An exploratory recording of numeral-plus-classifier phrases: 1 to 10, with 9 different classifiers. Speaker M31, year 2015

An exploratory recording of numeral-plus-classifier phrases. The elicitation starts out from the 9 tonal categories of classifiers that are known to be distinguished in another dialect, from the Yongning plain (Michaud, Alexis. 2013. The tone patterns of numeral-plus-classifier phrases in Yongning Na: a synchronic description and analysis. In Nathan Hill & Tom Owen-Smith (eds.), Transhimalayan Linguistics. Historical and Descriptive Linguistics of the Himalayan Area, 275–311. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton). These 9 different classifiers are elicited from speaker M31, a speaker of the Lataddi dialect (泸沽湖镇). The aim of this preliminary investigation is to find out which of the 9 classifiers have a tonally different behaviour in Lataddi. This recording was done in a room that was not sound-treated, hence some reverberation. In the transcriptions, Tones are indicated in two ways: (i) in surface-phonological transcription, and also (ii) in terms of the underlying categories: for instance, 'one piece' is transcribed as /ɖɯ˩-kʰwɤ˥˩/ (surface-phonological transcription), and its tone category is indicated as L.H, because the final falling contour is ascribed to an exceptionless phonological rule whereby tone-group-final H tones are realized with a falling contour (and tone-group-final L tones with a rising contour). The nine classifiers selected for this exploratory session exemplify the nine tonal categories of classifiers brought out for the Yongning dialect (speaker F4). In M31's speech as exemplified in this recording, four tonal sets of classifiers emerge; differences are few, however. The four categories brought out correspond to: - category 1: Yongning's H1, H2, and L1- category 2: Yongning's M1, L2, L3 and MH1- category 3: Yongning's M2- category 4: Yongning's MH2To verify whether there are additional categories or not, a larger-scale study would be necessary: systematic elicitation of the classifiers found in the Lataddi dialect, in association with a range of numbers. This study would be equivalent in scope to that conducted with speaker F4 for the Yongning dialect (Pingjing village).