Martine Mazaudon | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research (original) (raw)
Papers by Martine Mazaudon
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman area, 2012
The influence of the manner of articulation of initials on tonal development is well established;... more The influence of the manner of articulation of initials on tonal development is well established; conversely, apparently irregular correspondences in manner among daughter languages can be the result of the indirect influence of tone and the complexity of onsets. We present three examples from TGTM (the Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manangba subgroup of Tibeto-Burman). This subgroup presents a classic case of initial-merger-with-tonal-split, in which the loss of a voicing contrast on initials in a two-tone system led to the development of a four-tone system. Where the *voiced series of proto-TGTM normally developed into a voiceless unaspirated series under both proto-tones, in Manangba it developed into an aspirated series under one of the proto-tones and into a voiceless unaspirated series under the other. In Gurung, we find a double conditioning of the manner of the initial by tone and segmental complexity of the onset: *voiced stops have become voiceless under proto-tone *I, but have ret...
Linguistics of the Himalayas and Beyond, 2007
... in the description of the "velar approximant" in Axininca Campa, analysed with the ... more ... in the description of the "velar approximant" in Axininca Campa, analysed with the features [+high +back] (Payne 1981: 61), which is interpreted as a pharyngeal glide by Yip (1983) and as the velar glide [iq] by Ladefoged and Maddieson ... 4ti thipholtoq — (loan) (loan) - 4[wi — ...
Phonetica, 2008
Tamang (Bodic division of Tibeto-Burman) is spoken at the edge of the East Asian 'tone-prone... 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 syllableinitial consonants, Tamang has four tonal categories instead of its earlier two-tone system; the present state of the prosodic system ...
1. The Bumthang languages Bhutan is home to perhaps a dozen Tibeto-Burman languages; the three ma... more 1. The Bumthang languages Bhutan is home to perhaps a dozen Tibeto-Burman languages; the three major ones, from west to east, are Dzongkha, the official language, linguistically a Tibetan dialect, Bumthap, and Sharchop (or Tshangla). The main language of Central Bhutan, Bumthap, and its varieties or relatives may be referred to as the Bumthang group. This group is somewhat diverse. We will base our description on Kurtoep (Kt), the language of Dungkar and the Kurtoe ("upper Kuru Valley") region in Lhuntse district to the east of Bumthang, on which we collected data in Delhi in 1977-78. Bumthap proper (Bt) is the language of the four valleys of Bumthang district; we have a small amount of data, collected in Bhutan in 1986, on the dialects of Chume (Cm), Choekhor (Ck), and Ura (U) (the remaining valley is Tang). Kurtoep, Bumthap proper, and, by all reports, Khengke, to the south of Bumthang, are mutually intelligible. We have also included some preliminary material on a more divergent language, Mangdep 1 , from Tangbi village in Tongsa district (see map), which may also belong to the Bumthang group. The Bumthang languages are clearly closely related to Tibetan in addition to being heavily influenced by it, but we will show evidence that they are not Tibetan dialects, that is, unlike Dzongkha, they are not continuations of (roughly) the language reflected in the Tibetan writing system.
Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area, 1985
... Tibetan was my only example in the Tibeto-Burman family, and its removal would thus have an o... more ... Tibetan was my only example in the Tibeto-Burman family, and its removal would thus have an obvious typological significance. ... The morpheme-tone hypothesis should imply that a word contains a succession of tones corresponding to its compounding morphemes. ...
... la théorie de l'évolution en biologie, dont était familier André Haudricourt, naturalist... more ... la théorie de l'évolution en biologie, dont était familier André Haudricourt, naturaliste de formation ... avec Blevins ou les Néogrammairiens, que le hasard soit à l'origine du changement ... celle considérée auparavant est un apport majeur pour la PP des théories post-fonctionnalistes ...
