LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 4 April 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

HOME PAGE


AN APPEAL FOR SUPPORT

  • We seek your support to meet the expenses relating to the formatting of articles and books, maintaining and running the journal through hosting, correspondences, etc. Please write to the Editor in his e-mail address languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com to find out how you can support this journal. Thank you. Thirumalai, Editor.


BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!


REFERENCE MATERIAL

BACK ISSUES


  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Contributors from South Asia may e-mail their articles to
    B. Mallikarjun,
    Central Institute of Indian Languages,
    Manasagangotri,
    Mysore 570006, India
    mallikarjun@ciil.stpmy.soft.net.
  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.
  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.
  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2010
M. S. Thirumalai


Custom Search

A Brief Introduction to the Sound System of Sizang
A Kuki-Chin Language

Bobita Sarangthem Ph. D. Candidate
P. Madhubala, Ph. D.


Sizang village
A Sizang Village

Abstract

This paper attempts to present the sound system of Sizang, a Kuki-Chin language. By phonemic status is meant the distinctive function a speech sound or tone performs in keeping words (with their meanings) apart. The contrastive pairs demonstrate the phonemic status of the sounds concerned. Tones, vowels and consonants are dealt within that order to offer relatively extensive and reliable information on the sound system of Sizang. An inventory of the phonemes and allophones of Sizang, specifying their distribution and showing diagrammatically the consonant and vowel phonemes along with their place and manner of articulation are discussed as part of articulatory description.

Introduction

Sizang is a Kuki-Chin language of the Tibeto-Burman family. It is spoken by approximately 10,000 speakers in the Chin state of Myanmar and in north-eastern states of India. Manipur has many ethnic groups having their own ethnic identity. Sizang speaker are found in the southern direction of Manipur state, namely, Moreh, an international border town located on the Indo-Myanmar road south east of Imphal. Moreh is in India, and five kms away from this town is the Tamu town, its Myanmarese counterpart, where Sizang speakers are found in large numbers.

In this paper, an attempt is made to delineate the characteristic features of the sound system of Sizang, based on a lexicon eliciting from our informant Mr. Khampum (45yrs), a native speaker of Sizang, a resident of Tamu Town.

This paper attempts to present an inventory of the phonemes and allophones of Sizang, specifying their distribution and showing diagrammatically the consonant and vowel phonemes along with their place and manner of articulation. The segmental and supra-segmental phonemes are comprehensively given on account of articulatory description.


This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.


Bobita Sarangthem, Ph. D. Candidate
Department of Linguistics
Manipur University
Imphal 795001
Manipur
India
loken.lai@gmail.com

P. Madhubala, Ph.D.
Department of Linguistics
Manipur University
Imphal 795001
Manipur
India


Custom Search


  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you either cited or used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian scholarship.