Bru Tri Grammar Sketch Eastern Bru Grammar Sketch Carolyn P Miller 2017 1. BACKGROUND Eastern Bru (BRU) is an Austorasiatic language of the Western sub-division of the Katuic Branch of Eastern Mon-Khmer languages. It is spoken mainly in the mountainous region of Quang Tri and Quang Binh provinces of Vietnam and in neighboring areas of Savannakhet province in Laos. However, in 1968 several thousand Bru were resettled in Dac Lac province because of the war, and many of these people still live in the central highlands. Of an estimated population of around 100,000, 26,700 are living in Laos (2005 census) and 74,506 are living in Vietnam (2009 census). Because of the discrepancy in the way in which the group is calculated in Vietnam, the Ethnologue gives an estimate of 82,300 Eastern Bru speakers. Although the term Bru is used by many languages of the Katuic subgroup of Mon-Khmer languages in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, the variety described in this article is the one referred to in the Ethnologue as “Eastern Bru.” The Eastern Bru are known in Laos as Bru Tri and in Vietnam as Bru Van Kieu. The term Van Kieu is an exoethnonym applied to a number of related groups, namely Tri, Khua, and Mangcong by the Vietnamese. (Ethnologue 2013) According to Gabor Vargyas, Hoang Van Ma and Ta Van Thong the term Van Kieu comes from old Vietnamese references to “Vien Kieu” or “Sakieu,” a mountain region or village. In some related languages, the term Bru means “mountain.” In the Bru Tri/Van Kieu language it simply means minority people or people of the mountains or jungle areas. Traditionally the Bru have been rice swidden farmers, cutting and burning fields on mountainsides. In recent years government pressure against this type of agriculture as well as a large influx of lowlanders moving into their traditional areas have caused the Bru to diversify their agriculture and adapt to other ways of making a living. The Bru have been primarily animists, and in some areas strongly maintain their animistic practices. However the upheaval of the war years and economic factors that have caused them to leave their traditional areas have led to many changes. Within the last two or three decades many have turned to Christianity, and Christian churches are found in most areas where the Bru live. The New Testament was printed in 1981 and went through several printings before it was revised and printed with the Psalms in 2009. A translation of the entire Bible was printed in 2014.. The Bru have had materials in their language in a modified Roman script since the 1960s as a result of the work of SIL, and some mother-tongue literacy efforts were begun in the 1970s, but these were interrupted during the war. Literacy among the Bru is less advanced on the Lao side. Writing Bru in Lao script has been investigated, but to date no materials have been distributed to teach Bru on the Lao side to read Bru in that script. Literacy efforts on both sides of the border have been in Roman script. Descriptions of features of the Bru language were written during the 60s and 1970s by foreign researchers and by Vietnamese linguists during the 1980s. A listing of some of these is found in an appendix to this article. 1 Bru Tri Grammar Sketch 2. PHONETICS/PHONOLOGY 2.1 Word/Syllable structure Phonological words in Bru Tri as in other Katuic languages are either mono- or disyllabic. Because a word with two syllables always has an unstressed first syllable and a dominant second syllable, these languages have sometimes been described as “sesqui-syllabic.” Generally the pre-syllable consists of either a syllabic nasal which assimilates to the point of articulation of the initial consonant of the main syllable, or a consonant plus vowel, or consonant- vowel-consonant in which the vowel is usually a neutral mid-central vowel. Only in a very few words is the vowel of the pre-syllable differentiated to carry contrastive meaning. e.g. /kucit/ 'to die', /kacit 'to kill''. Rarely is a consonant cluster found initially in a pre-syllable, though a few examples exist. e.g. /blablɨəʔ/ 'flashing'. And consonants closing the pre-syllable are restricted to /m,n,ŋ,r,l/. The main syllable of a word consists of an obligatory consonant (C1), an optional second consonant (C2), a vowel nucleus (V) and an optional final consonant (C3). If the initial consonant is a glottal stop, it is unwritten in roman script, but written in Lao script Bru. Eleven vowel nuclei can generally occur in one of two lengths and one of two registers. Ten off-glided diphthongs may also occur in the vowel nucleus position. The