Following the transphonologization of a contrast in voicing on initial consonants into a tonal contrast, we examine the conditions under which some traces of the old voicing are retained on a limited number of segments, in specific... more
Following the transphonologization of a contrast in voicing on initial consonants into a tonal contrast, we examine the conditions under which some traces of the old voicing are retained on a limited number of segments, in specific contexts and words.
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Research Interests: Computer Science, Documentation, Open Access, Metadata, Language Documentation, and 15 moreEndangered Languages, Sound archives, XML Databases, Oral literature, Archive, World Wide Web, Online Databases, Language documentation and conservation, Language Documentation and Description, Sound Archive, Interlinear Morphemic Glossing, Language description and documentation, Long Term Preservation, Multimedia Corpora, and Pangloss Collection
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Title: Pitch and voice quality characteristics of the lexical word-tones of Tamang, as compared
The origin of the Tamang and of the first Tamang clans
How a mother sparrow obtains custody of her daughter (a tale)
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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or... more
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Copyright Cue weighting after a tone-split in Tamang (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) A perception study of stop initial words Martine Mazaudon, Jiayin Gao
Research Interests: Psychology and Perception
The languages of the Tamang group (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) are presently in the process of developing tones from an earlier opposition of voicing on word-initial consonants (“tone split” in an old two-tone system: voiceless onsets > 2... more
The languages of the Tamang group (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) are presently in the process of developing tones from an earlier opposition of voicing on word-initial consonants (“tone split” in an old two-tone system: voiceless onsets > 2 high tones; voiced onsets > 2 low tones). In this group of languages, we observe a large amount of variation between dialects, between speakers, and within speakers concerning the realization of the features which define each tone. We interpret these variations as different degrees of retention of earlier features (Mazaudon, 2012). A previous phonetic study of the Tamang dialect of Risiangku (Mazaudon & Michaud, 2008) demonstrated the use of F0 and phonation, and to a lesser degree of initial stop voicing, as cues to the four tones of the system. The retention of breathiness and stop initial voicing with low pitch tones may be explained by mutual enhancement (Silverman, 1997). In the Tamang dialect of Taglung, one of the two low tones has evolved i...
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Introduction: The lexical tones of the Bodic language group (Sino-Tibetan family), and of the Tamang language in particular, raise a challenge for theories of tone, and for prosodic phonology: (i) their domain is the phonological word... more
Introduction: The lexical tones of the Bodic language group (Sino-Tibetan family), and of the Tamang language in particular, raise a challenge for theories of tone, and for prosodic phonology: (i) their domain is the phonological word (whether monosyllabic or polysyllabic), not the syllable or the mora; (ii) their phonetic realisation is highly variable, and involves F0 and voice quality characteristics of the syllable rhyme as well as characteristics of the syllable-initial consonants (as described in earlier studies by the first author). In an effort to refine on the phonological characterisation of these tones, a cross-linguistic experiment was set up, comparing the pitch and voice quality characteristics of the Tamang tones with similar data from Naxi, a language which possesses a relatively simple system of level tones (without phonological use of voice quality), and from Vietnamese, which possesses tones that combine pitch and voice quality specifications. Method: Experimental...
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The neo-grammarian principle of the regularity of sound change has encountered string opposition from the very time of its formulation, based essentially on the existence of a non-negligible proportion of exceptions to the postulated... more
The neo-grammarian principle of the regularity of sound change has encountered string opposition from the very time of its formulation, based essentially on the existence of a non-negligible proportion of exceptions to the postulated regular laws. For most of the 20th century, it seemed that peace had been established in the shape of a synthesis, which was not fully explicit, in favor of regular sound change but allowing for ither processes as well. In the late 1960s however, this equilibrium has been brought into question, mostly following the work of William Wang, to the point not only of diminishing the part played by regular sound change, but of removing it from the core of the theory, and denying its place altogether. In the first part of this paper, we criticize the arguments brought against the regularity of sound change. Nevertheless exceptions remain a major methodological problem for the historical linguist. Determining what constitutes a genuine exception and what does no...
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Vowel length in open syllables is a rare feature in Tibeto-Burman languages. It is not reconstructed at the Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) level, and it is not widely reported in modern languages. The languages of the Tamang group (= TGTM,... more
Vowel length in open syllables is a rare feature in Tibeto-Burman languages. It is not reconstructed at the Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) level, and it is not widely reported in modern languages. The languages of the Tamang group (= TGTM, Shafer's (1955) Gurung branch of Bodish) have developed it and are in the process of losing it again, as a part of a general process of reduction of the syllable canon. We touch briefly upon the development of vowel length on open syllables in Proto-Tamang (= Proto-TGTM), and concentrate on the different evolution patterns followed by diverse dialects in eliminating vowel length contrast.
