Na (or Narua, Mosuo) is a language of the Naish subbranch of the Naic group of the Sino-Tibetan languages.
Varieties Yongning Na, which is spoken in Yongning Township, Ninglang County, Lijiang, Yunnan, China, has been documented by Jacques and Michaud (2011).Jacques, Guillaume, and Alexis Michaud. 2011. "Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages." Diachronica 28:468-498. It has three tonal levels. A trilingual dictionary is available online.
Lataddi Narua is notable for having only two tonal levels.Dobbs, Roselle, and La Mingqing. 2016 "The two-level tonal system of Lataddi Narua." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Vol. 39:1 (2016), 67–104.
Phonology
Consonants LabialAlveolarRetroflexAlveolo-palatalPalatalVelarUvularGlottalNasal()()Stopvoiceless()()aspirated()voiced()AffricatevoicelessaspiratedvoicedFricativevoiceless()voiced()()Lateralfricativeglide()Approximant
/t, tʰ, d, n, l/ can be heard as [ʈ, ʈʰ, ɖ, ɳ, ɭ] when preceding vowel sounds /ɯ, u, v̩, ɤ, æ/. /p, pʰ, b, m, w/ can be heard as [ʙ̥, ʙ̥ʰ, ʙ, ɱ, v] when preceding vowel sounds /ɯ, u, v̩/. /ɣ/ can also be heard as uvular [ʁ] in word-initial position. /w, h/ is also heard as voiceless [w̥, x] in free variation. /n/ is heard as velar [ŋ] when before velar stops. [ʔ] is heard in initial position before vowels.
Vowels FrontCentralBackCloseMidOpen, Syllabic
/ɯ/ can be heard as [ɨ] in syllable-initial position and as retroflex [ɻ̩] when after retroflex consonants.
Grammar
Syntax Narua's default word order is agent–object–verb, although expression of all verb arguments is not obligatory.
Narua marks sentence topics with jjo after a topicalized clause or noun phrase.
References