu be hot LLH akushu àkù ʃʃʃú heat, hot M thi thi die LLH akithi àkìt hí death M tsa tsa be damp LLH akütsa àkìtsá damp (one) M tsa tsa chew LLH akütsa àkìtsá chewing M tsü tsi rot (dry) LLH akütsü àkìtsí rotten (one)

Looking at the examples, we see that tones on verb roots undergo changes that cannot be accounted for by processes of tone spreading or deletion. There is little evidence to suggest that either the prefixes a- or kV- are lexically specified for some underlying tone. Based on these shifts, 4 verb classes can be identified which exhibit the following tone sandhi (the tone on a- is identical to that on the following syllable and is given in parentheses):

Verb class 1: L > (L)LL Verb class 2: L > (M)MH Verb class 3: M > (M)MH Verb class 4: M > (L)LH

Following these changes, the usual rules of tone assignment (as presented in 6.1.3) are then applied, i.e. linking of tones from right to left. A sample autosegmental representation of a deverbal form akuphu [akup hú] ‘searching’ with the output melody MH, derived from the class 2 verb phu [p hù] ‘search’ is given in (183). If we accept the analysis that the prefixes a- and kV- are lexically unspecified for tone, then it follows that the root -phu must be providing M tone, suggesting that it is now associated with the bitonal melody MH, i.e. /- ̄phú/. If this analysis is correct, it would provide further evidence for the existence of floating tones in Sumi. 95

95 Positing a floating M tone here suggests that there was once segmental material originally associated with this M tone that has since been lost. As with the autosegmental analyses presented in 6.1.3, it is assumed that the root morpheme is providing the tonal specification.

139 (183) /a-ku-phú/ ‘searching’ (‘NRL-NZP-search’)

M H M H | σ σ σ → σ σ σ | | | | | | a ku phu a ku phu

[a.ku.p hú] ~ [ak.p hú] ‘searching’

In the addition to the verbs presented in Table 29, the verb root sü [sí] ‘put’, the only verb root specified for H tone, has the deverbal form aküsü [akisí] ‘putting’, following the MMH output of verb roots in classes 2 and 3. It can be seen that neutralisation occurs with these two verb classes: for example, akiye [akijé] can mean both ‘writing’ and ‘drinking’ even though their verb roots are specified for L and M tone respectively.

An exception to this paradigm not included in Table 29, is the verb root nha [n ɦa] ‘cover’ with M tone, and its corresponding deverbal akünha [àkìnɦa] ‘lid’ which has a LLM tone melody. It is unknown at this point if this should be treated as a separate class of verb, or if akünha is lexically specified for (L)LM tone. The latter seems more likely, since we get other lexical nouns like akütsü [àkìtsi] ‘head’ and akichhi [àkì ʧhi] ‘breast’ also specified for (L)LM tone. These forms appear to have been derived through a- and kV- prefixation at an earlier stage, but their original verb roots are no longer morphologically analysable.

Table 30 provides examples of deverbal formation from sesquisyllabic verb roots. 96 Unlike monosyllabic verb roots, these verb roots do not undergo tone sandhi in their deverbal forms. The phonologically toneless prefixes a- and kV- simply take the tone of the minor syllable of the verb root (providing further evidence of right to left spreading of tones described in 6.1.3.)

96 This also includes verb roots consisting of a minor syllable added to a sesquisyllable e.g. kumsü / k.m.si/ ‘think’.

140 Table 30: Sesquisyllabic verb roots and deverbal forms Tone Verb Gloss Tone Deverbal Gloss LL kulo kùlò spin LLLL akukulo àkùkùlò spinning LL küla kìlà marry LLLL aküküla àkìkìlà wedding LL kügha kìɣɣɣà catch (L)LLL (a)kükügha (à)kìkìɣɣɣà catching LL mla m
là work LLLL akümla àkìm
là work (n.) LLL kimiye kìmìjè love LLLLL akikimiye àkìkìmìjè love (n.)

