Nuitah Zophei Swadesh List

This paper presents a preliminary 100-item Swadesh word list for Nuitah Zophei. Zophei or Zyphe (ISO 639-3 ZYP) belongs to the Maraic branch of Kuki-Chin within the Tibeto-Burman language family (Eberhard et. al, 2020). Nuitah (also known as Leitak) is a village in the southern part of the Zophei-speaking area in Thantlang Township, Chin State, Myanmar. The word list comes from the intuitions of our co-author Kimberly Biakthapar Sakhong, a 21-year-old native speaker born in Nuitah village of Zophei parents (both from Nuitah), who lived for some of her childhood in Hakha and Malaysia before moving to the US. She currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. She also speaks Hakha Lai, Senthang, and English.

Lexical correspondences between Proto-Kuki-Chin, Hakha Lai, and six Maraic varieties

The list presented here is intended as an elicitation program for future research on Maraic varieties of Kuki-Chin, as such, it includes both data used to create the elicitation instrument and data collected using it. The priority in this list is to maximize the possibility of eliciting different rhyme types for comparative analysis purposes.

Some Diachronic Phonological changes from Proto-Kuki-Chin to Lutuv

Lutuv (Lautu) is a Kuki-Chin language that VanBik (2009) places in the Maraic branch alongside Zophei, Mara, Senthang, and Zotung. Lutuv is of particular interest to the diachronic development of Maraic languages in that it is geographically central in the Maraic-speaking area, but shows some differences in historical development from its neighbors. This project is based on my dissertation research on Zophei and was first presented to Dr. Kelly Berkson’s Field Methods class on Lutuv in order to offer researchers of Lutuv (like those in the field methods class) a finer grained look at the diachronic development of syllable rhymes in Lutuv, specifically in comparison with the most closely related Kuki-Chin languages Zophei and Mara. The data set this paper is published separately in this volume as Lexical correspondences between Proto-Kuki-Chin, Hakha Lai, and six Maraic varieties(Lotven, 2020). This research is presented here to be of use to other Lutuv researchers, researchers of Kuki-Chin more broadly, and historical phonologists interested in rhyme development and syllable structure simplification.

Adpositions In Lutuv

This paper investigates the adpositional marking and case marking systems in Lutuv. This investigation finds that the basic adpositional phrase consists of a noun and a simplex or complex postposition. Complex postpositions are often used to convey information about both movement and location, whereas simplex postpositions are usually limited to expressing one of the two. The findings of this investigation are useful for highlighting potential future areas of research in Lutuv.

Hnaring Lutuv Swadesh list

This paper presents a preliminary 100-item Swadesh word list for Hnaring Lutuv. Lutuv or Lautu(ISO 639-3 CLT) belongs to the Maraic branch of Kuki-Chin within the Tibeto-Burman language family (Eberhard et. al, 2019). Hnaring is a Lutuv village in the southern part of the Lutuv-speaking area in Thantlang Township, Chin State, Myanmar The word list comes from the intuitions of our co-author Sui Hnem Par,a 21-year-old native speaker born Near Mandalay of Lutuv parents (both from Hnaring), who lived for some of her childhood in Hnaring before moving to the US.

Embodied Grammaticalizations of Time in Hakha Chin

In languages around the world, many of the words used to talk about time originate in the domain of space (e.g. ‘a long meeting’ vs. ‘a long table’). This leads us to ask: Does Hakha Chin conform to the documented pattern of using spatial terms to talk about time? In answering this question, we also learn what components are necessary to form temporal adverbial phrases. The data presented here suggest that in the context of temporal adverbial phrases, Hakha Chin does employ spatial terms to talk about time. Specifically, the body terms hnu (literally ‘back) and hmai (literally ‘face’) are used to mean ‘last’ (as in ‘last week’) and ‘next’ (as in ‘next week’), respectively. Formation of a temporal adverbial phrase requires such a body term (hnu or hmai), which orients to either the future or past, and a term to indicate the temporal period (e.g. week, year).

A vowel space comparison of Tlawngrang Zophei and Lawngtlang Zophei

Zophei is an undescribed Tibeto-Burman language within the Kuki-Chin family. Originally spoken in the Chin Hills of Western Myanmar, approximately 4,000 Zophei-speaking refugees now live in Central Indiana. No previous research on Zophei exists. The speakers located in Indiana who identify as ethnically Zophei hail from 14 distinct villages, and it is not yet known how many dialects or languages are represented. As part of a larger effort to kick-start a research program on Zophei, the current study presents vowel spaces for two speakers, one from Tlawngrang and one from Lawngtlang. Differences with regard to the number and distribution of high vowels and diphthongs indicate that these two areas speak different varieties with markedly different phonologies. For example, where one speaker has an /ui/ diphthong the other speaker consistently has the front rounded monophthong /y/. This research contributes to our ultimate goal, which is to determine the dialectal make-up of Zophei and to develop a description of the language or languages spoken by the ethnic Zophei population in Indiana.

Speech Rate Effects on VOT in a 3-category Language: Evidence from Hakha Chin

This study probes the claim made under the Laryngeal Realism (Beckman et al. 2011/2013 among others), by investigating the effect of speech rate on VOT in Hakha Chin. The present study uses the diagnostics of changing the speech rate (Beckman et al. 2011), and examines whether it can be used to find the specified phonological features of a language with a three-way contrast, Hakha Chin. The Laryngeal Realism states that the phonological features are privative and that the aspirating language is specified with the feature [spread glottis], while the true voiced language is specified with the feature of [voice]. It has been widely known that the speech rate affects laryngeal stops asymmetrically, and LR authors argue this is because the phonological features are privative rather than binary (e.g. Kessinger & Blumstein 1997). Methodologically, it attempts to experimentally control the rate variation with the help of metronome (de Jong 2001). The present study observes that in Hakha Chin, at a slower rate, the VOT of the prevoiced stop and the aspirated stop increase, while the voiceless unaspirated does not, which support the claims of the LR, but with caveats due to speaker variations.

Internally-Headed Relative Clauses in Hakha Chin

Hakha Chin, an underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language, is reported to have internally-headed relative clauses (IHRCs), a typologically rare syntactic structure in which the head noun phrase surfaces within the relative clause itself. The current study provides new data and novel observations which bear on several outstanding questions about IHRCs in this language: 1) Relativization of locative and instrumental adjuncts in IHRCs is avoided. 2) Conflicting stem allomorph requirements of negation and relativization of non-subjects give rise to optionality in stem choice when the two are brought together in an IHRC. 3) To relativize an indirect object, an IHRC is either avoided altogether, or the noun phrase is fronted to the absolute left-most position in the embedded clause. 4) Relativization of NPs with a human referent in an IHRC exhibit relativizer gender agreement, which has not been previously reported for this clause type in Hakha Chin.

Variation and Culture in Laiholh Psycho-Collocations

As shown in previous research, psycho-collocations are a feature of Laiholh, a Tibeto-Burman language in the Kuki-Chin family, that are used to express emotions or physical feelings through metaphor. Because psycho-collocations use metaphor, they experience metaphor variation and can encode cultural information relevant to the understanding of their meanings. The present paper compares the psycho-collocations reported in a study published in 1998 to the psycho-collocations reported by a 21-year-old male speaker of Laiholh from a diaspora community in Indianapolis to show how much these psycho-collocations vary in use, in meaning, and in construction between speakers; furthermore, to show how the deeper cultural information encoded in certain psycho-collocations acts as context for a more meaningful understanding.