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Tonogenetic mechanisms in Northern Mon-Khmer

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Author

Summary, in English

In this paper, tonogenesis in the four languages Northern Kammu, Blang, Hu and U is analyzed. For comparison, register development in Lamet is treated as well. All these languages belong to the Palaungic and Kammuic branches of the Mon-Khmer division of the Austroasiatic language family and are fairly closely related, but they have developed tone or register systems independently of each other. These developments can be explained by universal microprosodic properties of segments, which are used in different ways by the different languages. Tone (or register) development is connected with merger of voiced and voiceless initial consonants in Kammu, Blang and Lamet, with merger of long and short vowels in Hu, and with merger of long and short vowels combined with both initial and final consonant changes and vowel quality changes in U. Thus, the range of microprosodic properties used for tonogenesis is extremely wide in this language group.

Publishing year

1989

Language

English

Pages

60-79

Publication/Series

Phonetica

Volume

46

Issue

1-3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Karger

Topic

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1423-0321