LM küthü kìthi gnaw LLLM aküküthü àkìkìthi gnawing LM mla m
la foam LLLM akümla àkìm
la bubble LM müma mìma kiss LLLM akümüma àkìmìma kissing LM püghü pìɣɣɣi plan LLLM aküpüghü àkìpìɣɣɣi program LLM kümsü kìm
si think LLLLM akükümsü àkìkìm
si thought

LH mlo m
ló mourn LLLH akumlo àkù m
ló mourning

MM püka pika steal MMMM aküpüka akipika theft

be MH mla mlá MMMH akümla akimlá easy easy MH küha kihá lack (M)MMH (a)küküha (a)kikihá not having

A sample autosegmental representation of the deverbal form akümla ‘easy’, derived from mla ‘be easy’ is presented in (184). Note that M tone in this example spreads leftwards to the word-edge, demonstrating that tone spreading in Sumi is unbounded as long as there empty TBUs for the tone to spread onto.

(184) /a-ki-m̩.lá/ ‘easy’ (‘NRL-NZP-be.easy’)

M H M H | | σ σ σ σ → σ σ σ σ | | | | | | | | a k m la a ki m la

[a.kim.lá] ‘easy’

In addition to the examples in Table 30, the nominal akighithi [àkì ɣìt hi] ‘knowledge’ appears to be derived from the root ithi [ìt hi] ‘know’, and displays the same lack of tone sandhi as other LM tone verb roots, but with the insertion of an epenthetic / ɣ/. Few

141 monomorphemic verb roots begin with a vowel, and it remains to be seen if this epenthesis is a result of the phonological environment or if akighithi is a lexicalised item containing the vestige of an older phoneme long since lost in the verb root.

Table 31 gives examples of deverbal formation from disyllabic verbs, usually consisting of a prefix or another verb root followed by a monosyllabic verb root.

Table 31: Disyllabic verbs and deverbal forms Tone Verb Gloss Tone Deverbal Gloss LL saphe sàphè lead LMH sakiphe sàkiphé leading LL katha kàthà cross LMH kakütha kàkithá crossing

enclose; ML botha bothà MMH bokütha bokithá enclosure surround evict; driving out; ML haphe haphè MMH hakiphe hakiphé exile eviction ML huthu huthù begin MMH hukuthu hukuthú origin

LM heqhi hèqhi kill LLM hekiqhi hèkìqhi killing

MH püta 97 pitá whinge MMH püküta pikitá whingeing

These verbs behave differently from their monomorphemic counterparts, in that the kV- prefix is added before the final verb root (usually before the final syllable). The tone on the verb prefix remains the same in the deverbal form, while the verb root undergoes tone sandhi. The observed tone sandhi is similar, but not identical, to that observed in monosyllabic verbs. The pattern of tone sandhi can be summarised thus, with the tone on the first verb root, which does not undergo tone sandhi, given in parentheses:

(L)L > (L)MH L tone verb roots here (M)L > (M)MH undergo the same tone sandhi (L)M > (L)LM (M)H > (M)MH

97 While this looks like a sesquisyllabic verb, the insertion of the prefix kV - before the last syllable is evidence that this is a disyllabic verb. However, one speaker mentioned that the deverbal form püküta optionally takes the prefix a-, which is unusual for a disyllabic verb.

142

Not included in the table is the deverbal form of the trisyllabic verb ithulu [ìt hulù] ‘see’, ithukulu [ìt hukùlù] ‘seeing’. The verb root -lu carries L tone in the verb and does not undergo tone sandhi, similar to the class 1 monosyllabic verbs identified earlier, while the kV- prefix presumably copies the L tone of the verb root.

One example of a verb prefix that shows some tone alternation is ikuthu [ikut hú] ‘waking up’, derived from the verb ithu [ìt hù] ‘wake up’. Here, the root -thu , which carries L tone in the verb, undergoes the expected tone sandhi in the deverbal form. However, the prefix i-, a directional marker found on other motion verbs, changes from L to M tone. More data might show that i- is actually unspecified for tone and simply copies the tone of the following syllable.

The final group of verbs consists of compound verbs that specify their noun complements. Table 32 gives a few examples of such verbs and their deverbal forms.

