Mongsen Ao is a member of the

Ao languages The Ao or Central Naga languages are a small family of Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by various Naga peoples of Nagaland in northeast India. Conventionally classified as "Naga", they are not clearly related to other Naga languages, and are con ...

, a branch of the

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

, predominantly spoken in central

Mokokchung district Mokokchung District (Pron:/ˌməʊkɒkˈtʃʌŋ/) is a district of Nagaland state in India. The town of Mokokchung is its headquarters. The district is the home of the Ao Nagas. It is bounded by the state of Assam to its north, Wokha Distr ...

Nagaland Nagaland () is a landlocked States and union territories of India, state in the northeast India, northeastern region of India. It is bordered by the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Manipur to the south and the ...

, northeast

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. Its speakers see the language as one of two varieties of a greater "

Ao language The Ao language is a Naga language spoken by the Ao Naga in Nagaland of northeast India. Ao language cluster ''Ethnologue'' lists the following varieties of Ao. * Mongsen Khari *Changki * Chongli (Chungli) *Dordar (Yacham) *Longla Chongli and M ...

," along with the prestige variety

Chungli Ao Chungli Ao is the prestige dialect of Ao and it is a Sino-Tibetan language of northeast India. It is the most widely spoken of the Ao languages which also comprise Mongsen Ao and Changki. It is taught up to the tenth grade in schools of the M ...

. A chapter in the anthropological monograph of Mills (1926) provides a grammatical sketch of the variety of Mongsen Ao spoken in Longjang village. Coupe (2003) is one of the few acoustic studies published on a Kuki-Chin-Naga language (only three exist). Coupe (2007) is a reference grammar of the language, based on a revision of his PhD dissertation (Coupe 2004).

Alphabet

The Ao alphabet is based on the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...

and was developed in the 1880s by the Christian

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

Edward W. Clark for Chungli Ao. The system is not based on phonemic principles and does not represent tone. A Christian Bible was published using the orthography in 1964. Coupe (2003) suggests a more consistent alphabet for Mongsen Ao. A, B, Ch, E, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ng, O, P, R, S, T, U, Y, Z

Phonology

This section describes the sound system of Mongsen Ao as spoken in Mangmetong village and is based on Coupe (2007).

Vowels

Mongsen Ao has 6

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...

s: * The high central is

rounded Round or rounds may refer to: Mathematics and science * The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere * Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the num ...

. * The two low vowels differ in terms of phonation type. has modal voice (i.e. normal phonation); has

creaky voice In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...

(also known as ''vocal fry'', ''laryngealization''). Coupe (2003) argues that this is a separate vowel

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

and not a tone, a glottal stop, or resulting from

prosodic In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, s ...

effects.

Consonants

Mongsen Ao has 27

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...

s: * Dental consonants are

laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

denti-alveolar In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, ...

. * The post-alveolar approximant varies from an

apical Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to: * Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology) *Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features l ...

post-alveolar to

subapical A subapical consonant is a consonant made by contact with the underside of the tip of the tongue. The only common subapical articulations are in the postalveolar to palatal region, which are called "retroflex". Most so-called retroflex consonants ...

retroflex A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the ha ...

: . * The glottal stop occurs only at the end of words. However, in this position it contrasts with words ending in vowels: 'spear' vs. 'person'. When a suffix is added to such words, the is deleted: 'to eat' + CAUS → 'to cause to eat'. Thus, the glottal stop has a somewhat marginal phonemic status.

Tone

Ao is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

with 3 contrasting lexical tones: * high * mid * low All are register tones.

Syllable and phonotactics

The generalized syllable structure of Ao is abbreviated as the following: :: (C₁)V(G)(C₂)+T (C₁) * Any of the 20 consonants may appear as an optional

syllable onset A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...

(excluding the word-final ). V * All 6 vowels may occur as the syllable nucleus. (G) * The optional glide elements following the head vowel are essentially non-syllabic offglide realizations of the 4 vowels . For example, → 'species of centipede'. * The following are the possible tautsyllabic combinations: . (C₂) * The following consonants may occur in the optional

syllable coda A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...

: unaspirated stops, nasals, and the rhotic . The glottal stop with its restricted distribution also occurs but only word-finally. T All syllables occur with one of the three tones. In a VG sequence, tone only occurs the vowel head.

Syntax

Ao is an SOV language with postpositions. Adjectives, numerals and demonstratives follow the nouns they modify, whilst relative clauses may be either externally or internally headed.

Adverbial subordinator In grammar, a conjunction ( abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitute ...

s are suffixes attached to the verb and the end of the subordinate clause.

References

Bibliography

* Clark, E. W. (1981). ''The Ao-Naga Grammar with Illustrations, Phrases, and Vocabulary''. Delhi: Gian Publications, Mittal Publishers Distributors. (Original work published 1893). * Coupe, Alexander R. (2003). ''A Phonetic and Phonological Description of Ao: A Tibeto-Burman Language of Nagaland, North-east India''. Pacific Linguistics (No. 543). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University. . * Coupe, Alexander R. 2004. ''The Mongsen Dialect of Ao: a language of Nagaland.'' Unpublished PhD dissertation, La Trobe University. * Coupe, Alexander R. (2007). ''A grammar of Mongsen Ao'' outon Grammar Library 39 Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. . * Escamilla, R. M. (2012). ''An Updated Typology of Causative Constructions: Form-Function Mappings in Hupa (California Athabaskan), Chungli Ao (Tibeto-Burman), and Beyond.'' Unpublished PhD dissertation, U.C. Berkeley. * Gowda, K. S. Gurubasave. (1972). ''Ao-Naga Phonetic Reader''. CIIL Phonetic Reader Series (No. 7). Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. * Gowda, K. S. Gurubasave. (1975). ''Ao Grammar''. Grammar series (No. 1). Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. * Mills, J. P (1926). The Ao Nagas. London: MacMillan & Co.

External links

Ao Naga Tribe
(Language in India)

(Language in India) {{DEFAULTSORT:Mongsen Ao Language Ao languages Languages of Nagaland