Obstruent voicing and tone in Siklis Gurung

This thesis examines proposals for the tone system of Gurung, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal, in light of data collected from a speaker of Siklis Gurung. Although Gurung is widely acknowledged to be a tonal language, existing descriptions of Gurung disagree as to how these tone categories should be defined and whether word-initial obstruent voicing is phonemic or allophonic. The data presented in this paper suggests that, despite claims otherwise, voicing is phonemic in some dialects of Gurung. It also suggests that Siklis Gurung is best analyzed as having three tone categories: a low tone that occurs with breathy phonation; and high and mid tones that occur with modal phonation. Following models of tonogenesis, the emergence of these three tones is attributed to the split of one of two proto-tones due to the loss of a word-initial obstruent voicing contrast. This hypothesis is compared to theories outlined in the literature.