Vocalic contrasts in Zotung

Abstract

Though very few Maraic languages from the South Central branch of Tibeto-Burman are represented in the existing body of phonetics literature, they are of interest in that they appear to contain typologically unique dense high vowel systems. Zotung, spoken by approximately 100 000 people in Chin State in western Burma and in diaspora communities, is one such language (Eberhard et al., 2022). The only linguistic scholarship on Zotung (Shintani, 2015) is an extensive wordlist with brief preliminary comments on the syllable shape, tone, and vowel inventories; however, acoustic analyses are absent. To augment Shintani (2015) and further elucidate the vowel inventory of Zotung, we present data from an older male speaker deeply involved with Zotung translation, preservation, and literacy efforts, who hails originally from Tingsi on the far southern border of the Zotung speaking area. Based on analysis of 553 tokens collected via a wordlist, we substantiate some of the findings reported by Shintani (2015) and document several important differences. Shintani reported 8 monophthongal vowel qualities; we find 10: [i, y, e, ø, æ, ə, a, u, o, ɔ]. Shintani also reported an expansive diphthong inventory; our data support this claim, with 9 total vowels that can be categorized as diphthongs.