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Mongsen Ao is a member of the Ao languages, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, predominantly spoken in central Mokokchung district of Nagaland, northeast India. Its speakers see the language as one of two varieties of a greater "Ao language," along with the prestige variety Chungli Ao.[2] Mongsen Ao is spoken by an estimated forty percent of the 261,000 total Ao speakers.

The Ao language is a level 4 (educational) language, meaning that this language is standardized, used in literature, and supported by the education system. Ao uses a Latin writing system and is taught in primary schools. Ao can be seen in literature, dictionaries, grammars, and Bibles, and heard on the radio. The number of speakers of Ao has grown from an estimated 100,000 speakers in 1991 to 261,000 speakers in 2011.

The Mongsen Ao dialect contains a range of varieties in lexicon, phonology, and morphology dependent on the village in which it is spoken. A chapter in the anthropological monograph of Mills (1926) provides a grammatical sketch of the variety of Mongsen Ao spoken in Longchang village. Coupe (2003) is one of the few acoustic studies published on a Kuki-Chin-Naga language (only three exist). Coupe (2007) is a reference grammar of the language, based on a revision of his PhD dissertation (Coupe 2004).

The speakers of Mongsen Ao are almost all Baptist Christian. Church is held on Saturdays with the sermons given in the prestige dialect of Chungli. Traditionally, the Ao people are farmers, and eat rice, vegetables and occasionally meat hunted from the nearby jungle. Deforestation is a major problem in the lives of the Ao people, as it is dangerously depleting the food sources in the jungles around the villages.

Alphabet
The Ao alphabet is based on the Latin script and was developed in the 1880s by the Christian missionary Edward W. Clark for Chungli Ao. The system is not based on phonemic principles and does not represent tone. A Christian Bible was published using the orthography in 1964. Coupe (2003) suggests a more consistent alphabet for Mongsen Ao.

A, B, Ch, E, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ng, O, P, R, S, T, U, Y, Z

Vowels
Mongsen Ao has five vowel phonemes. There is one front /i/, three central /ə/, /a/, and /a̰/, and one back vowel /u/. The two low vowels /a, a̰/ differ in terms of phonation type. /a/ has modal voice (i.e. normal phonation); /a̰/ has creaky voice (also known as vocal fry, laryngealization). Coupe (2003) argues that this is a separate vowel phoneme and not a tone, a glottal stop, or resulting from prosodic effects.

''The table below is modified from existing wiki article. One incorrect entry was altered.''

The /i/ occurs in all initial, medial and final positions within words. The /u/ occurs in all initial, medial and final positions, as well, but has two allophonic realizations that arise in different phonemic environments. The two allophonic realizations are /u/ and /o/, with the later usually arising in proximity to a velar consonant. However, this is not consistent enough to be stated as a rule; there are some /u/ that arise in proximity with a velar consonant. Furthermore, the /u/ and /o/ are completely interchangeable, meaning that /u/ can be substituted for an /o/ and vice versa without change in the meaning of the word. The /ə/ occurs most frequently in the medial position, and in certain phonemic environments it may appear at the final position in a word. The /a/ occurs in initial, medial and final position and in all phonemic environments. The /a̰/ occurs when there is no glottal stop in the environment. Although similar, the /a/ and the /a̰/ are not allophonic.

Consonants
Mongsen Ao has 26 consonants.

''The table below was modified from the existing wikipedia article. Nothing was deleted.''

The consonant phonemes of Mongsen Ao have six distinct places of articulation, and six distinct manners of articulation. Aspiration is contrastive for stops (plosives) and fricatives. Voicing is contrastive for nasals, laterals and approximants. Dental consonants /t, tʰ, ts, tsʰ, s, z, n, l/ are laminal denti-alveolar. The post-alveolar approximant /ɹ/ varies from an apical post-alveolar to subapical retroflex: [ɹ̠~ɻ]. The glottal stop /ʔ/ occurs only at the end of words. However, in this position it contrasts with words ending in vowels: /āmī/ 'spear' vs. /āmīʔ/ 'person'. When a suffix is added to such words, the /ʔ/ is deleted. Thus, the glottal stop has a somewhat marginal phonemic status.

