Tsou phonology

The description of Tsou phonology below is from Wright & Ladefoged (1994).

## Vowels

Tsou has ten vowels, /i ɨ u e o ɛ ɔ æ ɑ ə/. Vowel sequences occur, including sequences of like vowels (/ii/ etc.), but these are separate moras rather than long vowels or diphthongs. Vowels, especially back vowels, are centralized when flanked by voiceless alveolar consonants (/t, ts, s/). This may involve a central offglide, so that /o/ is pronounced as a diphthong [öə̯] or [ɵə̯] in this environment.

## Consonants

The approximants /w/ and /j/ may surface as non-syllabic mid vowels [e̯] and [o̯], even (for /j/) in initial position (/jo~joskɨ/ [e̯oˈe̯oskɨ] "fishes"; /w/ does not occur in initial position), explaining the spelling *Tfuea* (/tfuja/) for the name of the dialect. However, stress assignment ([ˈtfue̯a]) and restrictions on consonant clusters (see stress and phonotactics below) demonstrate that they behave as consonants.

The plosives are not aspirated. Phonetically aspirated stops are actually sequences of stop plus /h/, as can be seen by the fact that they cannot cluster with a third consonant (see phonotactics below), and by morphological alternations such as /phini/ ~ /mhini/ "to trade".

According to spectrum analysis, /h/ appears to be a glottal fricative in most environments, but approaches a velar [x] next to the central vowel /ɨ/, as in /tsaphɨ/ 'palm, sole'. However, the fact that the sequences /hʔ/ and /ʔh/ occur, when no other homorganic sequence is allowed, suggests that /h/ and /ʔ/ may not both be glottal. (Additional evidence that /h/ might best be analyzed as velar is the fact that \*/kh/ is not found, and that /hk/ is only found medially, in the single known word /kuhku/ "fox".)

The voiceless sibilants, /ts/ and /s/, are palatalized to [tʃ] and [ʃ] before the front vowels /i/ and /e/. However, the voiced sibilant /z/ is not affected by this environment.

The implosives /ɓ/ and /ɗ/ are uncommon. Both may be glottalized ([ʔɓ], [ʔɗ] or maybe [ʔb], [ʔd]) in intervocalic position. In addition, alveolar /ɗ/ has some unusual allophony: About a third of speakers pronounce it with a lateral release, or before /a/ as a lateral approximant [l], as in /ɗauja/ [lauja] "maple". Indeed, Tsuchida (1976) transcribed it as a preglottalized lateral, [ˀl].

## Stress

With a few exceptions, stress is not only predictable, but shifts when suffixes are added to a word. It falls on the penultimate vowel, or on the penultimate mora if a moraic analysis is adopted. That is, a final heavy syllable (double vowel) receives stress ([eˈmoo] "house"); otherwise, stress falls on the penultimate syllable ([oˈkosi] "his child"). Additional stress falls in a trochaic pattern: Every other light syllable (single vowel) also receives stress. Unstressed vowels are deleted, except at word boundaries (initial or final vowel) and unless doing so would create a forbidden consonant cluster (see below).

For example, the verb //seʔe-nətəh-a// "to cut with a bolo" takes stress on the syllables //tə// and //ʔe//, and is realized as [sʔenˈtəha]. However, this does not explain all consonant clusters, many of which are lexically determined.

## Phonotactics

The most complex syllable in Tsou is CCVV. Tsou is unusual in the number of consonant clusters that it allows. Homorganic clusters are not allowed, unless one is a nasal consonant, and a maximum of two consonants may occur together, but otherwise about half of possible sequences are known to occur. For example, all non-homorganic sequences starting with /t/ and /ts/ are found. Missing clusters may not be allowed, or may simply be accidental gaps due to limited knowledge of the lexicon.

In clusters of oral stops, both have an audible release burst. This is true even between vowels, an environment where the first stop has no audible release in most languages, supporting an analysis of these clusters as part of the syllable onset, with no syllable codas occurring in the language.

Stops, oral or nasal, may or may not have a release burst before a nasal stop, depending on the speaker. The initial clusters /hp, ht, hʔ/ are unusual cross-linguistically. The spectrum shows that the tongue moves towards an alveolar articulation during the /h/ of /ht/, demonstrating that it is not articulated as a velar. The initial clusters /pʔ/ and /tʔ/ are sometimes realized as two released stops, but sometimes with a single release, resembling ejective consonants in other languages. (/kʔ/ is again notably missing, except intervocalically, despite the fact that [kʼ] is the most common ejective cross-linguistically.)

## References

1. ↑ In the text of Wright & Ladefoged, /fn/ is listed as an initial cluster, but the appendix only has an example for medial position.
2. ↑ Wright and Ladefoged list the additional medial cluster /ŋʔ/ in their appendix, but their example ⟨anʔosɨ⟩ "two friends ganging up on a third" is typed with an ⟨n⟩.