The Dialect Laboratory: Dialects as a testing ground for theories of language change, ed. by G. de Vogelaer & G. Seiler. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012
We examine a phonological change in progress in Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manangke (TGTM), a group of... more We examine a phonological change in progress in Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manangke (TGTM), a group of Tibeto-Burman dialects or languages of Nepal. Data from eight language varieties, five of them studied first-hand in the field, are presented. The phonological change studied is a modern-day instance of the tonal split which swept through the whole of Asia in the Middle Ages: Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and many less known languages underwent a merger of two of their series of initials (most commonly voiced/voiceless), resulting in a split of their tonal systems. Hypotheses about the modalities of implementation of this change have been offered, but modern day traces of intermediate stages are very limited. The languages of the Himalayas are situated at the geographical and chonological end of this wave so that the change is still in progress. In all the TGTM dialects studied here, the tonal split is phonologically completed, but traces of previous distinctions in manner of articulation and in phonation type survive, offering possible models for previously unobserved intermediate stages in tonogenesis. 1 From the similarities and differences observed between the dialects, some conclusions can be drawn. In diachrony, the common passage by a breathy stage between consonant-borne voice contrasts and tone, which has been proposed for the pan-Asian tonal split, is corroborated for all TGTM languages. But after the phonologization of tone, the degree, modality and factors of retention of the old features of voice and breathiness differ from dialect to dialect. Building on the repetition of distinct but similar changes, a tentative "law" is proposed for the evolution of breathiness, emphasizing the interplay of phonetic and phonological constraints in historical development: in a language where breathiness is used 1. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the following people either for discussion and references, or for comments and criticism on an earlier version of this paper:
Computational Linguistics, 1994
We describe the implementation of a computer program, the Reconstruction Engine (RE), which model... more We describe the implementation of a computer program, the Reconstruction Engine (RE), which models the comparative method for establishing genetic affiliation among a group of languages. The program is a research tool designed to aid the linguist in evaluating specific hypotheses, by calculating the consequences of a set of postulated sound changes (proposed by the linguist) on complete lexicons of several languages. It divides the lexicons into a phonologically regular part and a part that deviates from the sound laws. RE is bi-directionah given words in modern languages, it can propose cognate sets (with reconstructions); given reconstructions, it can project the modern forms that would result from regular changes. RE operates either interactively, allowing word-by-word evaluation of hypothesized sound changes and semantic shifts, or in a "batch" mode, processing entire multilingual lexicons en masse.
Prosodic analysis and …, Jan 1, 1988
… , Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 1994
![Research paper thumbnail of [Michailovsky, Mazaudon, Michaud, Guillaume, François & Adamou] Documenting and Researching Endangered Languages: The Pangloss Collection](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/34461112/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Boyd Michailovsky, Martine Mazaudon, Alexis Michaud, Séverine Guillaume, Alexandre François & Evangelia Adamou. 2014. Documenting and Researching Endangered Languages: The Pangloss Collection. _Language Documentation & Conservation_ 8 (2014), pp.119-135., Jun 2014
The Pangloss Collection [http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/index\_en.htm\] is a language archive d... more The Pangloss Collection [http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/index_en.htm] is a language archive developed since 1994 at the Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale (LACITO) research group of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). It contributes to the documentation and study of the world’s languages by providing free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in endangered or under-resourced languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. The Collection is an Open Archive containing media files (recordings), text annotations, and metadata; it currently contains over 1,400 recordings in 70 languages, including more than 400 transcribed and annotated documents. The annotations consist of transcription, free translation in English, French and/or other languages, and, in many cases, word or morpheme glosses; they are time-aligned with the recordings, usually at the utterance level. A web interface makes these annotations accessible online in an interlinear display format, in synchrony with the sound, using any standard browser. The structure of the XML documents makes them accessible to searching and indexing, always preserving the links to the recordings. Long-term preservation is guaranteed through a partnership with a digital archive. A guiding principle of the Pangloss Collection is that a close association between documentation and research is highly profitable to both. This article presents the collections currently available; it also aims to convey a sense of the range of possibilities they offer to the scientific and speaker communities and to the general public
The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2003
Linguistics of the Himalayas and beyond, p. 163-188, 2007
We describe in the Marphali dialect of Thakali (Nepal) an unsusual phoneme which we characterize ... more We describe in the Marphali dialect of Thakali (Nepal) an unsusual phoneme which we characterize as a consonantal or semi-vocalic ‟a”. This uvular or pharyngeal approximant, which is to /ɑ/ or /ʌ/ what /j/ is to /i/, /w/ to /u/ or /ɰ/ to /ɯ/ does not have a representation in the IPA. It can appear between an initial consonant and the nuclear vowels /i/ and /e/.
