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Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

DOI

10.31356/silwp.vol27.05

Abstract

From the introduction: "Newari vowels display marked individualistic tendencies. There is a prominent asymmetry in the relation between long and short vowels in that there are six short vowels, /i, e, ā, a, o, u/, but eight long vowels, /ii, ee, ae, āe, aa, āā, oo, uu/. More interesting for this study, however, is the fact that no two of these vowels respond to exactly the same set of low level phonetic rules, or are influenced in manifesting one phonetic exponent or another by the same set of phonological environments. In this paper we explore these phonetic differences in the attempt to show that underlying all the idiosyncratic behavior there is a system that accounts for it, a system that we are tempted to refer to as the politics of phonetic non-alignment. Non-alignment in the phonetics of Newari vowels, however, does not lead to egalitarian independence. Rather, it leads to salient inequalities in the degree to which various vowels are forced to modify their phonetic manifestations in the face of pressures from the phonological context."

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