Zoki
| Zoki | |
|---|---|
| Zoki | |
| Pronunciation | [[Help:IPA|zokʰi]] |
| Created by | – |
| Native to | Central Myanmar, immigrant communities in Rttirria and elsewhere |
| Native speakers | About 120,000 in Myanmar 9,900 in Rttirria (2015) |
Zoki (English: /ˈzoʊki/, Old Zoki: ['zoːki], Burmese: [zo˥ki˩]) is a language spoken by the Zoki people of Myanmar. It is a member of the North branch of the Rttirrian language family, and is thus distantly related to Rttirri, the official language of Rttirria. Although estimates are imprecise, Zoki is believed to be spoken natively by about 120,000 people in Myanmar (0.23% of the population). The 2010 Rttirrian census also found 9,903 citizens who claimed to speak Zoki at home; Zoki people are classified simply as "Burmese" along with all other ethnic groups from the nation. There are also speakers in other countries where the Zoki have immigrated, such as the United States.
Documentation on the language is scant, and it does not have a deep written tradition; most widely available texts in Zoki were created by Christian missionaries. It has no official status in any nation, including Myanmar. It uses the Burmese abugida by default, although a Latin transcription system is favored by linguists. As a member of the Southeast Asian sprachbund, it has been influenced greatly by surrounding languages, especially Burmese in areas such as phonological inventory, grammar, and vocabulary. It is considered one of the most innovative Rttirrian languages.
Most of its grammar is analytic, with word order serving multiple syntactic roles and little affixation. It has no grammatical gender, number, or cases. However, it is notable for its rich and productive system of incorporating words as biconsonantal or triconsonantal roots that can fit any of seven verb patterns, which can be inflected into three different tenses or derived into gerunds simply through vowel changes—this system is reminiscent of those of the Semitic languages of the Middle East. Unlike many languages spoken nearby, its phonology does not feature a tone system, but it does have a three-way voicing/aspiration distinction in stops and a large vowel inventory (at least 13 vowel phonemes).
History
- See also: Proto-Rttirrian, Proto-North-Rttirrian, and Old Zoki
Zoki is a member of the Rttirrian language family, whose languages are spoken across the nation of Rttirria as well as in adjoining areas of Myanmar and Thailand. It is part of the North Rttirrian branch of the family; the dialects of Proto-North-Rttirrian that would become Rttirri split off from those that would become other languages around the 2rd to 4th century CE, probably in central Myanmar.
Zoki is considered one of the most innovative Rttirrian languages, having undergone considerable changes in grammar and phonology over the millennia. The main changes from Proto-North-Rttirrian to Gaju are summarized here:
- The two verb forms (roughly equivalent to transitive and intransitive) evolved into seven (all of which can be transitive or intransitive in certain contexts), aided by a rigorous pattern of ablaut of verb prefixes, some reduplication, and reappropriation of the Old Zoki word shikh ("to do") into a verbal affix.
- The verb-pattern system also became more accepting of loaned morphemes, which inflected regularly (cf. Arabic kuub "cup", akwaab "cups").
- Because of the system's growing flexibility, auxiliary verbs began to be used less.
- The verb-affixation system was hugely simplified, changing from one that encoded person, number, and tense to a very vestigial system.
- The possessive, plural, and diminutive noun affixes became separate clitic-like words.
- Many of the pronouns were simplified to some degree.
- A chain shift took place from the retroflex series of consonants, to the alveolar series, to a new dental series.
- In verbs and gerunds, word-initial */β/ became a new /w/.
- Also in verbs and gerunds, but not in most loanwords, intervocalic and final */j/ became /d͡ʒ/. This resulted in a phonemic split.
- Outside verbs and gerunds, */d/ palatalized to /d͡ʒ/ before front vowels.
- In sequences involving /j/ and /w/, vowels were lengthened; they were also lengthened in certain positions in verbs to more clearly distinguish between the various verb forms.
- Outside verbs and gerunds, in coda position, there was a chain shift from /k/ to /g/ to a new /ŋ/, which became phonemic when Zoki imported numerous words containing /ŋ/ from other languages in Southeast Asia.
- In some dialects of late Old Zoki, the voiced and voiceless stops (velar, alveolar, and bilabial) chain-shifted universally to voiceless and voiceless aspirated under areal influence, e.g. */b/ > /p/ > /pʰ/. Dialect mixing caused these dialects to re-import the more conservative pronunciations in certain consonantal roots, but not others, and these hybrid pronunciations then spread, leading to new phonemic distinctions between all three series of stops.
- The dental stop series disappeared:
- /n̪/ palatalized to /ɲ/.
- /t̪/ and /d̪/ palatalized and affricated to /tɕ/ and /dʑ/.
- /t̪ʰ/ and /d̪ʰ/ fricativized to /θ/ and /ð/.
- /d͡ʒ/ merged into this new /dʑ/.
- Initial /x/ became /h/, while coda /x/ became a re-introduced coda /k/.
- A sweeping vowel shift caused the following effects:
- /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, and /oː/ lost their length but took on schwa offglides.
- /ɔː/ lowered and unrounded to /ɑ/, lost its length, and took a schwa offglide, although many speakers now pronounce it simply as /ɑ/.
- /äː/ lost its length and fronted to /a/.
- /i/ and /e/ chain-shifted to /e/ and /ɛ/. Likewise, /u/, /o/, and /ɔ/ became /o/, /ɔ/, and /ɑ/.
- /ä/ raised to /ə/.
