Basanta Goswami (Baba) thank you for your unconditional love and support in so many forms. Thank you for your unwavering support and contribution to the successful completion of my dissertation.
- General Introduction
- Contact-induced linguistic changes
- Language endangerment and Deori
- Deori
- Genetic affiliation of Deori
- Population and the total number of speakers in Deori
- Deori in the literature
- Data Collection
- Aim of the dissertation
- Organization of the dissertation
However, no exhaustive analysis of the process of nasalization was available in the relevant literature on Deori. The main aim of this thesis is to provide a detailed description of the phonological features of Deori.
Distinctive Phonemes in Deori
Introduction
This chapter presents a detailed analysis of Deori segmental phonology based on speech data collected from native Deori speakers of Bordeori village of Narayanpur, Lakhimpur district and Naam Deori and Upor Deori villages of Jorhat district of Assam. Before embarking on the analysis of the phonological features of the phonemes based on the collected speech data, an overview of Deori's segmental phonology available in the existing literature is presented to highlight the commonalities and irregularities of Deori's segmental inventory.
Deori consonants: a literature review
In Garo, /r/ is at the beginning of the word and /l/ is in the middle of the word. A review of the available literature shows that both similarities and irregularities exist in the description of Deori consonants.
Consonants in Deori
- Stops
- Nasals
- Fricatives
- Affricates
- Approximants
- Discussion
The distribution of the glottal fricative /ɦ/ in Deora is restricted to word-initial position, such as ɦidz. The assignment of the feature [expanded glottis] in Deora in Table 2.10 is in parentheses because the feature values [+expanded glottis] and [-expanded glottis] are on the surface.
Deori vowels: a literature review
While Goswami (1994), Jacquesson (2005) and Nath (2012) suggest that there are five oral vowels in the language, they differ in their description of the low vowel. While Goswami (1994) and Jacquesson (2005) report the presence of a low back vowel /ɑ/ in the vowel inventory, Nath (2012) reports the presence of an open-mid central vowel /ɐ/ in the vowel inventory.
Vowels in Deori
- Acoustic analysis of oral vowels in Deori
- Acoustic analysis of nasal vowels in Deori
Based on our analysis, we have found that the lexical items with the close back vowel /ɯ/ (as suggested by Brown, 1850) have changed to back high vowel /u/; low back vowel /ɒ/ and open-mid central vowel /ɐ/ (as suggested by Brown 1895 and Nath 2012 respectively) are changed to low back vowel /ɑ/; high back vowel /ʊ/ as suggested by Brown, 1850) is changed to high back vowel /u/ and high front vowel /ɪ/ (as suggested by Brown, 1895 is changed to high front vowel /i/. The centralized vowel /ǝ/ as suggested by Brown, 1895; Goswami, 1994) is not attested in the vowel inventory of Deori, which may be considered a result of language contact resulting in simplification of vowels in Deori. We will first discuss the analysis of the oral vowels, which will be followed by the nasal vowels.
Conclusion
The absence of glottal stop /ʔ/ in Deori, unlike other nearby Bodo-Garo languages, can be assumed to be a result of acute language contact with Assamese. The presence of phonemic nasal vowels and the absence of a centralized vowel in Deori is an unusual linguistic feature of Deori, unlike other Bodo-Garo languages (Tiwa, Dimasa, Bodo and Garo). It can be assumed that the proximity to Assamese39 is affecting the phonology of Deori leading to the simplification of phonemes in Deori.
Word Prosody and Prominence pattern in Deori
- Introduction
- Metrical Phonology
- The universal metrical inventory
- Moraic theory and syllable structure
- Morphology of Deori
- Syllable structure and distribution of phonemes in Deori
- Final syllables
- Pre-final syllables
- Vowel Epenthesis
- Metrical Prominence in Deori
- Summary of prominence in Deori
- Phonetic correlates of stress in Deori
- Acoustic correlates of stress
- Methodology
- The participants
- Data analysis
- Findings
- Summary of phonetic correlates of stress in Deori
- Conclusion
Prefixes provide examples of how most of the trisyllabic words are derived in Deori. The prominence pattern in Deori will give us insight into the shape of the foot in Deori, that is, we have also investigated the acoustic correlates of stress in Deori, and the results are discussed in the next section.
