A phonological and phonetic description of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland

Abstract

This book offers a comprehensive description of the phonetic and phonological features of Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nagaland, North-east India. It represents the first in-depth investigation of the acoustic phonetics and phonology of tone in Sumi, and is one of the first extensive acoustic descriptions of a language of Nagaland. The book describes the segmental phonology, syllable structure and tone system of Sumi. It looks at the phonetic realisation of these tones and the effects of segmental perturbations on tone realisation. It also examines morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi. Finally, this book offers a cross-linguistic comparison of both the segmental phonology and tonal system of Sumi with that of other Tibeto-Burman languages of Nagaland.