Ebook: Vowel quality in Hongyan Qiang

Taipei: Academia Sinica. Language and Linguistics, 2006, 7.4, 731-754 p.Northern Qiang vowel systems have been described with eight to nine monophthongs, which may be lengthened, rhotacized, or (non-phonemically) nasalized. This paper presents (morpho-)phonological evidence for adding the category of pharyngealization for one variety of Qiang. In addition, an acoustic analysis of vowels is given, which shows how one speaker maintains systematic acoustic distances among plain, pharyngealized, and rhotacized vowels, and vowels with a combination of coarticulatory effects. The implication of proposing the coarticulatory category of pharyngealization is that the Hongyan system may be described with just four plain monophthongs, half as many as have been proposed for other dialects.