LING: lesson 6 (dialects pt2)

Southern dialects

• many isolated areas in the South due to geographical characteristics

• mutually unintelligible dialects and sub-dialects

What are the 6 major Southern dialects?

1. Wu

2. Xiang

3. Gan

4. Yue/ Cantonese

5. Hakka/ Kejia

6. Min

Why is Yue/ Cantonese so interesting?

• global migration: most oversees chinese speak cantonese (not putonghua)

• own writing system (not standard pinyin or simplified characters

• pronounciation is much closer to Tang-dynasty pronounciation

Yue dialect background:

• Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hongkong

• ca. 80 million speakers

• traced back to settlers in the late 3rd century BCE (soldiers dispatched by the First Emperor?)

• Guangzhou → Canton → Cantonese

• own form of characters (not simplified + newly invented characters)

• nearly 90% of American Chinese from Taishan

Why do Yue speakers sometimes refer to themselves as Tangren?

Because the largest migration from N to S happened after the fall of the Tang dynasty (An Lushan)

What does Yue 粤 refer to?

originally: to various ppl of the Yue-kind (Austro-Asiatic/ Tai-Kadai?) occupying areas around the Yangtze and stretching to the Southern coastal region

ancestors of the Tai people?

migration patterns of the Yue:

Qin/ Han: immigration from Central Plain to areas around Yangtze and Southern coastal region

Six Dynasties: further immigrations

Tang: many Chinese flee to the South

What is the connection between Min and Yue?

both have a connection to the Qin-dynasty

→ they have DEEP roots substratum

What are the features of Yue dialect?

mixture of Sinitic and Thai elements

ca. 100 sub-dialects

phonology of Yue:

• correlation between tonal features and the aspiration of initial consonants derived from Middle Chinese voiced initials

  • aspirated voiceless consonants (p, t, k) become 平 and 上 tones

  • unaspirated become 去 and 入 tones

• endings

  • nasal: -m, -n, -ng

  • stop: -p, -t, -k

• many tones (because of split of the 入声)

• other correlations derive from That stratum

• ancient Yue probably featured consonant clusters (kl-, gl-, sl-)

• same word can be pronounced differently according to colloquial/ literary

initial consonants of Yue

Yue vowels

Yue rhymes (vowel + ending consonant)

• initials → 763 syllables

tones in Yue

many tones because of:

• existence of voiced consonants (e.g. b, d, g) and unvoiced (e.g. p, t, k) → voiced became unvoiced later BUT there was still a pitch difference

• split of 入声: syllables ending in a stop coda split into upper (unvoiced) and lower (voiced) registers (Mid-low Falling, Mid-low Rising, Mid-low Level, Mid-low Stop)

• changed tones: word shifts from Mid-low to High tone to signal familiarity

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syntactic features of Yue in relation to Mandarin Chinese?

most structures have equivalents

BUT Yue has some extra different structures (co-existing in High and Lower register)

What are some special syntactic features of Yue?

1. inverted double-object constructions

2. always an agent in passive constructions

3. aspect marking

4. negations

5. copula

6. interrogatives

7. personal pronouns

elaborate aspect marking in Yue:

• complex system

• perfective can be indicated by a tonal modification

• reduplication to indicate: intensity or diminuitive

What are some things that can be marked with an aspect in Yue?

• perfective

• completive

• habitual

• progressive

• durative

• …

Why are the semantics of Yue so compex?

because of the various layers it posseses:

• Han Chinese

• Archaic Han Chinese

• Southern Han Chinese

• Loan words (o.a. from English)

• “Aboriginal” languages

• Native Yue language