The Sounds Of Tawra (Digaru-Mishmi), A Tibeto-Burman Language

The present study is a phonological analysis of the segments and tones of the Tawra language (ISO 69-3: mhu; Glottolog: Diga1241), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Tibet, China. This paper, the first collaboration between a Tawra-speaking non-linguist and a non-Tawra-speaking linguist, attempts to clear up some confusion in the existing literature. For example, previous studies did not note that stop codas /-p, -k/ are in free variation with glides [-w, -j, (SIC)], and that the morpheme, rather than the syllable, is the tone-bearing unit. Acoustic analyses provide justification for the phonemic representation of the vowels and the tones. Finally, the paper is designed to introduce Tawra speakers to the recently standardized (2020) orthography, and to show how the letters and letter combinations function together as a system.