| Konyak | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Nagaland, India | |||
| Ethnicity | Konyak | |||
| Native speakers | 115,000 (2001) | |||
| Language family |
Sino-Tibetan
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | nbe | |||
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Konyak is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Konyak people of Nagaland, north-eastern India.
Contents |
There are three lexically contrastive contour tones in Konyak – rising (marked in writing by an accute accent – á), falling (marked by a grave accent – à) and level (unmarked).[1]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ | u |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | a |
The vowels /a/, /o/ and /u/ are lengthened before approximants. /ə/ doesn't occur finally.
| Bilabial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p pʰ |
t̪ | c | k kʰ |
ʔ |
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɲ | ŋ | |
| Fricative | s | h | |||
| Lateral | l | ||||
| Approximant | w | y |
The stops /p/ and /k/ conntrast with the aspirated /pʰ/ and /kʰ/. /p/ and /c/ become voiced intervocalically across morpheme boundaries. The dental /t/ is realised as an alveolar if preceded by a vowel with rising tone. The approximants /w/ and /j/ are pronounced laxer and shorter after vowels; /w/ becomes tenser initially before high vowels. If morpheme-initial or intervocalic, /j/ is pronounced with audible friction.[2] /pʰ/, /kʰ/, /c/, /ɲ/, /s/, /h/ and /l/ don't occur morpheme-finally, while /ʔ/ doesn't appear morpheme-initially. Except for morpheme-initial /kp/ and /kʰl/, consonant clusters occur only medially.[3]