Sui Dialect Research

Description

Abstract Contents Foreword Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 General Introduction 1.1 Introduction and objectives 1.2 Background 1.3 Previous research on the Sui language 1.4 Methodology 1.4.1 Site selection 1.4.2 Wordlist methodology 1.4.3 Intelligibility testing methodology 1.5 Research findings 2 Historical and Cultural Background 2.1 Origins of the Sui people and their migratory history 2.2 Geography of the Sui region 2.3 Information on the primary data points 2.3.1 Sandong (SD) (Shuigen village, Sandong district) 2.3.2 Zhonghe (ZH) (Hezhai hamlet, Zhonghe village) 2.3.3 Tangzhou (TZ) (Meiyu village, Tangzhou district) 2.3.4 Antang (AT) (Antang village, Tangzhou district) 2.3.5 Tingpai (TP) (Xinyang village, Tingpai township) 2.3.6 Dujiang (DJ) (Zenlei village, Dujiang township) 2.3.7 Banliang (BL) (Banliang village, Tangzhou district) 2.3.8 Jiaoli (JL) (Gaorong village, Jiaoli district) 2.3.9 Jiuqian (JQ) (Guchang village, Jiuqian township) 3 Historical Development of the Sui Dialects: Introduction 3.1 Background 3.2 Sui phonology sketch 3.2.1 The Sui syllable 3.2.2 Consonants 3.2.3 Vowels 3.2.4 Tones 3.3 Challenges to tracking sound changes in Sui 3.3.1 Proto-Sui: A questionable hypothesis 3.3.2 Lack of thorough and reliable reconstructions 3.3.3 Debate over prosodic form of the proto language 3.3.4 Difficulty in identifying cognates and loanwords 3.4 Data and conventions 4 Historical Development of Tones 4.1 Summary of argument 4.2 Background 4.3 Divergent tonal development in Sui dialects 4.3.1 Shared tonal developments in Yang’an Sui and Kam 4.3.2 Shared tonal developments in Pandong, Western, Yang’an Sui and Kam 4.3.3 Unique tonal developments in Southern Sui 4.3.4 Summary 4.3.5 Discussion 4.4 Tone splits and mergers 4.4.1 Merger of entering tones in Jiaoli (JL, Pandong) 4.4.2 Merger of Tones 7 and 8 in Shuiyao (SY, Southern) 4.5 Sui “voiced-high” tone value distinctiveness: An areal feature 4.6 Variation in Sui phonetic tone values 4.6.1 Tone 6 4.6.2 Tones 2 and 4 4.6.3 Tone 1 4.7 Summary of findings 5 Historical Development of Onsets and Rimes 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Onsets 5.2.1 Preglottalised onsets 5.2.2 Voiceless nasals 5.2.3 Prenasalised voiced stops 5.2.4 PKS *-w- clusters 5.2.5 PKS stop-lateral *ʔdl-, *kl-, *khl- clusters 5.2.6 Sibilants 5.2.7 Dorsals 5.3 From onsets to rimes: Palatalisation, labialisation and glides 5.3.1 Palatalised onsets 5.3.2 Labialised onsets 5.4 Rimes 5.4.1 PKS *-u 5.4.2 PKS *-i and *-e 5.4.3 PKS *-e and *-ai partial merger in Tangzhou (TZ) 5.4.4 PKS *-iŋ, *-eŋ (loanwords) partial merger in Tangzhou (TZ) and Tingpai (TP) 5.4.5 PKS *-ik, *-ek, *-aːk mergers in Tangzhou (TZ), Tingpai (TP) and Jiaoli (JL) 5.4.6 PKS *-uk and *-uːk merger in Jiaoli (JL) 5.4.7 PKS *u and *uː before nasal codas 5.4.8 PKS *-i-, *-ə- and *-a- partial mergers conditioned by palatals 5.5 Phonetic variation 5.6 Shared diachronic innovations and Sui subgrouping 5.6.1 Yang’an 5.6.2 Southern 5.6.3 Central, Western, Eastern and Pandong 5.7 Cross-dialect similarities and “Sui-ness” 5.7.1 PKS retentions shared by all Sui dialects 5.7.2 Late sound changes shared by all Sui dialects 6 Lexical Similarity 6.1 Background 6.2 Methodology 6.2.1 Selection of data for comparison 6.2.2 Method of determining lexical similarity 6.3 Lexical similarity counts 6.3.1 Sui and Kam 6.3.2 Sui dialects 6.4 Sui dialectal variants 6.4.1 Pandong Sui dialect variants 6.4.2 Yang’an Sui dialect variants 6.4.3 Dialect variants shared by Pandong and Yang’an Sui 6.4.4 Southern Sui dialect variants 6.4.5 Rongjiang county dialect variants 6.5 Semantic differences 6.5.1 Differences in semantic range 6.5.2 Semantic shift due to lexical replacement 6.5.3 Semantic differences due to differences in physical environment 6.5.4 SD and JQ: A lexical and semantic crossover region 6.5.5 Semantic change: Conclusion 6.6 Conclusion 7 Phonetic Distance 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Background: Dialectometry and Levenshtein distance (LD) 7.3 Methodology 7.3.1 Calculating Levenshtein distance 7.3.2 Selection of Sui and Kam data for comparison 7.3.3 Pre-processing of Sui and Kam data 7.4 Results of Sui dialect comparison 7.4.1 LD calculated using narrow, phonetic transcriptions 7.4.2 LD calculated using broad, phonemicised transcriptions 7.4.3 Sandong (SD) and Zhonghe (ZH): the most representative varieties 7.4.4 Cluster determinants 7.5 Results of Sui and Kam dialect comparison 7.6 Conclusions 8 Interdialect Intelligibility 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Measuring intelligibility 8.3 The history of intelligibility testing 8.3.1 Recorded Text Test (RTT): Story question and answer method 8.3.2 Word recognition tests 8.3.3 Sentence completion tests 8.3.4 Sentence translation tests 8.3.5 Content question and answer tests 8.3.6 Towards a new methodology: The sentence retelling (L2) test 8.4 Methodology 8.4.1 Designing the sentences 8.4.2 Translating and recording the sentences 8.4.3 Designing the tests 8.4.4 Test selection 8.4.5 Administering the tests (sampling and procedures) 8.4.6 Scoring the tests 8.5 Results 8.5.1 Intelligibility of Central Sui (GC) 8.5.2 Intelligibility of Southern Sui (SY) 8.5.3 Intelligibility of Yang’an Sui (LW) 8.5.4 Intelligibility of Pandong Sui (PD) 8.6 Conclusion 8.7 Methodology critique 9 Conclusions 9.1 Visualisations 9.2 Dialect clusters indicated by wordlist analysis 9.3 Dialect clusters indicated by intelligibility testing 9.4 Implications for language development 9.5 Final remarks Appendix A: Tone values of languages in the Guizhou-Guangxi region Appendix B: Summary of parallel tone development in Chinese and Sui Appendix C: RTT questionnaire Appendix D: RTT sentences Appendix E: RTT core elements Appendix F: RTT result tables Appendix G: Wordlist phonology sketches Appendix H: Wordlist data Appendix I: Index to wordlist data References