Laryngeal Contrast and Tone in Tamang: An Analysis Based on a New Set of Tamang Data

Tamang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nepal and India. We report findings from a newly recorded set of data that adopts words from Mazaudon (1973, 2014) as well as Hyonjan (1993, 1997). Various dialects of Tamang have been described as a language with a four-way tonal contrast (Hari 1970, Mazaudon 1973, 1978, Mazaudon and Michaud 2008, Owen-Smith 2014, Regmi and Regmi 2018). Our results, however, find that the Tamang variety we inves- tigated is better described via voice onset time (VOT) with a three-way laryngeal contrast