Understanding the relationship of a low vowel to the consonantal domain is a challenge for the classical classification of vowels, where ‘close’ is equated with ‘high’. To solve this representation problem, we resort to Catford’s analysis of vowels in terms of place of articulation and stricture type. In that analysis, the place of maximal constriction rather than the point of maximal height of the tongue is taken into consideration, and a natural class [i-ɨ-u-o-ɔ-ɑ] of ‟peripheral ‘narrow approximant’ vowels” (represented by the external arc on a polar co-ordinate diagram) emerges (Catford 1977 :186). This class has the potential to shift, historically, morpho-phonologically etc, between vocalic and consonantal status.
We trace a similar ‟a-glide” in a few other languages (Gurung, Gurage, Spanish, Aghem, Middle Chinese, etc) where it occurs in limited syllabic positions, or only as a phantom phonological item, or is revealed mostly by morpho-phonological alternations.
Comparative evidence is adduced to show several possible origins of this fully audible, if transient, phoneme in Marphali.
Theories of syllable structure based on a sonority hierarchy are discussed in the light of the fact that the non-syllabic status of this ‟a” in the presence of more sonorous vowels like [i] or [e] cannot be computed from generally admitted sonority hierarchies where ‟low vowels” are always considered as the most sonorous sounds.
We conclude that we need either to recognize [ɑ] and [ɑ̯] as potentially different phonemes, parallel to [u] and [w], and/or to revise the sonority hierarchy, or we will have to indicate the place of the nucleus in the lexical form of words. We suggest that in all events a symbol should be added to the inventory of the IPA for an ‟[ɑ]-approximant” between the (vowel) [ɑ] and the (fricative) [ʁ].
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman area, 1974
Syomhendo (Kathmandu, Nepal), 1993
In Lhasa Tibetan we can learn that in a word which begins with brgy-only gy in pronounced. This i... more In Lhasa Tibetan we can learn that in a word which begins with brgy-only gy in pronounced. This is the case in the word 'eight' pronounced gyeÚ , and also in other words, like '100', written brgya and pronounced gya . In comparing Tamang to Classical Tibetan, we could observe that in the word 'eight' the initial group brgy is pronounced br . But the word for '100' in Tamang is gyarca , with gy instead of br corresponding to Written Tibetan brgy. So while in Lhasa a single pronunciation rule can be learned, in Tamang we would need two different rules: 'brgy-is sounded gy', for the word '100', but 'brgy-is sounded br' for the word 'eight'. This will not make it easier for Tamang children to learn how to read and write! On the other hand, the Tibetan alphabet, simply as an alphabet, not as a spelling system, is one of the possible choices. In that option, 'eight' in Tamang would be written dC [-or something like that, as we will see later, and not d›X [-.
