SOAS Research Online

A Free Database of the Latest Research by SOAS Academics and PhD Students

[skip to content]

Watkins, Justin (2013) 'A first account of tone in Myebon Sumtu Chin.' Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 36 (2). pp. 97-127.

[img]
Preview
Text
Download (267kB) | Preview

Abstract

Sumtu Chin is spoken by some 20–30,000 people in four townships southeast of Sittwe in Arakan State, western Burma. Close analysis of tone systems in other southern Chin languages has proved difficult because the tones vary greatly between dialect; the data in this paper is from a single dialect of Sumtu, spoken in Myebon. Sumtu monosyllables may have lexical high or low tone. Grammaticalised morphemes may lose their underlying lexical tone and are assigned the polar opposite tone to the tone of the morpheme on the left. Functional morphemes may be lexically toneless, assigned a surface tone in a similar way. Restricted minor syllables preceding major syllables surface with the polar opposite tone to the major syllable to their right; verb-subject prefixes take the form of such minor syllables. The formation of the dual seems to flip the tone sequence of verbs.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: Chin languages, tonal phonology, polarity, agglutinative verbal morphology
SOAS Departments & Centres: Legacy Departments > Faculty of Languages and Cultures > Department of the Languages and Cultures of South East Asia
Legacy Departments > Faculty of Languages and Cultures > Department of Linguistics
ISSN: 07313500
Date Deposited: 11 Feb 2014 09:37
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/17958

Altmetric Data

There is no Altmetric data currently associated with this item.

Statistics

Download activity - last 12 monthsShow export options
Downloads since deposit
6 month trend
449Downloads
6 month trend
466Hits
Accesses by country - last 12 monthsShow export options
Accesses by referrer - last 12 monthsShow export options

Repository staff only

Edit Item Edit Item