Table 32: Verbs specified for noun complements and deverbal forms Tone Root Gloss Tone Deverbal Gloss LLL alephe àlèp hè sing LLMH alekiphe àlèkip hé singing (song-sing) swim LLL azügha àzì à LLMH azükügha àzìki á swimming ɣɣɣ (water-swim) ɣɣɣ

LLM azüsü àzìsi swim LLLM azüküsü àzìkìsi swimming (water-swim)

LLM akikhu àkìk hu sweep LLMH akikukhu àkìkuk hú sweeping (house-sweep)

Like in disyllabic verbs, only the final monosyllabic verb root undergoes tone sandhi (and not the noun). The tone sandhi undergone by verb roots can be summarised thus, with the tone on the noun given in parentheses:

(LL)L > (LL)MH (LL)M > (LL)LM (LL)M > (LL)MH

143 While it has been seen that sesquisyllabic verb roots do not undergo tone sandhi in their deverbal forms, an examination of monosyllabic verb roots in isolation (Table 30); in disyllabic compound verbs (Table 31); and in noun-verb compounds (Table 32) shows a set number of tone sandhi patterns that occur with deverbal formation. In total, six possible patterns of tone sandhi can be found:

Tone on verb root Tone on nominalising prefix + verb root L > LL (no tone sandhi) L > MH M > LM (rare) M > LH M > MH H > MH (one example)

L, M and H tones on verb roots are all potentially neutralised to MH, the most common tonal output. It is interesting to note that in outputs where tone sandhi is present, there is always one ‘peak’ – either M tone (vs. L tone) or H tone (vs. L or M tone) – that always occurs on the final syllable. As with sesquisyllabic noun and verb roots (see 6.2), the melody ML is not a possible output.

The proposed analysis of floating tones in verb roots that undergo tone sandhi (resulting in a bitonal output) suggests the previous existence of segmental material that has since been lost. Given that only monosyllabic verb roots have been observed to undergo such tone sandhi – as opposed to sesquisyllabic verb roots – one possible explanation for these bitonal output tones is that they reflect historical tonal specifications on verb roots that were previously sesquisyllabic but which have since lost their minor syllables. These original tonal specifications are therefore still preserved only in such deverbal forms. Again, more comparative work on tone sandhi across Sumi dialects and other Naga languages will need to be done to confirm such a hypothesis.

144 7.2.5 Deverbal nominals in other Naga languages

Similar patterns of tone sandhi can be found in Khezha, which has two prefixes that derive deverbal forms: ke-, used to derive abstract nouns; and ta-, which signifies the style or manner of the actor, often translated as ‘way of doing something’. (185) – (190) give examples of verb roots prefixed with ke-.

(185) tè ‘run’ ke + tè → keté ‘race’ (186) rhè ‘draw’ ke + rhè → kerhé ‘drawing’ (187) to ‘eat’ ke + to → kèto ‘food’ (188) so ‘drink’ ke + so → kèso ‘drink (N)’ (189) we ‘good’ ke + we → kewe ‘goodness’ (190) tsh ə ‘do’ ke + tsh ə → ketsh ə ‘doer’ 98

The patterns of tone sandhi on these verb roots can be summarised thus:

L > MH (185) & (186) M > LM (187) & (188) M > MM (189) & (190)

Turning our attention to the prefix ta-, we have the following examples:

(191) zə ‘sleep’ ta + z ə → taz ə ‘way of sleeping’ (192) nə ‘laugh’ ta + n ə → tan ə ‘way of laughing’ (193) te ‘walk’ ta + te → tate ‘way of walking’ (194) to ‘eat’ ta + to → tato ‘way of eating’ (195) thelé ‘roam’ ta + thelé → tàle ‘way of roaming’ (196) menyé ‘shame’ ta + menyé → tànye ‘way of becoming shy’ (197) kedze ‘play’ ta + kedze → tàdze ‘way of playing’ (198) keku ‘look after’ ta + keku → tàku ‘way of looking after’

98 Kapfo (1989) gives this as the gloss, and from other examples it appears that the abstract noun form and the agent noun are homophonous.

