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Chapter 2 Phonology Chapter 2 Phonology This chapter presents the phonological system in Zauzou. All data are from the field recordings T based on the Jiangmo dialect of Zauzou. The basic structure of Zauzou syllables is C(G)(V1)V 2 . All syllables must contain a consonant initial C, a main vowel V2 and a tone (represented by the superscript T ). Zauzou only has open syllables and no coda. A second vowel V1 is possible in Zauzou syllables, which usually takes the form as /i//ʊ//y/ to form diphthongs. Glides (semi-vowels) often appear between C and V as transitions in palatalization and labialization. Zauzou employs 23 consonants plus three semi-vowels (i.e. glides /j//w/,/ɥ/). Semi-vowels appear as onset consonants of syllables comprised by diphthongs /iV//ʊV//ɥV/. All consonants are syllable- initial. Zauzou does not have consonant clusters either. Plosives and affricates have aspiration contrast, and the voicing contrast is restricted to fricatives. Zauzou employs a relatively large vowel inventory. It has 11 plain (i.e.oral/lax) vowels and two types of vowel phonations, including 10 nasal vowels, 6 tense vowels, and 4 nasal tense vowels. The tense-lax contrast is a salient feature of most Lolo-Burmese languages1, including Zauzou. Nevertheless, the phonological contrasts between different types of vowel phonations, i.e. plain-nasal-tense-nasal tense vowels, are declining, in comparison with the data in Sun et al (2002). Zauzou has a large inventory of diphthongs. 19 diphthongs are identified, which all start with high back vowels /i//ʊ//y/. Zauzou is a tone language, and each syllable must bear a tone. The tone-bearing unit is V2. Zauzou employs 6 tonemes: the high-level tone /55/, the mid-level tone /33/, the high-rising tone /35/, the low-rising tone /13/, the high-falling tone /53/, and the low-falling tone /31/. The distribution of the two rising tones are extremely unbalanced, indicating a tendency of merging of the two tones. Tone sandhi is fairly robust in Zauzou, as the adjacency of two tones may cause various patterns of changes on pitches. In addition to the segmental and suprasegmental features in Zauzou phonology, this chapter also characterizes intonation and a bunch of inter-speaker variations. Morph-phonological processes is rather minimal in this isolating language, and there is a vowel quantity change that is triggerred by morphology. 1 See Dai (1979), Maddieson & Ladefoged (1985), Matisoff (2003) for more discussion on the synchronic and diachronic properteis of the tense vowels. However, there is no simple answer for the nature of the so-called “tense”-“lax” constrast. According to the reconstruction in Matisoff (2003), all final stops in PTB are reduced to glottal stop or glottal constriction, while final nasals may lose their oral occlusion and transfer their nasality to the preceding vowel (Matisoff 2003:239). This is what happened in the Loloish language Lahu. However, within the Lolo-Burmese branch, the glottal constriction can be described as either a tonal feature (e.g. Modern Burmese and Lahu, as described in Matisoff (2003:239) for Burmese and Matisoff (1973:25)) or vowel phonation (i.e.tense vowels in Yi, Hani, as described in Maddieson & Ladefoged 1985). 