The Tonal Classification of Chungli Ao Verbs

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the tonal behavi our exhibited by verb stems in Chungli Ao, a Tibeto-Burman language of north-east India. Three verb stem classes are established, and their tonal properties, along with those of various inflectional suffixes, are examined within the framework of Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith 1976a, 1976b). 1. CHUNGLI AO Chungli is the prestige dialect of Ao, a Tibeto- Burman language spoken in Nagaland, a hill state in north-east India. Chungli speakers number around 90,000, while the related dialect of Mongsen has approximately 70,000 speakers (Coupe 2008). Although genetic classificat ion of the so-called Naga languages is far from settled, a recent tentative a ttempt categorizes these two dialects of with the languages of Yacham-Tengsa, Sangtam, Yimchungru, and Lotha to form the Ao Group (Burling 2003). Most of the linguistic on the Chungli variety of is from the late 19 th - early 20 th century, consisting of a missionary grammar (Clark 1893), a voluminous (977pp.) Ao-English dictionary (Clark 1911), and a short (23pp.) grammatical description (Avery 1886). None of these publications, however, indicates tone. More recent works by Gowda include a phonetic reader designed for non-native speakers (1972) and a sketch grammar (1975). Both of these works include indications of tone levels, but lack a detailed analysis of tonal phenomena. The previously-neglected Mongsen variety has received more attention lately with the publication of Coupe's phonetic and phonol ogical description of Mongsen as spoken in Waromung village (2003), which contains detailed phonetic measurements of segmental and tonal phenomena. Coupe's most thorough work, however, is a 526-page grammar of Mongsen as spoken in Mangmetong village (2007). This publication contains a short chapter devoted to prosody, describing lexical & morphological tone, t one sandhi, and intonation in Mongsen Ao. Though Coupe presents a few examples of internal tone sandhi triggered by verbal morphology, he concludes with t he disclaimer that a detailed analysis of these patterns lies outside the scope of the present work (2007: 72). The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to present a preliminary investigation of tonal phenomena in the verbal morphology of Chungli 1 . Although * Special thanks to Larry Hyman and Russell Rhodes for their assistance in conducting this