145 Note that prefixed disyllabic verbs like thelé ‘roam’ lose their first syllable (possibly a separate morpheme). The patterns of tone sandhi on these verb roots are summarised here, with the first syllable of disyllabic verbs given in parenthesis:

L > MM (191) & (192) M > MM (193) & (194) (M)M > LM (195) & (196) (M)H > LM (197) & (198)

As can be seen, neutralisation of the original tone on the verb root occurs frequently here. Kapfo (1989) does not go so far as to propose a historical source for such tone sandhi in Khezha, though it is possible that the output tones also reflect historical tonal specifications, as was proposed for Sumi.

Stative verbs in Mongsen Ao take the nominalising prefix tə- ‘NZP’, which is comparable to Sumi kV- and Khezha ke- and ta-. Unlike these two languages though, the verb root in Mongsen Ao does not undergo tone sandhi. Instead, the phonologically toneless prefix simply copies the same tone on the first syllable of the verb root, to give the output seen in (199) – (203):

(199) tə -khá ʔ (NZP-be.bitter) ‘bitter’

(200) tə -ʧə n (NZP-be.old) ‘old’

(201) tə-ɹaɹaʔ (NZP-be.rough) ‘rough’

(202) tə-səsə (NZP-be.smooth) ‘smooth’ (203) tə-pəti (NZP-be.big) ‘big’

More commonly, verbs in Mongsen Ao are nominalised by the addition of the suffix -pà ʔ which does result in tone sandhi, as seen in (204) and (205). Coupe (2007) proposes a floating H tone which is associated with the final syllable of the verb root, but only realised in the environment of the suffix -pà ʔ.

146 (204) ah ɹək (drown.PST) ah ɹə́k-pà ʔ (drown-NR)

(205) ʧhaj (play.sport.PST) ʧháj-pà ʔ (play.sport-NR)

Looking at deverbal formation by prefixation, tone sandhi in Sumi appears much more similar to Khezha than to Mongsen Ao, where the prefix simply copies the tone of the first syllable of the verb root. However, even though verb nominalisation is achieved more commonly by suffixation in Mongsen Ao, it is interesting to note that Coupe’s (2007) preliminary analysis of tone sandhi also proposes that the verb root – not the affix – is underlyingly specified for an additional H tone that was associated with segmental material that has now been lost.

7.3 Agent nouns

7.3.1 Formation of agent nouns

Agent nouns in Sumi are formed by compounding a deverbal nominal with the noun root -mi ‘person’ 99 , as in (206) and (207). This is a common root across the Tibeto-Burman languages, reconstructed by Matisoff (2003) as proto Tibeto-Burman *mi ‘man / person’.

(206) aküha ‘hunting’ → akühami ‘hunter’ (207) akümla ‘work’ → akümlami ‘worker’

There is also a definite form of each agent noun, formed by the addition of the nominaliser -u glossed ‘NZR’ (possibly derived from the attributive / possessive suffix - wu) , e.g. akühau ‘the hunter’ (lit. ‘the hunting one’). This -u suffix also appears in the definite forms of totimi ‘woman’: atotiu ‘the woman’ (lit. ‘the female one’) and kipitimi ‘man’: akipitiu ‘the man’ (lit. ‘the male one’). It is unlikely that these definite forms are

99 -mi , like other monosyllabic noun roots in Sumi, is not a free morpheme. However, instead of taking the non-relational prefix a-, it takes the prefix ti-, possibly underlying tV- (where V is a high vowel that displays vowel harmony with the noun root) in the word timi ‘person, man’. This is the only noun root in Sumi encountered thus far that takes this prefix, which might be cognate with Mongsen Ao tə-.

147 lexicalised, as they are only used anaphorically after the form with -mi has already been mentioned in discourse.

7.3.2 Tone sandhi in agent nouns

Table 33 gives a list of examples of agent nouns derived from deverbal nominals. No tone sandhi appears in these examples, and the noun root -mi and nominaliser -u are consistently realised with L tone, suggesting that they are underlying /-mì/ and /-ù/, lexically specified for L tone.

However, a few agent nouns not included in Table 33 do not follow these patterns: the noun akishemi [aki ʃémì] ‘praiser’ with MMHL tone, derived from the deverbal akishe

[àkì ʃé] ‘praise (n.)’ which has LLH tone. It appears then that deverbals that carry LLH tone follow the pattern of deverbals with MMH tone in agent noun derivation.

