Tones of Lhasa Tibetan

Abstract

The author of this thesis claims that Lhasa Tibetan has more tonal contrasts than has hitherto generally been recognized. The proposed tonal classification has interesting consequences for the segmental phonology, in particular for the voicing status of initial stops and for some aspects of the phonology of stem compounds. No attempt has been made to adhere strictly to a specific school of phonology; but the presentation of the material has been influenced by classical phonemic, generative, and natural phonology theory. A special effort has been made through out the study to give a fair amount of phonetic data in support of the analysis proposed.