Sprigg, R. K.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studieshttp://journals.cambridge.org/BSOAdditional services for Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies:Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click hereMartine Mazaudon: Phonologie tamang: étude phonologique du dialecte tamang de Risiangku (langue tibéto­birmane du Népal). (Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale, 4.) 184 pp. + 2 pp. errata. Paris: [Société d’Éitudes Linguistiques et Anthropologiques de France], 1973. Fr. 38.R. K. SpriggBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 38 / Issue 02 / June 1975, pp 461 ­ 463DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00142831, Published online: 24 December 2009Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00142831How to cite this article:R. K. Sprigg (1975). Review of Martine Mazaudon 'Phonologie tamang: étude phonologique du dialecte tamang de Risiangku (langue tibéto­birmane du Népal)' Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 38, pp 461­463 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00142831Request Permissions : Click hereDownloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/BSO, IP address: 212.219.238.14 on 26 Oct 2012REVIEWS 461on and fatrvas concerning matters such asjihad, the upkeep of awqdf, and the ownershipof land whose holders had emigrated.Dr. Ott has done well to make the Mihnwn-nama-i Bukhara available in translation, butit is a matter for regret that she has not givenany indication of the substance of the numerouspassages she has omitted from the translation.ANN K. S. LAMBTONMARTINE MAZAUDON : Phonologietamang: etude phonologique du dia-lecte tamang de Risiangku (languetibeto-birmane du Nepal). (Langues etCivilisations a Tradition Orale, 4.)184 pp. + 2 pp. errata. Paris:[Societe d'fitudes Linguistiques etAnthropologiques de France], 1973.Fr. 38.Dr. Mazaudon's study of Tamang phono-logy can claim to be more direct than theconsiderable number of similar studies of thelanguages of Nepal that have been appearingover the last four years: her research wasconducted in the target language itself, notthrough Nepali, Tibetan, or some other inter-mediary language. Her having gained a fairdegree of acceptance into Tamang family lifegives an added significance to the introductorychapter (pp. 1-46), in which she places theTamangs in relation to the other ethnic groupsof eastern Nepal, and gives the necessarybackground information on their manner oflife, followed by an account of the village of' Risiangku ' and her informants, the Tamanglanguage in relation to the Tibeto-Burmangroup and to contact languages (Nepali,Tibetan), and the various styles within it. Thisintroduction is preceded by maps showing theareas of eastern and central Nepal in which thehalf million or so Tamang-speakers are mainlyto be found, and statistics of Tamang-speakersby district for 28 districts, in accordance withthe 1961 census.The importance of the Tamang language isdue in part to the fact that it is probably themost similar of any of the languages of Nepalto Tibetan ; but it is also important in its ownright as the mother tongue of about 6% ofthe population of Nepal, which puts it amongthe most prominent of Nepal's many Tibeto-Burman languages. It is also the only one ofthese languages that I know to have succeededeven in imposing itself on the Brahman caste,which ordinarily disdains any language butNepali. Thus, the village of ' Risiangku'(Rishingo, or Lisankhu), the village thatMazaudon chose as a base for her field-work,is 100% Tamang-speaking, even though someof its inhabitants are Brahmans, Newars, andKamis.Mazaudon's theoretical approach to Tamangphonology is that of the Prague school ofphonemics. Within its framework she goesbeyond a merely descriptive phonologicalanalysis of Tamang in order to introducediscussions of several points of controversy ofa general-linguistic and typological interest.Easily the most prominent of these dis-cussions is the question of tone, and whetherTamang is to be considered a tone language(ch. iii, ' Le systeme tonal', pp. 61-107); itleads to the adoption of what Mazaudon terms' le mot phonologique ' as the basic unit ofphonological statement, denning it as ' le lieude developpement d'un ton et d'un seul'.From this definition it follows that a ' phono-logical word' may comprise from one syllableto four or more (pp. 93-107), and may containseveral ' monemes ' (p. 49), one (the first) ofwhich must be a ' moneme lexical', while therest, if any, are often ' monemes grammati-caux '. A number of passages, however, appearto suggest that the ' phonological word ' has arival for the function of sole unit of tonalanalysis in Tamang in the ' moneme' (or,more specifically, the ' moneme lexical' or' lexeme ' ) : there are references to ' ton dulexeme ' and ' ton du moneme ' (pp. 62, 66,90-3), and passages such as ' la melodie desmonemes atoniques varie en fonction dumoneme qu'ils suivent' (p. 90). The fact thatthe limits of a ' moneme ' sometimes coincidewith those of a phonological word should notbe allowed to obscure the point that a so-calledtone-1 ' moneme ', for example, can be classi-fied as tone-1 only via the phonological wordthat either contains it or coincides with it, asa courtesy title, that tone-1 ' moneme ' is nomore than an abbreviation of tone-1-word' moneme ', a ' moneme ', that is, appropriateto, and confined to, occurrence in a tone-1phonological word.The status of the phonological word as theunit of tonal analysis, and Tamang as a' langue a ton du mot' (p. 86), also seems to bechallenged