148 Table 33: Deverbal forms and agent nouns Tone Deverbal Gloss Tone Agent noun Gloss LLL akupo àkùpò running LLLL akupomi àkùpòmì runner LLL aküsü àkìsì pain LLLL aküsümi àkìsìmì patient LLLL akümla àkìm
là work LLLLL akümlami àkìm
làmì worker (L)LLL (a)kükügha (à)kìkìɣɣɣà catching (L)LLLL (a)küküghami (à)kìkìɣɣɣàmì kidnapper LLLH akumlo àkù m
ló mourning LLLHL akumlomi àkù m
lómì mourner sakiphemi sàkip hémì leader LMH sakiphe sàkip hé leading LMHL sakipheu sàkip héù ‘the leader’ LLMH alekiphe àlèkip hé singing LLMHL alekiphemi àlèkip hémì singer LLMH azükügha àzìkiɣɣɣá swimming LLMHL azüküghami àzìkiɣɣɣámì swimmer akikukhumi àkìkuk húmì sweeper LLMH akikukhu àkìkuk hú sweeping LLMHL akikukhuu àkìkuk húù ‘the sweeper’ LMLL ithukulu ìt hukùlù seeing LMLLL ithukulumi ìthukùlùmì visionary (a)küpükami (a)kipikamì thief MMMM aküpüka akipika theft MMMML aküpükau akipikaù ‘the thief’ MMH akipi akipí speaking MMHL akipimi akipímì speaker MMH akiye akijé writing MMHL akiyemi akijémì writer MMH akuphu akup hú searching MMHL akuphumi akup húmì searcher MMH akuthu akut hú growth MMHL akuthumi akut húmì grower MMH aküha akihá hunting MMHL akühami akihámì hunter 100 hakiphemi hakip hémì evictor MMH hakiphe hakip hé eviction MMHL hakipheu hakip héù ‘the evictor’ MMH püküta pikitá whinging MMHL pükütami pikitámì whinger (M)MMH aküküha akikihá lacking (M)MMHL (a)kükühami (a)kikihámì poor person

100 Note that ashihami [à-ʃì-hà-mì] ‘NRL-meat-hunt-AGT’ ‘meat hunter’ has LLLL tone.

149 Two additional deverbal nominals seem to cause tone sandhi on the noun root -mi and nominaliser -u: hekiqhi ‘murder’ and azüküsü ‘swimming’. In these two cases we get the following outputs:

(208) hekiqhi ‘murder’ + -mi ‘person’ → hekiqhimi ‘murderer’ [hè-kì-qhi] [-mì] [hè-kì-qhi-mí] LLM + L → LLMH (209) hekiqhi ‘murder’ + -u ‘NZR’ → hekiqhiu ‘the murderer’ [hè-kì-qhi] [-ù] [hè-kì-qhi-ú] LLM + L → LLMH (210) azüküsü ‘swimming’ + -mi ‘person’ → azüküsümi ‘swimmer’ [à-zì-kì-si] [-mì] [à-zì-kì-si-mí] (L)LLM + L → (L)LLMH

The examples here are consistent with the few other observed instances of tone sandhi in Sumi nominal compounding (seen in 7.1.3) where L tone on a noun root becomes H tone after a noun with the melody LLM. Again, it is possible that hekiqhimi ‘murderer’ and azüküsümi ‘swimmer’ are simply lexicalised items specified for their particular tones. However, as noted previously, the definite form hekiqhiu ‘the murderer’ is less likely to be lexicalised and suggests that there might be a more productive tone sandhi rule like:

LLM + L → LLMH

This cannot be a purely phonological rule though, since there are counterexamples like hekiqhiki [hè-kì-qhi-kì] ‘abattoir’, derived from hekiqhi [hè-kì-qhi] ‘murder’ and aki [à-kì] ‘house’, where L tone on the noun root -ki [-kì] ‘house’ does not become H tone following a nominal with LLM melody. This suggests that L tones specified on only certain morphemes in Sumi undergo tone sandhi – more examples are needed to see if this rule does stand.

