Suprasegmental features of Lamo and its sister languages: With reference to Kansai Japanese

Abstract

Lamo (Tibeto-Burman; spoken in mDzogong County of Chamdo, TAR) is a tone language with a two-way distinction between H (high) and L (low) just like its sister languages, Larong sMar and Drag-yab sMar. In describing its suprasegmental system, we find a word-tone system similar to many Tibetic languages, but different from them in the tone-bearing unit. Lamo’s suprasegmental system can be summarised as a combination of the two-way distinction at the word-initial position and the existence of the accent nucleus. We further examined the suprasegmental features and behaviour of derivation attested in the numeral morphology of Lamo and its sister languages, Larong sMar and Drag-yab sMar, and concluded that their system is fundamentally more similar to Kansai (Keihan) Japanese than to Tibetic languages.