from another direction, that ofunanalysed final syllables within the word:' . . . les syllabes de la fin du mot, non utiliseespour la realisation du ton, sont emises sensible-ment au niveau du ton 2, point zero dusysteme' (p. 48). A consequence of thisanalysis must be that the final part of somewords will be left in a kind of tonal limbo notcovered by the realization of the tone of thephonological word of which they are part, noreven by tonal neutralization, with the resultthat some Tamang words will be (fully) tonaland others only partially tonal (the tone-2-likefinal pitch of words of this latter type is clearlynot meant to be tone-2 in any phonological462 ItEVIEWSsense, or these words would have to beclassified as words of mixed tone: 1 combinedwith 2, 3 + 2, and 4 + 2, or else 2 + 2).Could not the problem posed by the uncertaintonal status of these final syllables, it seemsreasonable to ask at this point, be solved byincorporating them in the ' realisation du ton ',by extending its sphere, that is, beyond the' traits pertinents' to the pitch of everysyllable within the word, to the pitch patternof the word as a whole ?From these two observations of mine itfollows that I do not entirely subscribe toMazaudon's conclusion that ' le tamang con-stitue un cas intermediaire entre les langues quiont une opposition tonale par syllabe, et cellesou une syllabe ne saurait suffire au developpe-ment d'une opposition tonale. Le ton dutamang peut quant a lui se concentrer sur unesyllabe unique ou s'etendre, au-dela dumoneme qu'il caracterise, au mot entier qui lecontient' (p. 92). As I see it, tone in Tamangcannot be concentrated on a single syllablequa syllable; the unit to which tone appliesis the word, and the word may coincide witha single syllable just as readily as with two,three, or four syllables. Further, the descrip-tion of tone as being able to extend ' au-deladu moneme qu'il caracterise' seems to me toconflict with the conception of tone as a word-unit feature, characterizing not merely one' moneme ' but every ' moneme ' that thephonological word contains, equally.As a representative phonemic analysis inaccordance with the Prague school as developedby Martinet (p. 86) Phonologie tamang draws onthe concept of neutralization of oppositions of' traits pertinents ' at a number of points in thebook, at each of which it consequently intro-duces archiphonemes. It is a great asset to thissort of analysis when archiphonemes aresymbolized differently from phonemes, throughthe use of capital letters, e.g. ' Varticulationdentale oppose les phonemes t et th, ainsi quel'archiphoneme dental T, a tous les autresphonemes occlusifs du systeme ' (p. 135); butthis useful distinction is not applied through-out ; indeed, on the following page, in asection intended to prove a minimal distinctionbetween T and C, examples of T are symbolizedwith t, e.g. 3tai, *t(i) ; and elsewhere noattempt is made to give to this distinction thedifference in symbolization that its significanceto the theory would seem to require. A laterpassage, for example, extends the neutraliza-tion concept from an opposition betweenfeatures of single phonemes to ' une neutraliza-tion de l'opposition entre une sequence dephonemes et un phoneme simple ' (p. 144):'. . . c'est entre les phonemes simples i, e et lesgroupes vocaliques ii, ie, que nous avonschoisi de poser une neutralization . . .j ] — kikie <- [kje] — ke ' (pp. 144-5);here, some such symbolization as kl l and klEwould be a useful device for reminding thereader that no lexically distinctive contrast ispossible between these forms and forms suchas *ki and *ke.Another phonological treatment that raisesgeneral theoretical problems of wide interestis that of dividing the component features of aparticular sound,' la phonie [fl] ', for example,among two ' phonemes', which have then tobe considered as realized simultaneously, as' la coalescence de Q et i non syllabique '(p. 150). In ' 3niot', then, n and i have to berealized simultaneously; and the velarityfeature of the phoneme n must be suppressedin favour of the palatality feature of thephoneme i, which feature is, in fact, thephoneme i's only contribution to the sound' [fl]'. Daniel Jones was alive to the dangersthat such an analysis have for the phonemetheory : in criticism of a corresponding treat-ment of the nasality feature of French nasalvowels he drew attention to the possibility ofextending this treatment to any phonemicallysignificant feature whatever, to dentality,voice, lip-rounding, and so on, with, as itslogical outcome, the atomization of every soundinto as many phonemes as it had significantfeatures, and the destruction of the phonemetheory as he knew it (cf. The phoneme, 85).There is one further point, of a differentorder, a question of phonetic symbolization,that ought, perhaps, to be mentioned, sinceit is, after all, accurate phonetic observationthat underpins the whole phonological fabric,and the examples in question are proof of agood ear for nice phonetic distinctions: ' lanasalite se transmet a travers les consonnesnon occlusives et les voyelles, ainsi 2mrui"couvercle" se prononce [mrul], 2mahi" buffle" se prononce [mahl] et 2mrwai" paon " se prononce [mrawai] ou [mraOS]'(p. 123). The phonetic transcription does notdo justice to the phonetic description, whichseems to require phonetic forms such as[mful], [mafii], and [mrawai] or [mf&OE],with nasal egress for the breath throughoutthe word; possibly the discrepancy is due toa printer's error, for the ' errata ' slip requiresthe last of these to be corrected to [mr3dl],which does not fall far