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Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1989), pp. 367-378
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We conducted a perception experiment in the field to examine the synchronic consequences of a tonal split in Risiangku Tamang (Tibeto-Burman). Proto-Tamang was a two-tone language with three series of plosives and two series of... more
We conducted a perception experiment in the field to examine the synchronic consequences of a tonal split in Risiangku Tamang (Tibeto-Burman). Proto-Tamang was a two-tone language with three series of plosives and two series of continuants. The merger of its continuants provoked a split of the original two tones into four, two high and two low, which combine pitch and phonation features. The quasi-merger of the voiced and voiceless plosives left sporadic remnants of initial plosive voicing in low tone syllables. A previous production study has shown that speakers use pitch and phonation features concomitantly to distinguish high from low tones, while producing initial plosive voicing only marginally with low tones. The present perception study establishes the preeminence of the pitch cue, but also confirms the effective use of the two older cues in tone identification. An apparent-time analysis shows the phonation cue to be less used by younger speakers, in keeping with the historic...
Tamang (Bodic division of Tibeto-Burman) is spoken at the edge of the East Asian ‘tone-prone’ zone, next to the almost tone-free Indian linguistic area, and is, chronologically, at the late end of the tone multiplication wave which has... more
Tamang (Bodic division of Tibeto-Burman) is spoken at the edge of the East Asian ‘tone-prone’ zone, next to the almost tone-free Indian linguistic area, and is, chronologically, at the late end of the tone multiplication wave which has swept through East Asia in the course of the last two millennia. It can be regarded as a ‘missing link’ in tonogenesis: following the loss of voicing contrasts on syllable-initial consonants, Tamang has four tonal categories instead of its earlier two-tone system; the present state of the prosodic system is typologically transitional, in that these four tonal categories are realised by several cues which include fundamental frequency (F0), phonation type, and allophonic variation in the realisation of consonants. Acoustic and electroglottographic recordings of 131 words in two carrier sentences by 5 speakers were conducted (total number of target syllables analysed: n = 1,651). They allow for a description in terms of F0, glottal open quotient, durati...
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This paper focuses on the particular kinds of difficulties which arise in the study of an emergent tone-system, exemplified by Tamang in Nepal, where pitch, phonation and other laryngeal features combine in the definition of a tone. As a... more
This paper focuses on the particular kinds of difficulties which arise in the study of an emergent tone-system, exemplified by Tamang in Nepal, where pitch, phonation and other laryngeal features combine in the definition of a tone. As a consequence, conducting a well-ordered analysis in stages first of phonetic transcription, then variation in context, then interpretation is not possible. Rather we have to discover the contrasting categories first, and study their phonetic realization next, or do both at the same time. This also leads to questioning the validity of the traditional distinction of features into “distinctive” and “redundant” and proposing instead an analysis of an abstract “tone” as a bundle of cues. We will only sketch the second characteristic of the Tamang tone system, the extension of tone over the phonological word. The contributions of instrumental studies and of a comparative-historical perspective are discussed.
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The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F0 and voice quality characteristics: two of the four tones (tones 3 and 4) were reported to be breathy in studies from the 1970s. For the present research (thirty years later), audio... more
The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F0 and voice quality characteristics: two of the four tones (tones 3 and 4) were reported to be breathy in studies from the 1970s. For the present research (thirty years later), audio and electroglottographic data were collected from 5 speakers of the Risiangku dialect in their 30s or 40s. Voice quality is estimated by computing the glottal open quotient. The present results bear on 788 syllables (from a corpus of 6,500). They show that in the speech of three speakers (M2, M3, M5), tones 3 and 4 have a higher open quotient (which provides an indirect cue to the degree of breathiness) than tones 1 and 2, with tone 3 more clearly so than tone 4, especially for speaker M2. The difference in open quotient between the four tones for the other two speakers is negligible or inconsistent. The Tamang data are compared with similar data from Naxi, which possesses level tones, and from Vietnamese, which possesses pitch-plus-voice-quality t...
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The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F0 and voice quality characteristics: two of the four tones (tones 3 and 4) were reported to be breathy in studies from the 1970s. For the present research (thirty years later), audio... more
The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F0 and voice quality characteristics: two of the four tones (tones 3 and 4) were reported to be breathy in studies from the 1970s. For the present research (thirty years later), audio and electroglottographic data were collected from 5 speakers of the Risiangku dialect in their 30s or 40s. Voice quality is estimated by computing the glottal open quotient. The present results bear on 788 syllables (from a corpus of 6,500). They show that in the speech of three speakers (M2, M3 ...