typical phonological word may be summarized as: (C V (C)) C(C) V (C) 2.2 Phoneme inventory and phonotactics 2.2.1 Consonants Bru Tri consonants consist of the following: Manner of Points of Articulation Articulation Bilabial Alveolar Alveolo Palatal Velar Glottal -palatal Stop [+asp.] **pʰ tʰ kʰ Stop [-vd] p t k ʔ Stop [+vd] b d Fricative [-vd] s h Affricate [-vd] c Nasal [+vd] m n ɲ ŋ Lateral [+vd] l Trill [+vd] r Approximant w* j [+vd] The approximant /w/ is usually pronounced [v] when it is an initial consonant. ** due to Vietamese and Lao influence the aspirated /pʰ/ is moving toward /f/. All consonants occur in the initial position of either syllable. Additionally the following consonant clusters occur syllable initially in the main syllable: /pl/, /pr/, /tr/, /thr/, /kl/, /kr/, /khr/, /bl/, /br/. 2 Bru Tri Grammar Sketch Consonants / pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, b, d, c, ɲ, s/ do not occur syllable finally. However, consonants /j/ and /w/ may occur with (or without) a glottal stop in final position of the main syllable e.g./sɜwʔ/ 'bad' or /bajʔ/ 'to bud'. Additionally found in this position is /jh/ which in some related languages patterns as a final /s/. e.g. /ʔajh/ 'swollen'. 2.2.2 Vowels Bru vowels consist in ten basic vowel positions. These occur in two constrastive lengths and two registers,, albeit with some areas of non-contrast (see below). Five glided nuclei occur in both registers, giving a total of forty one contrastive vowel nuclei. The basic positions for vowels are as follows: Front Central Back high i ɨ u mid e ə o mid-low ɛ ɜ ɔ low a ɒ Diphthongs iə ɨə uə ia ua The phonetic quality of these vowel nuclei has been described by Miller (1967), by Phillips, Miller and Miller (1976), as well as by Hoang Van Ma and Ta Van Thong (1998). All of these occur in the V position of the main syllable. In the pre-syllable /a/ and /u/ occur, but these are often neutralized to /ə / in normal speech. Phonetic /i/ sometimes occurs following /c/ or /s/ but can also be neutralized to /ə/. 2.3 Suprasegmentals (tones, registers, phonation) The basic vowels may occur as either long or short and in one of two registers. The two registers (phonation types) are called in Bru /pre:ŋ/ ‘sound of a small gong’ or /krɨ̤ ːm/ ‘sound of a large gong’. In other literature these are sometimes referred to as ‘light’ vs. ‘heavy’, ‘small voice’ vs. ‘large voice’, ‘tense’ vs. ‘lax’, or ‘first register’ vs. ‘second register’. In Bru the registers may also be recognized in the high and mid vowels by lower tongue-height positions gliding to a slightly higher position for the tense vowels and in the low-mid and low vowels by slight on-gliding from a mid- central vowel at the onset of the lax vowel. The acoustic differences between the various vowel nuclei in Bru have been described in Miller (1967). No register contrast has been noted for long /ɛ:/ in the dialect studied by the author, but the contrast has been reported by Vuong Huu Le (1998:102) e.g. /lɛ:h/ ‘to untie’ vs. /lɛ̤ :h/ ‘slope’ /tɛ:h/ ‘stick of wood’ vs. /tɛ̤ :h/ ‘leech’ the short mid vowel has both /ə:/ and /ə̤ :/ counterparts. the mid-low vowel /ɜ/ is perceived as tense in nature and has only a second-register long counterpart /ɜ̤ ː/. 3 Bru Tri Grammar Sketch The five diphthongs occur in both registers are show below with examples.. Dipthongs High to mid High to Low iə ia i̤ ə i̤ a ɨə ɨ̤ ə uə ua uə ua /tiən/ ‘money’ /ti̤ ən/ ‘add to’ /tian/ ‘wrap tightly’ /ti̤ an/ ‘candle’ /cɨəŋ/ ‘well’ /cɨ̤ əŋ/ ‘give birth (pig)’ /cuəp/ ‘about to’ /c̤ uəp/ ‘around’ /tuaŋ/ ‘strike metal’ /tuaŋ/ ‘pipe stem’ 2.4. Stress and Intonation Word stress is always found on the final (main) syllable. Yes-no questions are often accompanied by rising intonation and use of the clause-final question particle /tə:/. Other interrogatory sentences are marked by stress on the question marker. 2.5 Reduplication and Rhyming Full-word reduplication is not common in Bru, though it is occasionally used for emphasis. E.g. /bi:ʔ-bi:ʔ/ ‘few’ or /kət-kət/ ‘small’ where reduplication of the word gives intensity. A common feature of Mon-Khmer languages is the use of what has been variously termed expres- sives, ideophones, binomials, or double words (Watson 1980:76). In some cases these expressions have parts which are either rhyming or phonologically similar in some way. They may be very com- mon expressions or those which are created by the speaker. Some of these expressions take a word which has meaning by itself and add a second word which has no meaning of its own simply to add fullness or weight to the expression.