short of the perceptivedescription.The phonological problems that I haveillustrated are only a sample; it is charac-teristic of this study of Tamang phonologythat at a number of points the phonetic data arepresented in something like the form of aphonological challenge, for which more thanone solution is discussed. A presentation ofthis sort should give Phonologie tamang anREVIEWS 463interest to the student of linguistics, and todepartments teaching linguistics, beyond thatof an exposition of one among many Himalayanlanguages.it. K. SPBIGCASHIRBADI LAL SRIVASTAVA : Akbar theGreat. Vol. ///. Society and culture in16th century India, xvi, 375 pp. +errata slip. Agra: Shiva Lal Agar-wala and Co., 1973. Rs. 20.For 20 years Professor Srivastava has beenengaged on his magnum opus on the emperorAkbar (r. A.D. 1556-1605), and he has beenpublishing on Indo-Muslim history for nearlyhalf a century. The first volume of Akbar theGreat was a narrative of political events, inmany respects preferable to Vincent Smith'soddly opinionated Akbar the great Moghul.Vol. II described administration and the third(which presumably completes the set thoughthis is nowhere stated) is a handbook of' society and culture ' during the reign, incor-porating under broad chapter headings greatnumbers of references and items of informa-tion, e.g. ' Housing, food, dress, toilet andornaments, samskars, games and sports, man-ners and etiquette ' (eh. viii). In fact much ofthe information is not limited to the emperor'sreign but concerns also the preceding period ofIndo-Muslim history, and there are evenoccasional forays into antiquity (see p. 267 forprehistoric cave-paintings in Rajasthan). Byits scope this volume must bear comparisonwith W. H. Moreland's India at the death ofAlcbar and K. M. Ashraf's Life and conditionsof the people of Hindustan, 1200-1550 A.D., aswell as with an increasing and increasinglydepressing corpus of published doctoral theseson Mughal, Indo-Muslim, and medieval Indian' society and culture '. Srivastava's volumelacks the intellectual distinction of those ofMoreland and Ashraf, but it has a broader andless familiar range of references than most ofthe current studies, and the style is readable.The student will here find fairly copious inform-ation on the development of Indian vernacularliteratures during the medieval period, or ofIndo-Muslim architecture or of painting, butmuch of this information is of a quality whichshould not deter him from consulting morespecialized studies. As in his earlier publishedhistory of the Dehli sultanate, Srivastava isinclined to regard the Muslim presence in theIndian subcontinent as a misfortune and as anobstacle to the ' national integration ' dear tothe hearts of the Congress bourgeois intelligent-sia. His approach to Akbar is pithily summar-ized in his list of the contents of the concludingchapter, called ' A nation in the making ' :' Political condition. . . . Akbar gives politicalunity to most parts of India. . . . Administra-tive uniformity.. . . Equal citizenship forall. . . . Attempts at social integration. . . .India a nation in the last quarter of the 16thcentury . . . '.SIMON DIGEYBAWA SATINDER SINGH : The Jammufox: a biography of Maharaja GulabSingh of Kashmir, 1792-1857. xvi,263 pp., 12 plates. Carbondale andEdwardsville : Southern Illinois Uni-versity Press; London and Amster-dam, Feffer and Simons, Inc., [1974].$15.The founder of Jammu and Kashmir Statemade a strong impression on his contempor-aries. Among the judgements quoted in thisbook, Sir Charles Napier thought him ' thecleverest man India ever produced ' and Her-bert Edwardes ' the worst native I have evercome in contact with'. His life is a uniquestory of the success of a north Indian power-holder who, in an age of declining fortunes,started with little and left much, who had toserve two powerful masters and to survive atransfer of allegiance. There are two mainphases of Gulab Singh's political life, whichstand in strong contrast to one another. Thefirst is of his rise to favour and to power in thereign of Maharaja Ran jit Singh of Lahore,when he was in formidable alliance with hisbrothers Dhian Singh and Suchet Singh andhis nephew Hira, Singh. The second is of GulabSingh's lone survival, thanks to ' a wonderfulgift of evading assassination and violent death 'in the troubled days of the downfall of the Sikhkingdom, when he transferred his allegiance tothe British and acquired Kashmir proper toround off the domain which he had built uppiecemeal. His territorial expansion towardsTibet and Central Asia pushed forward theborders of India itself, and his composite statein spite of ethnic, linguistic, and religiousdiversity endured to our own day. In short thelife of Gulab Singh is a challenging theme.He has previously been the subject of aslender but accomplished biography in English,by the late K. M. Panikkar (The founding ofKashmir state: a biography of Maharaja GulabSingh, 1792-1858, London, 1930, reprinted1953; Panikkar appears to have miscalculatedthe date of decease in the Christian era from aTikram samvat date). The biography waswritten in the course of Panikkar's own careeras a Dewan of princely states, when he was inthe employ of the Jammu and Kashmir Durbar.Panikkar denounced contemporary sources' written by persons who have taken an active

Martine Mazaudon. Phonologie tamang: étude phonologique du dialecte tamang de Risiangku

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Martine Mazaudon. Phonologie tamang: étude phonologique du dialecte tamang de Risiangku

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