A General Survey of the Mosuo Language
This paper presents a preliminary phonological, lexical, and grammatical description of the Mosuo (Na) language, based on fieldwork in Luoshui Village, Yongning Township, Ninglang County, Yunnan, near Lugu Lake. Spoken by the Mosuo people—who have no traditional writing system and rely on oral transmission—the language is endangered as younger generations increasingly lose fluency due to tourism and outside cultural influence, prompting urgent documentation. The authors describe a phonemic inventory of 32 initials (with a three-way contrast of aspirated, unaspirated, and voiced stops/affricates), 19 finals (mostly monophthongs, few diphthongs, plus nasalized, retroflex, and consonantal finals), and 4 tones. Grammatically, phrase structure parallels compound-word structure; basic word order is SOV. Noun modifiers precede head nouns; adjective/classifier phrases and relative clauses show mixed pre-/post-head positioning; verb/adjective-headed phrases typically place modifiers before the head. Sentences with special structural particles allow more flexible word order.
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