Syllable Structure
A syllable (represented by σ) in Mongsen Ao consists of a vowel with a tone, and optionally, any of the following: a consonant onset, a consonant coda, and a glide (/w/ or /j/) which immediately follows the vowel.

σ = (C1)V(G)(C2) + tone

The nucleus of the syllable consists of the vowel and the glide, or, if the glide is not present, just the vowel. The consonants present in the coda are more constrained than the consonants in the onset. All consonants of the language can be used as an onset, but only unasperated stops, nasals, and post-alveolar approximants are allowed to constitute the coda. Furthermore, in free speech, many Mongsen speakers have a tendency to reshape the structure of a single syllable by realizing the coda of the syllable as an onset to another syllable, followed by a shwa nucleus, /ə/. "E.g. Resyllabification: sàɹàɹ ('animal') can be pronounced sàɹàɹə without any change in meaning."

Long vowels are not allowed by the language within a syllable nucleus. If they occur due to morpheme concatenation, then either one of the vowels will be deleted, or the word will be resyllabified, so that each vowel composes one singular syllable nucleus. "E.g. vowel deletion: sana ('speak') + -aŋ (IMP) becomes sanaŋ ('speak!') with a vowel deletion on one of the /a/'s instead of elongating the /a/."

Tone
Ao is a tonal language with 3 contrasting lexical tones:


 * high
 * mid
 * low

All are register tones.

These tones are sometimes realized differently in free speech depending on their environments due to allotonic variations. Because each syllable is assigned a tone in Mongsen Ao, words with more than one syllable have tone sequences. For example, the word təkhə́t (hand/arm) has a mid tone on the first syllable nucleus and a high tone (represented by the upwards pointing accent mark) on the second syllable nucleus. (i.e. M-H) In disyllabic words, the following tone sequences are found in Mongsen Ao: (L-L), (M-M), (H-H), (L-M), (H-L), (M-H), and (M-L). The following tone sequences do not occur in disyllabic words: (L-H) and (H-M). In words longer than two syllables, these tone sequences may occur. Tone sandhi occurs in this language, as it does in most Tibeto-Burman languages.

Words
Words may be a short as just one phoneme, and also may minimally convey only one morphological meaning. Two syllable words and one syllable words occur with roughly equal frequency in Mongsen Ao: about 49% and 47%, respectively. The rest are trisyllabic words, which occur infrequently.

Nominal Prefixes
There are only four nominal prefixes in Mongsen Ao. They are the following:


 * 1) a - This is a vocative prefix  (VOC)used on kinship words only when invoking a person or thing.
 * 2) tə - This nominalizing prefix (NZP) is used to create nouns from verb roots.
 * 3) a - This non-relational prefix (NRL) is used on nouns defining objects in the natural environment or cultural artifacts to show a lack of ownership, or kinship relationship with the object.
 * 4) tə - This relational prefix (RL) is used on kinship words, such as father or mother, and on body parts to convey a sense of relational status or ownership. It can be loosely thought of as meaning 'somebody's.'

All nominal prefixes are atonal when said in isolation, and take on the tones from the adjacent root syllable when said in concatenation with a root. It is interesting to note that there are two /a/ prefixes and two /tə/ prefixes, each with a completely different meaning than their homonym pair. Below are examples of these four prefixes.

The Vocative Prefix
Below shows an example of the use of the vocative prefix. An example of the nominalizing prefix can be found in the compounding section for the word 'corpse.'"apaʔ a-paʔ

VOC-father

'Father!'"

