Tone and Syllable Weight: The Tonotactic Asymmetry in Jinghpaw

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay between tonal and quantity contrasts in Jinghpaw, a Tibeto-Burman language of China and Burma, by exploring the distributional asymmetry in the tonotactics of iambic disyllabic words in the language. Our phonological interpretation of the systematic gaps in the tonal string patterns led to the conclusion that the language has a reduced tonal contrast in light syllables relative to heavy syllables. This paper points out that our conclusion is by no means unnatural in light of the literature on contrast reduction in light syllables.