32 The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: I firstly characterize the The phoneme inventory is present in §2.1, which covers consonants (§2.1.1), vowels (§2.1.2), and tones (§2.1.3). Syllable structure of Zauzou is decribed in §2.2. §2.3 describes the tone sandhi patterns in Zauzou; §2.4 presents a number of inter-speaker variations; §2.5 characterizes vowel-lengthening as a morpho- phonological process; §2.6 offers and overview of intonations of different types of Zauzou sentences. 2.1 Phoneme inventory Zauzou exhibits 26 phonemic consonants, which are all initials, as present in Table 2.1 in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). bilabial labiodental alveolar palatal velar glottal voiceless voiced voiceless voice d Plosive [-asp] p t k ʔ [+asp] ph th kh Nasal m n ɲ ŋ Fricative f v s z ɕ x ɣ Affricate [-asp] ts tɕ [+asp] tsh tɕh Lateral l j ɥ w approximant Table 2.1 Consonants in Zauzou The consonantal initials in Zauzou are fairly strightforward, and little allophony amongst consonants is noted. Based on the places of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing qualities, Zauzou consonants include: 1) seven plosives, 2) four nasals, 3) seven fricatives, 4) four affricates, 5) one lateral approximant, 6) three glides. Except for the glottal stop /ʔ/, plosives have two fully contrastive types: aspirated and unaspirated plosives in three distinct places of articulation. Voicing contrast is not observed in plosives. The constrast in aspiration is also phonemic for affricates. The voicing contrast is consistently attested among fricatives, except for the palatal fricative /ɕ/. Zauzou exhibits a relatively large vowel inventory, including 11 plain monophthongs, 10 nasal monophthongs, 6 tense monophthongs, 4 nasal tense monophthongs, and 19 diphthongs. The full 33 inventory of oral monophthongal and diphthongal vocalic phonemes is present in (2.1), where the vowels in the parenthesis have a suspecious phonemic status: (2.1) Vowels in Zauzou: a.plain monophthongs: /i/,/y/,/ɰ/,/ʊ/,/e/,/o/,/ə/,/ɛ/,/ɔ/,/æ/,/a/ b.nasal monophthongs: /ĩ/,/ỹ/,/ẽ/,/æ̃/,/ɛ/,/ã/,̃ /ə̃/,/õ/,(/ɰ̃ /,/ʊ̃/) c.tense monophthongs: /i̠ /,/e̠ /,/ɛ̠ /,/æ̠ /,/a̠ /,/ə̠ / d.nasal tense monophthongs: (/ə̠ ̃/,/e̠ /̃ ,/a̠ /̃ ,/ɛ̠ /̃ ) e.diphthongs: /ia/,/iə/, /iɛ/, iɔ/, /io/, /iã/,/iɛ/,̃ /iõ/,/ʊa/, /ʊɔ/, /ʊe/, /ʊɛ/, /ʊã/, /ʊẽ/, /ʊɛ/̃ ,/ʊõ/,/yɛ/, /yɛ̃/,/yɰ/ Among the 11 plain monophtongs, there are five front vowel /i/, /y/, /e/, /æ/, /ɛ/, two central vowels /ə/,/a/, and four back vowels /ɰ/,/ʊ/,/o/,/ɔ/. A subset of these plain vowels have the corresponding nasal, tense, and nasal tense vowels. A plain/nasal vowel plus the onglide /i/,/ʊ/, or /y/ will create a diphthong. Zauzou employs 7 tones, including three level tones, two rising tones, and two falling tones: (2.2) Zauzou tones: a. Level tone: /55/,(/44/2),/33/ b. Rising tone: /35/,/13/ c. Falling tone: /53/,/31/ The section below will present the three elements of Zauzou phonology in sequence: consonants (§2.2.1), vowels(§2.2.2), and tones (§2.2.3). 