Nasal Assimilation in the Mising Language

Name of Author : Jimly Gogoi

Abstract: Mising language has been descended from Sino-Tibetan language family shows a set of phonological features. Assimilation is one among of those. The language shows voicing and nasal assimilation process. This paper intends to investigate the nasal assimilation; a place feature is given to a voiced plosive consonant by the adjacent onset nasal consonant. Sometimes this process happens by shortening vowels simultaneously inserts a velar nasal. A process is termed as nasal assimilation when a non nasal gets changed to nasal sound for the influence of its neighboring sound. In this particular language, the onset spreads the place feature to the adjacent coda. As a result the trigger sounds come with both germination and non germination pattern. Another phenomenon of this phonologically rich language in terms of nasal assimilation is the shortening of vowel length and simultaneously a velar nasal sound is inserted. Here, two fine examples are given: rag + ?ab = ra??ab ‘ending of tiding something’ te: + gan =te?gan ‘let a tree fall on something

Keywords : Mising Language, Assimilation, Nasal Assimilation, Germination, Vowel Shortening.

DOI :