Tone in Yongning Na: lexical tones and morphotonology

The draft has been circulated among colleagues since 2012. A first version was deposited in the HAL-SHS archive in 2014 under the title "The tonal grammar of Yongning Na". The title was later changed to "Tone in Yongning Na: lexical tones and morphotonology". The draft was submitted for publication on June 1st, 2016. The volume was published in April 2017. The PDF is available under a Creative Commons license.This version is slightly improved from the submitted version (version 4 of the HAL deposit). It incorporates comments suggested by Roselle Dobbs in the course of a complete proofreading of the volume.International audienceYongning Na, also known as Mosuo, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Southwest China. This book aims to provide a description and analysis of its tone system, progressing from lexical tones towards morphotonology. Tonal changes permeate numerous aspects of the morphosyntax of Yongning Na; they are not the product of a small set of phonological rules, but of a host of rules that are restricted to specific morphosyntactic contexts. Rich morphotonological systems have been reported in this area of Sino-Tibetan, but book-length descriptions remain few. This study of an endangered language contributes to a better understanding of the diversity of prosodic systems in East Asia. The analysis is based on original fieldwork data (made available online), collected over the course of ten years, commencing in 2006