Poula phonetics and phonology: An Initial overview (Poumai Naga)

Abstract

This paper presents the first structural description of the syllable structure, sound segments and tonal patterns of Poula, an Angami-Pochuri language of Manipur and Nagaland. The canonical shape of Poula syllable consists of an obligatory vowel, a tone and an optional onset. The consonant inventory consists of 25 phonemes, and closely resembles the inventory of Tibeto-Burman languages of the area, with some interesting exceptions. There are six phonemic monophthongs and four phonemic diphthongs. An acoustic analysis of Poula monophthongs also shows that the F1 and F2 acoustic space of /u/ has a large standard deviation. Poula has three contour tones (High-Falling, Mid-Rising & Falling, and Mid-Falling) and one Low-Level tone.