- In onset, /ɸ/ and /β/ labiodentalized to /f/ and /v/; elsewhere, they caused various effects on the vowels:
- /iː/ and /uː/ avoided the expected diphthongization, leading to phonemic splits between /i/ and /iə/ and between /u/ and /uə/.
- However, every other vowel became newly diphthongized with a schwa offglide.
- Some old /iːCV/ and /uːCV/ sequences simplified to /i/ and /u/.
- Expression of negation underwent Jespersen's Cycle in both types: X nu > kkûng X nu > kkûng X for nominal and adjectival phrases, and X-an > ri X-an > ri X for verbal phrases.
- Word order became significantly more important, being used to distinguish subjects and objects, indicative and conditional/subjunctive clauses, regular and comparative/superlative adjectives, and independent and relative clauses.
Phonology
Consonants
Zoki possesses the following consonant phonemes:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ny /ɳ/ | ng /ŋ/ | |||
| Plosive | p /p/ b /b/ pp /pʰ/ |
t /t/ d /d/ tt /tʰ/ |
k /k/ g /g/ kk /kʰ/ |
||||
| Fricative | f /f/ v /v/ |
th /θ/ dh /ð/ |
s /s/ z /z/ |
sh /ʃ/ zh /ʒ/ |
h /h/ | ||
| Affricate | ch /tɕ/ j /dʑ/ |
||||||
| Approximant | w /w/ | l /l/ r /ɹ/ |
y /j/ |
Vowels
The following vowel phonemes are used:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i /i/ ì /iə/ |
u /u/ ù /uə/ | |
| Mid-high | é /e/ è /eə/ |
ó /o/ ò /oə/ | |
| Mid | û /ə/ | ||
| Low-mid | e /ɛ/ | o /ɔ/ | |
| Low | a /a/ (ai /ai/) (au /au/) |
â /ɑ/ (ấ /ɑə/) |
- The distinction between /ɑ/ and /ɑə/ is a remnant of the historical vowel length distinction in Old Zoki; vowel shifts since the Old Zoki period have diphthongized most instances of the historical long vowels, while the short vowels have altered in quality. However, in the case of short and long historical */ɔ/, most speakers have merged them to /ɑ/; the diphthongization of historical long */ɔ/ to /ɑə/ is now considered a dying feature.
- The diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ do not occur in native Zoki words except for a few interjections and onomatopoeic terms, such as hai ("haha") and hau ("ouch"). They occur in some loanwords, but speakers, especially less educated ones, often pronounce them variously as bisyllabic a-i and a-u, as monophthongal a, or as monophthongal i and u.
Grammar
As part of the Southeast Asian sprachbund, Zoki has lost most of the complex affixational morphology of Proto-Rttirrian and become highly analytic. However, it retains parts of the (already simplified) affixational system of Old Zoki. Nevertheless, Zoki is no longer considered pro-drop, for example, as several verbal conjugation paradigms have merged together; pronouns are now generally used alongside verbs, except in some informal speech where they may be dropped. Similar processes have occurred in English and French.
Noun phrases
The following pronouns are used:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | |
| Nominative | nûg | mo | a | sûg | tù | âk |
| Accusative | né | me | ké | se | yo | gi |
| Possessive | nû | mé | û | sû | â | e |
Two particles may come after the entire noun phrase. One is the non-obligatory plural particle mi; the other is the diminutive ûzh. When multiple diminutive objects are being referred to, the particles may come in either order, although mi ûzh is more typical.
Verb phrases
Person/number conjugation
Verbs conjugate, vestigially, for person and number of the subject:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | |
| Past | o- | o- | — | — | — | o- |
| Present | — | — | — | — | — | e- |
| Future | — | — | — | ji- | — | ji- |
Verb patterns
However, consonantal verb roots can fit a large number of verb patterns, each of which puts a different nuance on the action.
| Form | Past | Present | Future | Gerund | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | shò1e2(e3) | shè1e2(e3) | shè1e2(e3) | nó1o2(o3) | to do something skillfully or carefully |
| II | 1ò2(e3) | 1è2(e3) | 1è2(e3) | 1e2(a3) | to do something accidentally or unintentionally |
| III | 1u2ò2(e3) | 1i2è2(e3) | 1i2è2(e3) | 1e2e2(a3) | to do something accidentally or unintentionally, over and over |
| IV | 1a2(û3) | 1a2(û3) | 1e2(é3) | 1â2(â3) | to do something weakly, gradually, or unwillingly |
| V | 1é2ò(3û) | 1é2è(3û) | 1é2è(3û) | 1é2e(3a) | to do something excitedly or rapidly |
| VI | 1i2é2ò(3û) | 1i2é2è(3û) | 1i2é2è(3û) | 1i2é2e(3a) | to do something excitedly or rapidly, over and over |
| VII | 1é2a(3û) | 1é2a(3û) | 1é2ì(3é) | 1é2â(3â) | to do something and savor or enjoy it |
The present tense of each verb form is syncretic with either the past or the future tense. This was also the case in Old Zoki, but in that stage of the language, the person/number affixes on the verb encoded unambiguous tense information, which is no longer the case in Modern Zoki. As a result, speakers often use mó (a truncation of mómó, lit. "now", cognate to Rttirri mumu) to specify that an action is taking place in the present. However, this word may come anywhere in the sentence, though it is found most frequently after the verb.
- Tù né ttéjanyû.
- 3SG.NOM 1SG.ACC annoy.Form_V
- He was/is annoying me.
- Tù né ttéjanyû mó.
- 3SG.NOM 1SG.ACC annoy.Form_V now
- He is annoying me.