Apatani phonology and lexicon, with a special focus on tone
Abstract
Despite being one of the most extensively researched of Eastern Himalayan languages, the basic morphological and phonological-prosodic properties of Apatani (Tibeto-Burman > Tani > Western) have not yet been adequately described. This article attempts such a description, focusing especially on interactions between segmental-syllabic phonology and tone in Apatani. We highlight three features in particular – vowel length, nasality and a glottal stop – which contribute to contrastively-weighted syllables in Apatani, which are consistently under-represented in previous descriptions of Apatani, and in absence of which tone in Apatani cannot be effectively analysed. We conclude that Apatani has two “underlying”, lexically-specified tone categories H and L, whose interaction with word structure and syllable weight produce a maximum of three “surface” pitch contours – level, falling and rising – on disyllabic phonological words. Two appendices provide a set of diagnostic procedures for the discovery and description of Apatani tone categories, as well as an Apatani lexicon of approximately one thousand entries.
Date Issued
2013
Publication Type
Article
Subject(s)
Subjects
lexicon
•
tone
•
morphophonology
•
Tibeto-Burman languages
•
Tani languages
•
Eastern Himalayan languages
•
Apatani
Language(s)
en
Author(s)
Additional Credits
Journal
Himalayan linguistics
Publisher
University of California, Santa Barbara
ISSN
1544-7502
Access(Rights)
open.access