Poula language

Poula is an Angami-Pochuri language that is predominantly spoken by the Poumai Naga people in Senapati district in Manipur and Phek district in Nagaland, India. The language of Chingjaroi is also closely related to Poula but is distinct. A descriptive grammar of Poula is available.^[2]

Poula
Poumai
Native to	Manipur, Nagaland
Ethnicity	Poumai Naga
Native speakers	140,000 (2011)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Angami-Pochuri Angami Poula
Language codes
ISO 639-3	pmx
Glottolog	poum1235

Grammar

Phonology

The phonology of Poula lacks syllable codas and also disallows consonant clusters in onset position. There are 25 consonant phonemes in Poula.

Consonants

Consonants^[3]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k
	voiced	pʰ	tʰ	cʰ	kʰ
	aspirated	b	d		g
Nasal	plain	m	n		ŋ
	aspirated				ŋ̊ʰ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ɕ		h
	voiced			ʑ
Affricate	voiceless			tɕ
	voiced			dʑ
Approximant		ʋ		j
Liquid	rhotic		ɾ
	lateral		l

Vowels

There are six vowel phonemes in Poula.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i   y		(u)
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a

In Poula, the phoneme /ə/ is written with the grapheme 'ü' (now, many use it as 'ii') in Bible and Hymns which was devised by Bible Society of India. In addition Poula lacks high back round vowel [u] as a monophthong,^[4] but [u] is present in nexus of diphthong; for example pou [pəu] `father'.

Tones

Poula is a tonal language, however tone is not currently marked in the orthography. There are four tonemes in Poula.^[3]

Word	Tone	Gloss
/na˥/	High-falling	'baby'
/na˦/	Mid-Rising	'later'
/na˧/	Mid	'things'
/na˩/	Low	'paint'

Poula is an extremely innovative language–unlike Kuki-Chin languages–for having simple morphology.^[5]

Morphology

Nouns and verbs are the two content word classes. There are no ‘adjective’ and ‘adverbs’ words classes, however nominalized verbs may modify nouns and non-finite converbial verbs may modify verbs. There several functional words found.^[6]