Production and Perception of Tones in Deori
Introduction
Overview of tone
Chao (1965) states that the pitch field is the voiced part of the syllable, 'so it is supposed to include an onset if it is voiced' (p.20). The frequency of vibration of the vocal cords or the rate of vibration of. The measurement is such that each cycle of vibration of the vocal fold is counted as one Hz.
Tones in Tibeto Burman languages of North East India
Tones in Deori
The domain of tone-bearing unit in Deori is the phonological word rather than the syllable in the traditional sense (e.g. Bodo, Dimasa and Tiwa)47. It has been reported that tonoexodus "is reflected in the fact that the disyllable is the location of the tone target where the tone-bearing unit (henceforth TBU) is. It has further been reported that although tonal differences are maintained in the language, there are very few homophonic words with tonal contrasts.
Tonoexodus
Production experiment
- Materials
- Speakers
- Recording
- Fundamental frequency (f 0 ) extraction
- Statistical Analysis
- Results
- Monosyllables
- Disyllable
- Summary of tone production
Tone reversal is observed in kɔ “pluck/come” (Figure 4.7), where the low tone is realized as a high tone (L>H) and the high tone is realized as a low tone (H>L). Tone distinction in disyllabic words is maintained by each speaker only in tʃitu and kiɹi, as shown in Figure 4-21 and Figure 4-22, respectively. Tone contrasts in ku (Figure 4-23) and ud u (Figure 4-24) are preserved in each of the syllables, unlike older speakers.
Tone perception
- Methodology
- Speakers
- Procedure
- Results
- Identification test
- Summary of tone perception
On the contrary, older generation speakers correctly identified the low tone stimuli and associated the correct meaning to the respective tonal category. Younger generation speakers had perceptual problems and identified the high tone stimuli as low tone and vice versa. The identification test results show perceptual difficulties in identifying the tonal categories by younger generation speakers compared to older generation speakers.
Conclusion
Production and perception problems among speakers of the younger generation can be considered the result of language experience. The results of the identification task show that speakers of the older generation could respond more accurately in recognizing the stimuli than speakers of the younger generation. The result of the perception test correlates with the idea that there is a perceptual difficulty in recognizing different tonal categories among the younger generation speakers, which is further consistent with the result of the production test.
Vowel Harmony in Deori
Introduction
While discussing the vowel harmony pattern in Deori, trigger, target and opaque vowels in Deori will be discussed. Another important aim of this chapter is to show the directionality of vowel harmony in Deori. The Assamese vowel harmony pattern (as reported in Mahanta 2007) is discussed within the framework of Optimality Theory (hereafter OT, Prince and Smolensky.
A TR Harmony
The opacity of the [+low -ATR] vowel /ɑ/ prevents the spread of the harmonic feature from propagating further in many vowel-harmonic languages. Nasal vowels blocking vowel harmony are attested in languages such as Ijesa and Ekiti (Przezdziecki, 2005) and Karajá (Ribeiro, 2002). In Karaj, nasal vowels /a /, /o / and /ɛ / are opaque to vowel harmony, prohibiting the regressive spread of the [ATR] feature, e.g.
Descriptive facts
- Co-occurrence restrictions of vowels in disyllabic words in the underived domain
- High vowels /i/ and /u/
- The mid vowels /ɛ, ɔ, e, o/
- The low vowel /ɑ/
- Trisyllables/Quadrisyllables
- Summary of vowel harmony in underived domain
- Co-occurrence restrictions of vowels in derived domain
- Vowel harmony in verbs
- Summary of vowel harmony in derived domain
- Consonants and vowels blocking harmony
- Intervening low vowel /ɑ/
- Nasal consonants blocking vowel harmony
- Summary of consonants and vowels blocking harmony
Regressive vowel harmony in Deori is represented schematically in (49) which shows the regressive propagation of the feature value [+ATR] to vowels that would otherwise emerge as [- ATR]. Vowel harmony in Deori is also blocked by the intervening nasal consonants as shown in (52) and (53). The harmony blocking by the nasal consonant in Deori is also similar to the Assamese vowel harmony pattern.
