What lies behind Wobzi Consonant Clusters?
Lai Yunfan
ILPGA, CRLAO
Abstract
Wobzi is a dialect of Lavrung, a Rgyalrongic language spoken in Chuchen County, Rngaba Autonomous Prefecture of Tibetan and Qiang.
The extremely elaborated consonant clusters in the onset position of Lavrung are under analysis in this talk.
A Lavrung onset can reach up to five or more consonants. Huang (2007) finds an example with five consecutive consonants in the dialect of Guanyinqiao: ʁvrdʑɣə̀ “hatch”; Yin (2007) and my own fieldwork show a number of examples with four-consonant onsets in Njorogs and Wobzi: Wobzi. ʁɴscʰò “hibernate”, etc. As a result, we are interested in how these consonants are organised and what they tell us about the phonology of the language.
In this talk, we are going to give a phonological account to the structure of the Wobzi onset and the way to derive a Wobzi onset.
We will first examine the different roles (pre-initials, initial and medial) of the onset by applying the reduplication test, which contributes to the analysis of its structure. Then we will focus on the pre-initial hierarchy, using various phonomorphological tests (resyllabification, reduplication, etc). The hierarchy will be dealt with by modern phonological theories.
Finally, we will see how these phonological rules work in a whole syllable and even an utterance.
References
Clements, G.N. 1990. The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. in J. Kingston & M. Beckman, eds. Papers in Laboratory Phonology I: 283-333. CUP, Cambridge.
Clements, G.N. 1997. Berber Syllabification: Derivations or Constraints? in I.M. Roca, ed. Derivations and Constraints in Phonology: 289-330. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dell, F. & Elmedlaoui, M. 1985. Syllabic consonants and syllabification in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 7: 105–130.
Huang, Bufan. 2007. 拉坞戎语研究 Lawurongyu Yanjiu. Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.
Keren D. Rice. 1992. On deriving sonority: a structural account of sonority relationships. Phonology, 9, pp 6199
Yin, Weibin. 2007. 业隆拉坞戎语研究 Yelong Lawurongyu Yanjiu. Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.