Finally, there are also a few examples of a ‘mobile’ H tone that appears to move from the deverbal stem to the /-mì/ suffix:

150 (211) akithi ‘death’ + -mi ‘person’ → akithimi ‘dead person’ [à-kì-thí] [-mì] [à-kì-thì-mí] (L)LH → (L)LLH (212) aküka ‘power’ + -mi ‘person’ → (a)kükami ‘chief’ [à-kì-ká] [-mì] [(à)-kì-kà-mí] (L)LH → (L)LLH

While it is probable that these agent nouns are simply specified lexically for their tone melodies, it is still interesting to see that the H tone here has behaved like a word-level accent that shifted rightwards onto word-final -mi (see 6.3 for more on H tone in Sumi).

One final exception to all the patterns observed so far is the agent noun akushomi [àkù ʃómì] ‘drinker’ with LLHL tone, derived from the deverbal nominal akusho [àkù ʃò]

‘drinking’ with LLL tone. What is interesting here is that the agent noun has developed a H tone on the third syllable where none existed before. It remains to be seen if there are any other examples of deverbal nominals with LLL tone that exhibit this kind of sandhi.

7.4 Miscellaneous morphotonological processes

7.4.1 Reduplication

One example of reduplication is found in distributive numerals, where the final syllable of a cardinal numeral is reduplicated, as given in (213) – (215):

(213) lakhi ‘one’ → lakhikhi ‘one by one’ [lak hí] [lak hí-khí]

(214) kini ‘two’ → kinini ‘two by two’ [kini] [kini-ni]

(215) küthü ‘three’ → küthüthü ‘three by three’ [kìthí] [kìthí-thí]

As can be seen, the partially reduplicated morpheme copies both segments and tone. This same reduplicative process is seen in Mongsen Ao to obtain distributive numerals (Coupe, 2007).

151 7.5 Final remarks on tone sandhi and tone rules

The proposed tone rules and examples of tone sandhi in Sumi presented in this and the preceding chapter should by no means be viewed as an exhaustive list. Further work on Sumi morphology will undoubtedly unravel more examples of tone sandhi and perhaps the need for more tone rules. Yet even at this stage, a few typological remarks can already be made. The main observation, as noted in 6.4, is that with regards to tone rules, it is difficult to classify Sumi as being either an ‘African’ or ‘East Asian’ type of tone language.

More evidence can be found in this chapter to support this assertion. On the one hand, Sumi resembles an East Asian tone language – looking at deverbal formation, we see a remarkably regular paradigmatic shift in tone, e.g. from L to H, similar to what has often been described in Chinese tone systems, such as Mandarin and the southern Min dialects (Chen, 2000). On the other hand, it was posited that tone spreading in Sumi is unbounded, provided that there are empty TBUs for tones to spread onto – this is more characteristic of African tone languages. Furthermore, more examples of floating tones were posited with monosyllabic morphemes specified for a bitonal melody, e.g. MH.

152 8 Final Discussion

To conclude this work, a final typological comparison of Sumi with African and East Asian tone language types is presented in Table 34, which incorporates observations about Sumi and two other Naga languages, Angami and Mongsen Ao into Table 34, which was originally presented in 1.4.4.

Table 34: Typological profiles of three Naga languages with ‘East Asian’ and ‘African’ tone languages Sumi Angami 101 Mongsen Ao ‘East Asian’ ‘African’ TBU syllable syllable syllable syllable mora / syllable Level vs level level and level both are level tones contour tones contour primary primary; contours = sequences of level tones Tonal 3 5 (3 level, 3 3 to 11 1 to 2 inventory 2 contour) Floating tones yes - no yes yes Downstep no - no no yes Toneless assigned by - assigned by predictable default, syllable pitch rules + rules from prior usually L default L rule tone + intonation Tone rare, with - rare, with rare, but yes spreading toneless toneless possible TBUs TBUs - direction R to L R to L usually L to R Morphological no - no no yes tonal polarity (-) indicates that insufficient data exist for the languages.