2.1.1 Consonants 2.1.1.1 The plosives /p/,/pʰ/, /t/,/tʰ/,/k/,/kʰ/,/ʔ/ Seven plosive phonemes are identified in four places of articulation: the unaspirated bilabial /p/ and its aspirated counterpart /pʰ/, the alveolar /t/ and the aspirated /tʰ/ in the same place, two velar plosives /k/ nad /kʰ/, and a glottal stop /ʔ/. All of these plosives are restricted to the syllable onset position, and none of them can appear as codas. The glottal stop /ʔ/ only appears before the nuclears of 2 The tonemic status of /44/ tone is suspicious. It is subject to large inter-speaker variation and is often merged with /33/ or /55/ in different lexical items. 34 /a/,/ɛ/,/æ/,/ɔ/,/o/,/ə/ if there is no other consonantal initials. The seven plosives are equally productive in combinations with different vowels and tones. Some minimal pairs and near-minimal pairs involving plosives are given below: (2.3) /p/-/pʰ/-/m/-/f/ [p] [pʰ] [m] [f] pɔ33 “tub” ɕi31.pʰɔ33 “ficus mɔ33 “lower part” fɔ33 “there” tikoua” pa33 “dye” pʰa55 “lift up (a leg)” ma33 “MW.herd” fa13.pɛ31.tsɿ31 “malaria” pɰ33 “walnut“ pʰɰ33 “white“ mɰ33 “grovel“ fɰ53 “drink“ pe31 “put“ pʰe31 “spicy“ me13 “ripe“ - pjɔ13 “grass“ pʰjɔ13 “face“ mjɔ13 “wife“ - (2.4) /t/-/tʰ/-/n/-/s/-/ts/-/l/ [t] [tʰ] [n] [s] [ts] [l] tɔ33 “put” tʰɔ33 “toss” nɔ33 pu33.sɔ33 tsɔ33 “sand” lɔ33 “smelly” “leg” “pants/hang” ta33 “fry” tʰa33.tsɿ31 na33 “wet“ sa33 “half- tsa33 “fish la33 “shine“ “persimmon“ dry” (V)” tɰ55 “s/he/it“ tʰɰ33 “thick“ nɰ31 - tsɰ33 lɰ55 “sly“ “cattle“ “human“ tõ31“hole“ tʰõ31“pestle“ nõ53 - tsõ31 lõ33 “black“ “chisel“ “MW.Liang (50g)“ tə53 “cut off“ tʰə53 “castrate“ nə33 “2PL“ - tsə53 “tight“ lə53 “measure“ (2.5) /k/-/kʰ/-/ŋ/-/x/ [k] [kʰ] [ŋ] [x] kɔ33 “comb/scratch” kʰɔ33 “bamboo” ŋɔ33 “RES.see” xɔ33 “iron” ka53 “fear” kʰa53 “put“ ŋa53 “gnaw“ xa53 “take out“ 35 kõ31 “CL.road“ kʰõ31 “river“ - - kə33 “LOC/inside“ kʰə33 “shout“ ŋə33 “cry“ xə55 “smear“ kɛ33 “soldier“ kʰɛ33 “plank“ ŋɛ33 “small“ xɛ33.lɛ31 “weasel” (2.6) /p/-/t/-/k/-/ɣ/-/ʔ/ [p] [t] [k] [ɣ] [ʔ] pɔ33 “tub” tɔ33 “put” kɔ33 - ʔɔ33 “dumb” “comb/scratch” pa33 “dye” ta33 “fry” ka33 “dry” ɣa33 “firewood” ʔa33 “irrigate” tɕʰja31.pɛ33 tɛ33 “return“ kɛ33 “soldier“ ɣɛ33 “water“ ʔɛ33.wa55 “skin“ “money“ pə13 “float“ tə31 “one“ kə31 “rice“ ɣə31 “pan“ ʔə31 “hold“ pẽ53“push“ tẽ55“arrive“ kẽ55 “button“ ɣẽ55“long“ ʔẽ55“pick up“ (2.7) /pʰ/-/tʰ/-/kʰ/-/ɣ/-/ʔ/ [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ] [ɣ] [ʔ] ɕi31.pʰɔ33 “ficus tʰɔ33 “toss” kʰɔ33 “bamboo” - ʔɔ33 “dumb” tikoua” pʰa55 “lift up (a tʰa33.tsɿ31 kʰa53 “put“ ɣa33 “firewood” ʔa33 “irrigate” leg)” “persimmon“ pʰɛ31 “chaff” tʰɛ55.lɛ55 kʰɛ33 “plank“ ɣɛ33 “water“ ʔɛ33.wa55 “skin“ “pigeon“ - tʰə53 “castrate“ kʰə33 “shout“ ɣə31 “pan“ ʔə31 “hold“ pʰe33 “tear“ tʰẽ53“wrap“ kʰẽ53 “sew“ ɣẽ55“long“ ʔẽ55“pick up“ 2.1.1.2 The nasals /m/,/n/,/ɳ/,/ŋ/ There are four distinct nasal phonemes in Zauzou: 1) the bilabial /m/, 2) the alveolar /n/, 3) the palatal /ɳ/, and 4) the velar /ŋ/. The four nasals are restricted to the syllable onset position. Based on a word list containing 4000 lexical items, the palatal nasal /ɳ/ and the velar nasal /ŋ/ are much less common than the bilabial and alvelar nasals in syllables. The combinations of /ɳ/ with high vowels /i/, /y/,/ʊ/,/ɰ/ and the schwa /ə/ are not possible.
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