The 14th Manchester Phonology Meeting (2006)
Introduction: The lexical tones of the Bodic language group (Sino-Tibetan family), and of the Tam... 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 data were collected in the field from 5 Tamang speakers (143 monosyllabic CV and disyllabic CVCV words, illustrating the 4 tones), 5 Naxi speakers and 4 Vietnamese speakers, using electroglottography to obtain indications on voice quality. Results: Cross-language differences in variability and language-specific patterns of least variability emerge. In the speech of the five Tamang subjects, one of the four tones (tone 3, which is low-rising) departs significantly from the other three by a breathy voice quality (sporadically accompanied by voicing of the initial consonant; voicing is not contrastive in Tamang). The four Tamang tones are highly variable in terms of F0, as well as in terms of open quotient; the ranges of variation of the four tones overlap. By contrast, in our Vietnamese data, the F0 and voice quality of each tone are more tightly controlled. In Naxi (where tones do not carry a voice quality specification), the F0 standard deviation is limited, whereas voice quality varies according to speaker-specific strategies. Discussion: One of the options open for the phonological modelling of the Tamang tone system is to consider it as a scalar system of four tones from highest to lowest. Under this view, voice quality could be considered as a secondary feature of the tones (variation on the 'non-tonic' syllable of a disyllabic phonological word could also be viewed as a coarticulatory consequences of a syllabic tone). It appears, however, that the 'secondary' characteristics of the Tamang tones are best analysed as features of these tones. This synchronic observation is in keeping with the historical origin of these tones in segmental material at the beginning and the end of words. Proposals for a characterisation of tone in terms of multiple correlates (a template representation, rather than an analysis into distinctive features) are put forward in light of diachronic dynamics, on the one hand, and synchronic realisation, on the other. The implications are discussed in a debate with some current theories of tone (in particular Hyman 2001) and of linguistic typology. Reference
Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2006, 2006
The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F 0 and voice quality characteristics: two... more The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F 0 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.
Fifteenth International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 1982
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman area, 2012
The influence of the manner of articulation of initials on tonal development is well established;... more The influence of the manner of articulation of initials on tonal development is well established; conversely, apparently irregular correspondences in manner among daughter languages can be the result of the indirect influence of tone and the complexity of onsets. We present three examples from TGTM (the Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manangba subgroup of Tibeto-Burman). This subgroup presents a classic case of initial-merger-with-tonal-split, in which the loss of a voicing contrast on initials in a two-tone system led to the development of a four-tone system. Where the *voiced series of proto-TGTM normally developed into a voiceless unaspirated series under both proto-tones, in Manangba it developed into an aspirated series under one of the proto-tones and into a voiceless unaspirated series under the other. In Gurung, we find a double conditioning of the manner of the initial by tone and segmental complexity of the onset: *voiced stops have become voiceless under proto-tone *I, but have ret...
Linguistics of the Himalayas and Beyond, 2007
... in the description of the "velar approximant" in Axininca Campa, analysed with the ... more ... in the description of the "velar approximant" in Axininca Campa, analysed with the features [+high +back] (Payne 1981: 61), which is interpreted as a pharyngeal glide by Yip (1983) and as the velar glide [iq] by Ladefoged and Maddieson ... 4ti thipholtoq — (loan) (loan) - 4[wi — ...
Phonetica, 2008
Tamang (Bodic division of Tibeto-Burman) is spoken at the edge of the East Asian 'tone-prone... 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 syllableinitial consonants, Tamang has four tonal categories instead of its earlier two-tone system; the present state of the prosodic system ...
1. The Bumthang languages Bhutan is home to perhaps a dozen Tibeto-Burman languages; the three ma... more 1. The Bumthang languages Bhutan is home to perhaps a dozen Tibeto-Burman languages; the three major ones, from west to east, are Dzongkha, the official language, linguistically a Tibetan dialect, Bumthap, and Sharchop (or Tshangla). The main language of Central Bhutan, Bumthap, and its varieties or relatives may be referred to as the Bumthang group. This group is somewhat diverse. We will base our description on Kurtoep (Kt), the language of Dungkar and the Kurtoe ("upper Kuru Valley") region in Lhuntse district to the east of Bumthang, on which we collected data in Delhi in 1977-78. Bumthap proper (Bt) is the language of the four valleys of Bumthang district; we have a small amount of data, collected in Bhutan in 1986, on the dialects of Chume (Cm), Choekhor (Ck), and Ura (U) (the remaining valley is Tang). Kurtoep, Bumthap proper, and, by all reports, Khengke, to the south of Bumthang, are mutually intelligible. We have also included some preliminary material on a more divergent language, Mangdep 1 , from Tangbi village in Tongsa district (see map), which may also belong to the Bumthang group. The Bumthang languages are clearly closely related to Tibetan in addition to being heavily influenced by it, but we will show evidence that they are not Tibetan dialects, that is, unlike Dzongkha, they are not continuations of (roughly) the language reflected in the Tibetan writing system.
Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area, 1985
... Tibetan was my only example in the Tibeto-Burman family, and its removal would thus have an o... more ... Tibetan was my only example in the Tibeto-Burman family, and its removal would thus have an obvious typological significance. ... The morpheme-tone hypothesis should imply that a word contains a succession of tones corresponding to its compounding morphemes. ...
... la théorie de l'évolution en biologie, dont était familier André Haudricourt, naturalist... more ... la théorie de l'évolution en biologie, dont était familier André Haudricourt, naturaliste de formation ... avec Blevins ou les Néogrammairiens, que le hasard soit à l'origine du changement ... celle considérée auparavant est un apport majeur pour la PP des théories post-fonctionnalistes ...
The Dialect Laboratory: Dialects as a testing ground for theories of language change, ed. by G. de Vogelaer & G. Seiler. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012
We examine a phonological change in progress in Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manangke (TGTM), a group of... more We examine a phonological change in progress in Tamang-Gurung-Thakali-Manangke (TGTM), a group of Tibeto-Burman dialects or languages of Nepal. Data from eight language varieties, five of them studied first-hand in the field, are presented. The phonological change studied is a modern-day instance of the tonal split which swept through the whole of Asia in the Middle Ages: Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and many less known languages underwent a merger of two of their series of initials (most commonly voiced/voiceless), resulting in a split of their tonal systems. Hypotheses about the modalities of implementation of this change have been offered, but modern day traces of intermediate stages are very limited. The languages of the Himalayas are situated at the geographical and chonological end of this wave so that the change is still in progress. In all the TGTM dialects studied here, the tonal split is phonologically completed, but traces of previous distinctions in manner of articulation and in phonation type survive, offering possible models for previously unobserved intermediate stages in tonogenesis. 1 From the similarities and differences observed between the dialects, some conclusions can be drawn. In diachrony, the common passage by a breathy stage between consonant-borne voice contrasts and tone, which has been proposed for the pan-Asian tonal split, is corroborated for all TGTM languages. But after the phonologization of tone, the degree, modality and factors of retention of the old features of voice and breathiness differ from dialect to dialect. Building on the repetition of distinct but similar changes, a tentative "law" is proposed for the evolution of breathiness, emphasizing the interplay of phonetic and phonological constraints in historical development: in a language where breathiness is used 1. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the following people either for discussion and references, or for comments and criticism on an earlier version of this paper:
Computational Linguistics, 1994
We describe the implementation of a computer program, the Reconstruction Engine (RE), which model... more We describe the implementation of a computer program, the Reconstruction Engine (RE), which models the comparative method for establishing genetic affiliation among a group of languages. The program is a research tool designed to aid the linguist in evaluating specific hypotheses, by calculating the consequences of a set of postulated sound changes (proposed by the linguist) on complete lexicons of several languages. It divides the lexicons into a phonologically regular part and a part that deviates from the sound laws. RE is bi-directionah given words in modern languages, it can propose cognate sets (with reconstructions); given reconstructions, it can project the modern forms that would result from regular changes. RE operates either interactively, allowing word-by-word evaluation of hypothesized sound changes and semantic shifts, or in a "batch" mode, processing entire multilingual lexicons en masse.
