The sounds and tones of five Tibetan languages of the Himalayan region

Abstract

In this paper I describe the sounds and tones of five Tibetan languages: Dzongkha, Lhomi, Sherpa, Dolpo Tibetan, and Mugom Tibetan. In characterizing these sounds, I describe first, using digital oscillograms, the intersegmental voicing coordination of the onset consonant in the various dialects. This is important as an initial step in the study of pitch because it demonstrates the extent to which the complexity of the WI' syllable canon is still evident in onset phonation, and the extent to which these onsets are contrastive. The laryngeal states of the onset for the Tibetan dialects often exhibit a rare complexity, which gives evidence for the complexity of the WT syllable. In Dzongkha, there is a seven way contrast in the phonatory/articulatory interaction on onsets, and a six way contrast for the other languages studied here.