Viewing the Developmental Trajectory of Sino-Tibetan Phonology through the Tense–Lax Vowel Opposition in the Naxi Language
In this 1990 paper, Yang Huandian argues, against earlier scholars' denial that Naxi even has tense/lax vowels, that Naxi possesses a substantial tense-lax vowel opposition, restricted to a few initial-consonant series and mainly to the second (33) and third (55) tones, though it is visibly receding (several tense-vowel syllable types have "essentially disappeared"). Comparing Naxi against Hani, Lisu, Bai, and Tibetan, the author shows that words tense-voweled in the more conservative Yi-branch languages are mostly already lax in Naxi, and that Tibetan checked syllables (-p/-t/-k) often correspond to the same tense-vowel words. Against Hu Tan and Dai Qingxia's hypothesis that checked/nasal codas came first and tense vowels arose from their loss, the author proposes the reverse trajectory — tense/lax opposition first, then its loss, then nasalization and checked/nasal codas — placing Hani/Lisu/Lahu, Naxi/Bai, Tibetan/Cantonese, and Beijing Mandarin at four successive stages of this pathway.
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