Chapter X: Eastern Cham 1 Colloquial Eastern Cham Marc Brunelle Phú Văn Hẳn Eastern Cham is an Austronesian language spoken by about 100,000 people in the provinces of Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận, in south-central Vietnam (Brunelle 2008). Eastern Cham communities are scattered throughout these two provinces and are interspersed with Vietnamese communities. As a result, all Eastern Cham speakers are now at least fluent in Vietnamese and younger speakers usually speak it natively. Until the 19th century, Cham (along with other Chamic languages and possible some Mon-Khmer languages) was the language of the “confederation” of Champa, a mandala-type kingdom located on the central coast of Vietnam that was gradually absorbed by the Vietnamese state from the 10th to the 19th century. As a former state language, Cham has a long written tradition, despite the fact that its script is now barely used (Brunelle 2008). Although there have been a number of descriptions of Eastern Cham, most of them have focused on the written language or on the formal language that is usually volunteered by speakers in data elicitation sessions (Aymonier 1889; Aymonier and Cabaton 1906; Moussay 1971; Bùi 1995; 1996a; b; Thurgood 2005; Moussay 2006). However, the differences between the colloquial and formal languages and the contexts of functional use of each variety strongly suggest that Eastern Cham is now in a diglossic situation (Brunelle 2008; 2009). The two varieties show marked differences, especially in their phonologies and in the degree to which they have been affected by Vietnamese. The goal of this article is to complement previous work by presenting a basic description of the colloquial language, which, as a living and quickly evolving language, is the locus of language convergence. The data provided in this paper are therefore entirely given in their colloquial form. We are well aware that this is controversial and that many Cham intellectuals oppose any scholarly description of what they consider a corrupt form of speech. However, as the colloquial variety is de facto the real language of the community, we believe it deserves to be described. The data presented in this paper have been collected from a large number of consultants living in Ninh Thuận province and Hồ Chí Minh City over the past few years. They have been complemented and double-checked against the intuitions of the second author, who is a native speaker of Eastern Cham born in the village of Vụ Bổn, in Ninh Thuận. The reader should keep in mind that grammaticality judgments are difficult to elicit in a language that shows substantial sociolectal and dialectal diversity, does not have clear standards and is barely taught in schools. Overall, Cham speakers have much less rigid grammaticality judgments than speakers of large written languages like English, French or Vietnamese. Widespread bilingualism in Vietnamese further increases the tolerance of speakers to forms that would probably have been judged ungrammatical a few generations ago. 2 Marc Brunelle Phú Văn Hẳn 1. Phonology Our phonology section slightly departs from the basic organization found in other chapters of this book. Since the basic word template plays a crucial role in the phonotactic restrictions found in Eastern Cham, it will be addressed first (§ 1.1) and will be followed by descriptions of segmental (§ 1.2) and suprasegmental phoneme inventories (§ 1.3). 1.1. Basic word template and syllable structure The formal variety of Eastern Cham has two main types of word templates: monosyllables and sesquisyllables (Blood 1967; Thurgood 1996; 1999). Sesquisyllables are words made up of “a syllable and a half” (Matisoff 1973), i.e. disyllabic words with a major syllable and a reduced minor syllable. The final or main syllable of a sesquisyllable is stressed and exhibits the entire array of possible phonological contrasts, while its presyllable only contains a subset of the vowels, onsets and codas found in the main syllable. This is shown schematically in (1a). (1) Word shapes in the formal (a) and colloquial (b) varieties a. σ σ (C) (V) (C) C (G/L) V (C) b. σ (C) C (G) V (C) By contrast, the colloquial variety (1b) has lost most of its sesquisyllables, due to a diachronic process of monosyllabization (Trung-tâm Văn-hoá Chàm 197?; Alieva 1991; 1994; Brunelle 2005b; 2009). Exceptions include religious and learned vocabulary items, which could be considered as inherently formal. A few sesquisyllables are also preserved to avoid homophony. The best example of that is the contrast between tt apăn ‘eight’ and thampăn ‘nine’, which would both be realized as [păn] if they were monosyllabized. Monosyllabization has taken place either through the loss of the entire presyllable, or through the elision of its vowel and the formation of an onset cluster composed of the onset of the presyllable and the onset of the main syllable. The complete loss of the presyllable or the formation of an onset cluster, and the exact realization of clusters (if clusters are formed at all), greatly vary across villages, age groups and genders. Without a full sociolinguistic survey, it is difficult to lay out precise rules, but two general principles seem to constrain the outcome of monosyllabization: 1) Clusters usually follow the sonority hierarchy, although some clusters consisting of a nasal and a stop can violate it, as in mta ‘eye’. 