As can be seen in the table, it is not an uncomplicated matter to place Sumi within one of the two language types. Sumi has in common with African languages features such as: a small tone inventory that lacks contour tones, a syllabic TBU, tone spreading rules,

101 The Kohima dialect is taken as the standard.

153 floating tones and a default tone rule. 102 On the other hand, a small tone inventory of three tones and a lack of contour tones do not immediately exclude Sumi from the East Asian type. Features of African tone languages like tonal polarity and downstep are also absent from Sumi. Tone spreading rules in Sumi also only permit tones to spread to empty TBUs, unlike in some African languages where tones may dock onto TBUs already bearing a tone, resulting in a phonetic contour tone. However, Coupe (2007) does note one example of a phonetic contour tone produced by such spreading in Mongsen Ao. 103

These mixed findings are not surprising in light of work by other researchers who have found characteristics of African tone languages within the Tibeto-Burman family, e.g. Chungli Ao (Bruhn, 2009); Kuki-Thaadow (Kuki-Chin-Naga) (Hyman, 2007a); Mianchi (Qiangic) (Evans, 2008). That we find Sumi located ‘between’ the two types suggests that ‘East Asian’ and ‘African’ types are better thought of as two ends of a phonological continuum.

Returning to some of the problems with situating the Naga languages within Hildebrandt’s (2007) proposed typology for Tibeto-Burman languages dicussed in 5.7, it was suggested that some of the differences between tone languages of the Buffer Zone and those of the Sinosphere could be accounted for by the fact that languages of the Sinosphere developed tone while they were still monosyllabic, while those of the Buffer Zone developed tone after they had become polysyllabic.

A typology of tone must take into account both the morphological structure and the different diachronic origins of tone in the languages it covers. Some of the parameters used to typologise African and East Asian tone languages, such as tone spreading, might have more to do with the fact that morphologically, East Asian languages are generally

102 Coupe (2007) also notes the presence of grammatical tone, which is more commonly associated with ‘African’ languages, in Mongsen Ao. 103 This occurs when the first person singular pronoun nì ‘I’, specified for low tone, is marked for agentive case – the segmental material of the agentive enclitic nə, which is specified for mid tone, is often deleted, but the mid tone remains and links to the preceding syllable nì , resulting in a rising contour tone on that syllable (Coupe, 2007: 64).

154 monosyllabic and isolating, leading to more paradigmatic tone systems. On the other hand ‘African’ languages tend to be polysyllabic and agglutinating, resulting in more syntagmatic tone systems with fewer paradigmatic tonal contrasts (Hyman, 2001b). Consequently, one reason why Sumi falls in between the the two language types might simply be that it still has many monosyllabic and sesquisyllabic roots, but also displays agglutinative tendencies, as reflected in such morphological processes as prefixation and word compounding.

To conclude this work, summaries of some of the conclusions presented in each chapter are given here:

Chapters 3 and 4 provided descriptions of the segmental phonology and phonotactics of Sumi, serving as an update to Sreedhar’s original (1976) analysis. A cross-linguistic comparison revealed that Sumi shared phonological features with both the Angami- Pochuri languages to the south (of which Sumi is a member) and the Ao languages to the north and west. It was also shown that Sumi has innovated /x ɣ/ and /q q h/, which are unusual in the area, and a hypothesis about how they developed was offered, based on cross-linguistic evidence.

Chapter 5 examined Sumi tonal phonology in much greater depth than any previous work, providing an analysis of the syllable as the tone-bearing unit in Sumi as well as a description of variation in tone realisation. One acoustic study showed that prevocalic voiced and voiceless consonants had a lowering and raising effect of F 0 as expected, but the effect of voiceless aspirated stops was not predictable. The other acoustic study confirmed that vowel intrinsic F 0 was present in Sumi. These were the first studies of their kind to be done for this language. The cross-linguistic comparison of tone among the Kuki-Chin-Naga languages provided more evidence for Sumi falling on a phonological continuum between the Angami-Pochuri languages and the Ao languages. Finally, a typological comparison with other Tibeto-Burman languages, following Hildebrandt’s (2007) typological parameters, revealed that despite being geographically

155 located in the Indosphere, the Naga languages were more similar to languages in the Sinosphere.