Prosodic analysis and …, Jan 1, 1988
… , Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 1994
Boyd Michailovsky, Martine Mazaudon, Alexis Michaud, Séverine Guillaume, Alexandre François & Evangelia Adamou. 2014. Documenting and Researching Endangered Languages: The Pangloss Collection. _Language Documentation & Conservation_ 8 (2014), pp.119-135., Jun 2014
The Pangloss Collection [http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/index\_en.htm\] is a language archive d... more The Pangloss Collection [http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/pangloss/index_en.htm] is a language archive developed since 1994 at the Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale (LACITO) research group of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). It contributes to the documentation and study of the world’s languages by providing free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in endangered or under-resourced languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. The Collection is an Open Archive containing media files (recordings), text annotations, and metadata; it currently contains over 1,400 recordings in 70 languages, including more than 400 transcribed and annotated documents. The annotations consist of transcription, free translation in English, French and/or other languages, and, in many cases, word or morpheme glosses; they are time-aligned with the recordings, usually at the utterance level. A web interface makes these annotations accessible online in an interlinear display format, in synchrony with the sound, using any standard browser. The structure of the XML documents makes them accessible to searching and indexing, always preserving the links to the recordings. Long-term preservation is guaranteed through a partnership with a digital archive. A guiding principle of the Pangloss Collection is that a close association between documentation and research is highly profitable to both. This article presents the collections currently available; it also aims to convey a sense of the range of possibilities they offer to the scientific and speaker communities and to the general public
The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2003
Linguistics of the Himalayas and beyond, p. 163-188, 2007
We describe in the Marphali dialect of Thakali (Nepal) an unsusual phoneme which we characterize ... more We describe in the Marphali dialect of Thakali (Nepal) an unsusual phoneme which we characterize as a consonantal or semi-vocalic ‟a”. This uvular or pharyngeal approximant, which is to /ɑ/ or /ʌ/ what /j/ is to /i/, /w/ to /u/ or /ɰ/ to /ɯ/ does not have a representation in the IPA. It can appear between an initial consonant and the nuclear vowels /i/ and /e/.
Understanding the relationship of a low vowel to the consonantal domain is a challenge for the classical classification of vowels, where ‘close’ is equated with ‘high’. To solve this representation problem, we resort to Catford’s analysis of vowels in terms of place of articulation and stricture type. In that analysis, the place of maximal constriction rather than the point of maximal height of the tongue is taken into consideration, and a natural class [i-ɨ-u-o-ɔ-ɑ] of ‟peripheral ‘narrow approximant’ vowels” (represented by the external arc on a polar co-ordinate diagram) emerges (Catford 1977 :186). This class has the potential to shift, historically, morpho-phonologically etc, between vocalic and consonantal status.
We trace a similar ‟a-glide” in a few other languages (Gurung, Gurage, Spanish, Aghem, Middle Chinese, etc) where it occurs in limited syllabic positions, or only as a phantom phonological item, or is revealed mostly by morpho-phonological alternations.
Comparative evidence is adduced to show several possible origins of this fully audible, if transient, phoneme in Marphali.
Theories of syllable structure based on a sonority hierarchy are discussed in the light of the fact that the non-syllabic status of this ‟a” in the presence of more sonorous vowels like [i] or [e] cannot be computed from generally admitted sonority hierarchies where ‟low vowels” are always considered as the most sonorous sounds.
We conclude that we need either to recognize [ɑ] and [ɑ̯] as potentially different phonemes, parallel to [u] and [w], and/or to revise the sonority hierarchy, or we will have to indicate the place of the nucleus in the lexical form of words. We suggest that in all events a symbol should be added to the inventory of the IPA for an ‟[ɑ]-approximant” between the (vowel) [ɑ] and the (fricative) [ʁ].
Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman area, 1974
Syomhendo (Kathmandu, Nepal), 1993
In Lhasa Tibetan we can learn that in a word which begins with brgy-only gy in pronounced. This i... more In Lhasa Tibetan we can learn that in a word which begins with brgy-only gy in pronounced. This is the case in the word 'eight' pronounced gyeÚ , and also in other words, like '100', written brgya and pronounced gya . In comparing Tamang to Classical Tibetan, we could observe that in the word 'eight' the initial group brgy is pronounced br . But the word for '100' in Tamang is gyarca , with gy instead of br corresponding to Written Tibetan brgy. So while in Lhasa a single pronunciation rule can be learned, in Tamang we would need two different rules: 'brgy-is sounded gy', for the word '100', but 'brgy-is sounded br' for the word 'eight'. This will not make it easier for Tamang children to learn how to read and write! On the other hand, the Tibetan alphabet, simply as an alphabet, not as a spelling system, is one of the possible choices. In that option, 'eight' in Tamang would be written dC [-or something like that, as we will see later, and not d›X [-.