Optimality Theory
- A TR harmony in Deori: an OT account
- A TR harmony in presence of mid vowels
- A TR harmony in the presence of high and mid vowels
- The opacity of low vowel /ɑ/
- Nasal consonants blocking harmony
A limitation of the restriction of AGREE[F] to capture the process of vowel harmony, which is strictly unidirectional, was postulated by Mahanta 2007 as follows: “The symmetric nature of AGREE[F] prohibits true results in strictly directional systems. In the above table, candidate (c) emerges as the winning candidate that satisfies all the constraints – harmony driven constraint *[-ATR][+ATR], feature co-occurrence constraint *[-high +ATR] and IDENT fidelity constraint [ATR ]. In the table above, (72) (b) is selected as the optimal candidate over (a) with the harmony-based constraint *[-ATR][+ATR] instead of the marking constraint *[oNi]/[eNi].
Conclusion
The order of the constraints shows that the sequential markedness constraint *[-ATR][+ATR] is ranked higher than the fidelity constraint IDENT[ATR] to result in regressive harmony in Deori. 70 However, Assamese needs much more constraints to account for the vowel harmony pattern, which is not required in Deori (for a detailed review of the Assamese vowel harmony pattern, see Mahanta, 2007). The similarities in the vowel harmony pattern in Deori and Assamese are likely a result of Deori's continued contact with Assamese and the high degree of bilingualism of the Deori speakers.
Nasal Harmony in Deori
Introduction
The data included in the analysis of nasal harmony in Deori is based on the collection of primary data as mentioned in Chapter 1 of Section 1.5. From the four recorded tokens of each word, three samples were selected for analysis. Samples were collected using a Shure SM-10 headset microphone connected to a Tascam DR 100 MK II recorder and digitized at a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz and 32-bit resolution.
Cross-linguistic nasal harmony pattern
Fricatives and obtrusive stops are less compatible with nasalization and are therefore ambiguous in nasal harmony space. Walker (1998), however, proposes a new generalization of the nasal harmony model and points out that different nasalization models can be unified. Walker (1998) includes the spread constraint (Spread-R or Spread-L) to capture directionality in nasal harmony languages. Bidirectional nasal spreading is reported in languages such as Tuyuca, a Tukanoan language, and in Guaraní, a Tupi language of Paraguay.
Nasal harmony pattern in Deori
- Nasal harmony pattern in disyllabic words in underived word domain
- Nasal harmony pattern in derived word domain
- Oral-nasal suffixal alternation
- Summary of nasal harmony pattern in Deori
While the glottal fricative /ɦ/ is a target segment in the Deori nasal harmony, the [-voice] fricative /s/ and the [±voice] affricates /tʃ/ and /dz/ are opaque to the nasal harmony in Deori. Examples (87-89), show that fricatives and affricates in Deori block the spread of the nasal and are opaque to nasal harmony. The nasal harmony in Deori is progressive which spreads from left to right in the adjacent sonorant segment.
Nasal harmony in Deori: an OT account
- Target segments in Deori - vowels, glides, liquid, and glottal fricative
- Opaque segments in Deori - obstruent stops, fricative, and affricates
- Exceptional occurrences of /b/ → /m/ and [ɹ] → /n/
Since Deori exhibits progressive nasal harmony, the spreading constraint Spread-R([+nasal], Pwd) will be active to achieve nasal harmony in Deori. Thus, to account for the target segment, the spreading constraint SPREAD- R([+nasal],Pwd) will exceed the nasal marked constraints *NASLIQ » *NASGLIDE » *NASV in Deori. Similarly, in Deori the markedness constraints are ranked higher than the distribution constraint to account for the opacity of segments.
Conclusion
In contrast to these languages, we saw a different process in Deori – in case of suffix changes, only /b/ and [ɹ] change to /m/ and /n/ in the derived domain and not in other segments. However, the markedness constraints that cross-linguistically predict the nasal harmony pattern fail to capture the exceptional suffix changes in Deori in the derivative domain. Therefore, it can be assumed that exceptional cases of suffix changes in Deori are contact-induced innovation that requires an additional constraint to explain such events.
Conclusion
Introduction
Phoneme inventory of Deori
Prominence pattern in Deori
Production and Perception of tone in Deori
Vowel Harmony
Nasal Harmony
Language vitality assessment of Deori
Implications and future research