Chapter 6 examined prefixes in Sumi that are lexically unspecified for tone and posited rules that assigned tones to these prefixes. It was proposed that these prefixes typically receive tones from the noun and verb root that are lexically specified for melodies comprising one or two tones, but at times a default L tone rule was necessary. An analysis of H tone as the marked tone in Sumi was given, showing that its syntagmatic distribution in a word was more constrained than that of the L and M tones.

Chapter 7 investigated morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi, finding very regular patterns of tone sandhi in the formation of deverbal nominals from verb roots. It was hypothesised that many monosyllabic verb roots were historically sesquisyllabic and that their original tone specifications were preserved in such deverbal forms. The lack of tone sandhi in Sumi nominal compounds compared to Khezha and Mongsen Ao compounds was also noted as unusual.

A final typological comparison of Sumi with typical African and East Asian tone systems revealed similarities between the Naga languages and both these two systems, and it was suggested that some of these similarities and differences in these tone systems could in fact be due to similarities and differences in morphological structure.

It can be gleaned from this work that the task of describing and understanding the tone system of a language like Sumi is an incredibly complex one, requiring an understanding both of the segmental phonology and phonotactics of the language, as well as a grasp of its morphology. Moreover, a diachronic perspective sometimes needs to be taken in order to account for synchronic tone rules and tone sandhi – this further necessitates cross- linguistic comparisons with other related languages. However, it is hoped that by presenting such a description, it can be seen that these complications are not insurmountable. It is also hoped that this work will form the basis for future research on

156 other topics like the interaction between lexical tone and post-lexical intonation in Sumi, as well as morphological analyses of the language.

At the community level it is hoped that this phonological description of Sumi, with its focus on lexical tone, will help foster a greater awareness and understanding of tone for the more learned members of the Sumi-speaking community and allow them to make more informed decisions as they continue to develop a practical orthography which distinguishes tonal minimal sets.

In general, much more descriptive work needs to be done for Sumi and for all the Naga languages in the areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax. The urgent need for such work comes at a time when languages like English and Nagamese, the lingua franca of Nagaland, are gaining currency at the expense of speakers’ home languages. My personal wish is that projects such as this one will spark an interest in younger Sumis to document and study their own language.

157 References

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162 Appendix A: Tone comparison chart

Syll Word Gloss Tone POS 1 pi say L v sü hurt L v ngo and L conj

ju look at M v lho create M v pa he M pron

li she H pron

2 aki house LL n aphu village LL n timi person LL n

sasü with LM postp niye I LM pron ghili about LM adv

apu son LH n aza mother LH n

eno and ML conj shiphe create ML v

aje name MM n kini two MM num khani sometimes MM adv

anga child MH n lakhi one MH num

afo older sister HL n

vilo to HM post

linga her child HH n

163 3 asamo dream LLL n akimi husband LLL n

aküghü big leaf LLM n shoghethi soap LLM n

aküka power LLH n tüghashi wild animal LLH n

ithulu look for LML v ghajuku yam leaf LML n

bepesü cook.take LMM v achuka kitchen LMM n

akchhizü milk LMH n

axone fermented soya beans LHL n khetsünhe sun LHL n

anathi banana LHM n ghenguno for, because of LHM post

murasü snow LHH n

zümüxa rotate MLL v lhochuphe start to cook MLL v

nitsülo Give (it) to us MLM 104

khochile answer MLH v ikhone short MLH adj

lhothemi youth MML n alothi seed MML n

achhophe broom MMM n akhosa cat MMM n

104 Twin ‘peaks’ found in tone melodies like MLM and MLH occur as a result of morphological concatenation.

164 ayeghi land MMH n apukhu leg MMH n totimi woman MHL n panongu they MHL pron ighono very MHM adv ikemu despite this MHH conj afono older sister + AF HLL n süveno put and… HML v khijehi How much? HMM kutomo a lot HHL adv

165

Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Teo, Amos Benjamin

Title: Sumi tone: a phonological and phonetic description of a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland

Date: 2009

Citation: Teo, A. B. (2009). Sumi tone: a phonological and phonetic description of a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland. PhD thesis, Arts, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne.

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/35429

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