The 14th Manchester Phonology Meeting (2006)
Introduction: The lexical tones of the Bodic language group (Sino-Tibetan family), and of the Tam... 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 data were collected in the field from 5 Tamang speakers (143 monosyllabic CV and disyllabic CVCV words, illustrating the 4 tones), 5 Naxi speakers and 4 Vietnamese speakers, using electroglottography to obtain indications on voice quality. Results: Cross-language differences in variability and language-specific patterns of least variability emerge. In the speech of the five Tamang subjects, one of the four tones (tone 3, which is low-rising) departs significantly from the other three by a breathy voice quality (sporadically accompanied by voicing of the initial consonant; voicing is not contrastive in Tamang). The four Tamang tones are highly variable in terms of F0, as well as in terms of open quotient; the ranges of variation of the four tones overlap. By contrast, in our Vietnamese data, the F0 and voice quality of each tone are more tightly controlled. In Naxi (where tones do not carry a voice quality specification), the F0 standard deviation is limited, whereas voice quality varies according to speaker-specific strategies. Discussion: One of the options open for the phonological modelling of the Tamang tone system is to consider it as a scalar system of four tones from highest to lowest. Under this view, voice quality could be considered as a secondary feature of the tones (variation on the 'non-tonic' syllable of a disyllabic phonological word could also be viewed as a coarticulatory consequences of a syllabic tone). It appears, however, that the 'secondary' characteristics of the Tamang tones are best analysed as features of these tones. This synchronic observation is in keeping with the historical origin of these tones in segmental material at the beginning and the end of words. Proposals for a characterisation of tone in terms of multiple correlates (a template representation, rather than an analysis into distinctive features) are put forward in light of diachronic dynamics, on the one hand, and synchronic realisation, on the other. The implications are discussed in a debate with some current theories of tone (in particular Hyman 2001) and of linguistic typology. Reference
Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2006, 2006
The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F 0 and voice quality characteristics: two... more The tones of Tamang (Sino-Tibetan family) involve both F 0 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.
Fifteenth International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, 1982
Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 1991
Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 1975
Phonetica, Jan 1, 2008
Tamang (Bodic division of Tibeto-Burman) is spoken at the edge of the East Asian "tone-prone" zon... 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 millenia. 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 five speakers were conducted (total number of target syllables analysed: 1651). They allow for a description in terms of F0, glottal open quotient, duration, and realisation of consonants. The results confirm the diversity of cues to the four tonal categories, and show evidence of laxness on tones 3 and 4, i.e. on the two tones which originate diachronically in voiced initials. The discussion hinges on the phonological definition of tone.
Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2006, 823–826. Dresden., Jan 1, 2006
Language Documentation and Conservation, 2014
The Pangloss Collection is a language archive developed since 1994 at the LACITO (Langues et Civi... more The Pangloss Collection is a language archive developed since 1994 at the LACITO (Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale) research group of the French CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). It contributes to the documentation and study of the world’s languages by providing free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in endangered or under-resourced languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. The Collection is an Open Archive containing media files (recordings), text annotations, and metadata; it currently contains over 1,400 recordings in 70 languages, including more than 400 transcribed and annotated documents. The annotations consist of transcription, free translation in English, French and/or other languages, and, in many cases, word or morpheme glosses; they are time-aligned with the recordings, usually at the utterance level. A web interface makes these annotations accessible online in an interlinear display format, in synchrony with the sound, using any standard browser. The structure of the XML documents makes them accessible to searching and indexing, always preserving the links to the recordings. Long-term preservation is guaranteed through a partnership with a digital archive. A guiding principle of the Pangloss Collection is that a close association between documentation and research is highly profitable to both. This article presents the collections currently available; it also aims to convey a sense of the range of possibilities they offer to the scientific and speaker communities and to the general public.