2) If the onset of the main syllable was originally a liquid [l] or [r], a cluster is usually formed (as in plɛɛ j or mlɛɛ j ‘village’ < palɛɛ j). An important point regarding the syllable structure given in (1) is that there are no words without onset. Several dictionaries and grammars omit to mark onset glottal stops or choose not to do it for convenience (Moussay 1971; Bùi 1995; 1996a), but the presence of the onset glottal stop is carefully marked elsewhere (Blood 1967). 1.2. Segmental phonemes: consonants and vowels Two factors constrain the phonotactic distribution of segments in Eastern Cham: the syllable in which they stand and their position in the syllable. As the Chapter X: Eastern Cham 3 colloquial variety is now almost entirely monosyllabic, the segments found in presyllables could be omitted. However, some words related to religion or other cultural activities are inherently formal and are therefore sesquisyllabic even in the colloquial language. We thus give the segmental inventory of presyllables, even if they are relatively uncommon. 1.2.1. Consonants Main syllable onsets The full inventory of consonants, given in (2), surfaces in the onset of the main syllable. There are five places of articulation: labial, dental, palatal, velar and laryngeal. In addition to three series of stops (plain voiceless, voiceless aspirated and voiced implosive), there are voiceless fricatives, nasals, liquids and glides. (2) lab. dent. pal. vel. lar. plain stops p t c k Ɂ asp. stops ph th ch kh implosives ɓ ɗ ʄ fricatives s h nasals m n ɲ ŋ liquids l, r glides j w preglottalized glides Ɂj Ɂw This inventory is fairly consensual. The only divergence between authors is that Moussay treats the preglottalized glides /Ɂw-/ and /Ɂj-/ as simplex phonemes (Moussay 1971) whereas other scholars analyze them as sequences of glottal stops plus glides (Blood 1967; Bùi 1996a; Phú 2003). The distribution of medial glides suggests that the second solution is preferable: all onsets can be followed by the medial glides /-j-, -w-/ except the contentious preglottalized glides themselves. Another interesting fact about glides is that onset /w-/ cannot form a cluster with medial /-j-/, but that the cluster /jw-/ is possible, as in jwa, ‘because’. The liquids /r/ and /l/ can also be found in medial position. They never form clusters with sonorants in the formal variety, but often combine with /m-/ in the colloquial variety. Some onsets have several possible realizations. The aspirated /ph, th, kh/ can be realized as [f, s, x] respectively. The sonorant /w/ frequently alternates with [v] and [ʋ], while /r/ can be pronounced as [r], [z], [j] or [ʒ]. The voiced fricative [z] is also a common surface form of /j/. Combinations of onsets and medial glides or liquids have an even wider array of possible realizations. For example, /tr-/ can be realized as [tr-], [tʃ-] or [c-] and /tl-/ is often changed to [kl-]. These variants are largely determined by sociolinguistic factors, but since many of them are also idiosyncratic, they will not be discussed in detail here. What is interesting is that a number of them, especially the realization of [ʋ] as [v] and of aspirated stops as fricatives seem to bring the Cham inventory closer to Vietnamese. The fact [th] is the only Eastern Cham aspirate that does not spirantize seems to support this claim, as it is also the only aspirated stop in modern Vietnamese. Main syllable codas As in most Mainland Southeast Asian languages, the coda consonant inventory of Eastern Cham is a subset of onset consonants. It is given in (3). 4 Marc Brunelle Phú Văn Hẳn (3) lab. dent. pal./vel. lar. plain stops p [p~wɁ] t c [jɁ] Ɂ fricatives s [jh] h nasals m n ŋ glides j/w Several authors mention the fact that the coda stops of Eastern Cham are debuccalized (Aymonier 1889; Blood 1967; Moussay 1971; Hoàng 1987; Bùi 1996a). This has led other researchers to posit a process of place neutralization in codas (Phú, Edmondson and Gregerson 1992; Thurgood 1999). The actual situation is far from being that simple. Codas are often debuccalized, but contrasts are still maintained. While coda /-p/ is realized as either [-p] or [-wɁ] and coda /-c/ is systematically reduced to [-jɁ], coda /-t/ is still preserved everywhere, except in the word kt eɁ ‘what’, historically hakt ɛɛ t.