The Non-relational Prefix
The bound prefix 'a' is a non-relational bound prefix (NRL) meaning ‘a.’ It does not signifiy that the root morpheme (person) belongs to anyone or is related to anyone, like ‘tə’ does. While ‘tə’ is used in conjunction with body parts and kinship terms, 'a  is used in conjunction with objects in the surrounding environment, or things that are specifically lacking in any known kinship relation. This prefix is also inflectional.   "amiʔpuk a-miʔ-puk

NRL-person-stomach

'a person's stomach'"

The Relational Prefix
The bound morpheme, ‘tə,’ is a relational prefix (RL) that indicates relation to the noun. It is not translated as ‘my,’ but instead as ‘someone’s.' This prefix is used with kinship and body part nouns. It is inflectional. "təma tə-ma

RL-face

'Someone's face'"

Verbal Prefixes
Mongsen Ao has an even distribution between intransitive and transitive verbs. In addition to the nominalizing prefix tə-, there are three verbal prefixes, described below.


 * 1) asáʔ- The admonitive mood prefix (ADM).
 * 2) tə̀ - The prohibitive mood prefix (PROH).
 * 3) mə̀- The negative prefix (NEG).

The Admonitive Mood Prefix
The admonitive prefix is used to indicate the same meaning as the English phrase, 'don't you VERB too much.'

asátʃàsi asá-tʃàsi

ADM-be.distressed

'Don't be too upset'

The Prohibitive Mood Prefix
The prohibitive mood prefix, on the other hand, outright prohibits a certain activity, such as telling a child the following:

"awŋ ku tə̀tʃə̀lì a-uŋ ku tè-tʃèlì

NRL-jungle LOC PROH-walk

'Don't wander around in the jungle'"

The Negative Prefix
The negative prefix mə̀ is used to negate verbs, loosely equivalent to the 'not' in 'did not' or 'does not' in English. "tə̀ku təpaʔ nə 'u mə̀phùjùʔ.' tə̀-ku tə-paʔ nə u mə̀-phùʔ-ì-ùʔ

thus-LOC.CV RL-father AGT EXCLM NEG-steal-IRR-DEC

'And so, the father said, 'Oh I won't steal''"(LOC.CV = locative converb, AGT = agentive case, EXCLM = exclamation, IRR = irrealis mood, DEC = declarative mood)

Nominal Suffixes
There are more nominal suffixes than nominal prefixes in the language. There is an intensifier suffix, two gender suffixes, a diminutive suffix, a terminative suffix, a reflexive suffix, and a locational suffix. Below is an example of the terminative suffix. "tə-mi-lak tə-mi-lak

RL-tail-TERM

'tip of a tail'"  The morpheme,  'lak', means the terminal point of an activity or noun. So, this suffix added onto ‘tə-mi’ (someone’s tail), indicates the end of the tail, or the tip of the tail.  

Verbal Suffixes
Verbal suffixes are the most prevalent and numerous in terms of verbal morphology. The following table is compilation of all the known suffixes. Note that verbal suffixes are more numerous than verbal prefixes, nominal prefixes and nominal suffixes.

Clitics
Mongsen Ao has clitics, many of which follow the characteristics listed below:

                
 * 1) low selectivity with regards to host lexical category.
 * 2) able to change the meaning of the host word, or even the phrase or clause containing the host word. This is in contrast to affixes, which only can affect the host lexical stem to which they are applied, and not at any higher level, such as word, phrase or clause.

Compound Nouns
Compounds can be formed in Mongsen Ao through noun-noun, noun-verb, nominalized verb-noun, and noun nominalized verb combinations. Nominalization occurs when a word that is not a noun is used as a noun, with or without morphological modification. An example of a nominalized verb-noun compound would be the following: tə-sə-maŋ 

NZP-die + body

'corpse' The nominalizing prefix  'tə'  changes the verb 'die' to a noun form of the verb, such as 'death.' An example of a noun nominalized verb compound would be the following:         kì-li-əɹ 

house + stay-ANOM

'servant' (ANOM = agentive nominalization)          

The nominalizing suffix ' əɹ' changes the verb 'stay' into 'staying,' which makes the compound literally translate to 'house staying one.' The difference between nominalized verb-noun and noun nominalized verb is whether the verb appears before or after the noun.

Compound Verbs
Verbs can be concatenated to create compounds, such as the following: tshə̀ (pull) + laŋ (be.long)

'stretch'                            

Reduplication In Distributive Numerals
Mongsen Ao also uses reduplication in distributive numerals. In the example below, to say ‘three each,’ the last syllable of the root number ' səm' is duplicated. In this case, since the number ‘three’ is only one syllable, the entire number is duplicated.

"a-səm-səm                                                                                                                  a-səm-səm

NRL-three-three

'three each'"    

Pronouns
Mongsen Ao uses the above pronouns. There is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive for the first person. Additionally, there three categories of plurality: singular, dual and plural (3+ people).

Possession
Possesion is commonly denoted by the pronoun in Mongsen Ao. In these cases, the relational prefix ' tə' is replaced by the possessive pronoun, except in the 3rd person singular, in which case the possessive pronoun cannot replace the relational prefix and instead occupies a place before the prefix as a separate word.

kə-ləm kə-ləm

1SG.POSS-head

'my head'

pa tə-ləm pa tə-ləm

3SG RL-head

'His/her head!'    Possession can also be shown by the juxtaposition of nouns. Additionally, possession can also be shown the agentive nominalizing suffix, -əɹ.

Unbound Nouns
All unbound nouns in Mongsen Ao are personal names, place names or nature nouns. All other nouns have bound morphemes, such as the relational or nonrelational prefixes.

Syntax
Mongsen Ao is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language with postpositions. Adjectives, numerals and demonstratives follow the nouns they modify, whilst relative clauses may be either externally or internally headed. Adverbial subordinators are suffixes attached to the verb and the end of the subordinate clause. The following examples illustrate the basic (SOV) syntactical sentence structure. "nì asəŋ səɹə̀ nì a-sə́ŋ sə-ə̀ɹ

1SG NRL-wood chop-PRES

'I'm chopping wood'"

The verb, by default, is clause-final, as is common in Tibeto-Burman languages. So, in the intransitive case, the sentence follows an SV structure. Mongsen Ao clauses may also be verbless, as shown by the following example: "kə təniŋ pəntáŋmuŋla kə tə-niŋ pəntáŋmuŋ-la

1SG.POSS RL-name PN-F

'My name is Bendangmongla'"

Passive Voice
The object of a transitive verb may be put at the front of the clause with no special grammatical marking. The below example shows this property: nuzaj la tsə̀ŋɹutshə-la tʃu tshəjùʔ nuzaj la tsə̀ŋɹutshə-la tʃu tshə-ì-ùʔ

younger.female TOP PN-F DIST take-IRR-DEC

'The younger one, Tsengrutsela, [I'll] take.' (In rely to 'which daughter will you take to marry?')

The inverted positions of the subject and the object is best translated as the passive voice in English. The topic particle particle /la/ is used in the above example to point attention to a certain referent, 'the younger one.'

Case Marking
The vast majority of intransitive verbs do not have case marking. For transitive verbs, the agentive marker can be used as a case marking, but it depends on the semantic meaning of the sentence

Agentive case
The agentive marker indicates an added level of agency and intention. This is opposed to a neutral and habitual activity, which is conveyed by the lack of the agentive marker after the subject. When the agentive marker, /nə/, is added, the subjects are given an extra level of agency, willingness, intention, and often, cunning. This marker conveys a meaning beyond the most basic, neutral interpretation. The agentive marker always occurs after the subject, either in an intransitive or transitive clause. For an example, see below: "a-hən nə atʃak tʃàɹùʔ a-hən nə atʃak tʃàʔ-èɹ-ùʔ

NRL-chicken AGT NRL-paddy consume-PRES-DEC

'The chickens are eating the paddy' (with implication that the chickens are stealing the paddy)"The lack of this agentive marker would indicate that the chickens were eating the paddy that was given to them, without stealing. The addition of this maker leads the listener to think of a non-neutral possibility for how the chickens could be eating the paddy, such as they stole the paddy. When this marker is added after the 'who' to to question 'who drank the tea?', there is a conotation that someone stole the tea. Additionally, including this marker after the 'I' in 'I coughed' would mean, ' I deliberately coughed to get your attention.' There is no perfect translation of this marker into English, but one can think about it as indicating an added level of purpose, or deviation from a neutral meaning.