Table 5.54. Sound changes shared by Yang’an and Sandong. PKS forms are ours Sandong
Yang’an Kam
see Table
PKS SD
TN BL
N.kr- ŋN-
ŋ.kr-ble ŋŋ.
h-, j- 5.16
kʰw- f-
f- f-
pʰ-, kʰw- 5.19 hl-
l- l-
l- s-
5.23
5.6.2 Southern
Southern Sui clearly branched off from the rest of Sui at an early point in time, due to a series of divergent diachronic sound changes mostly resulting in phonemic mergers, not undergone by any other
Sui dialect. These are listed in table 5.55. Furthermore, Southern Sui has retained preglottalisation on several words with approximant and nasal onsets which has been lost in other Sui dialects, for example
‘to sneeze’
ʔjan⁵ and ‘Miao’ ʔmiu¹ see section 5.2.1.4. Table 5.55. Divergent sound changes in Southern Sui. PKS is ours
Sandong Kam
see Table
PKS Central and
Western Southern
N.tr- ⁿdj-
tj- not SY ȶ-
5.14 N.tsʰr-
ⁿd- t- not SY
tʰ- 5.14
N.k-, N.kr- ŋɡ-
ɣ- k-, j-, h-
5.16 xw-
f- w-
pj- 5.19
pw- v-
w- p-
5.21 p.q-
p- q-
p-kw-w- 5.22
ʔdl-, ʔdl̥- l-
ʔd- l-
5.23 ql-
ʔd- q-, k-
, ȶ- k-, kw-
5.24 qʰl-
h- qʰ-
kʰw-, kʰ- 5.25
c- ts-
ts-, tsj- not SY ȶ-
5.27 kʰj- ‘heavy’, ‘light’
z- tsj-, ts- not SY
ȶʰ 5.32
ɕi- Chinese loans s-
sj- not SY ɕ-
5.34 kʰl-
kʰ- x-
j-, h- 5.35
-i C[+pal]___ i
e e
5.44, 5.45
- uŋ C[+lab]___
uŋ oŋ
uŋ 5.50
ʔN-, ʔj-, ʔw- partial
N-, j-, w- ʔN-, ʔj-, ʔw-
N-, j-, w- 5.8
Most of Southern Sui’s yīn-yáng tone allocations are in agreement with other Sandong subdialects
and Pandong dialect, with the exception of tones on words with ɣ- initials which tend to be pronounced
ŋɡ- in other Central dialects; see chapter 4, section 4.3.3 for discussion of tone developments. As table 5.55 indicates, although Shuiyao SY shares many phonological innovations with other
Southern lects and clearly belongs to the Southern Sui cluster, it is nevertheless somewhat distinctive. It has retained prenasalisation on some words with PKS nasal prefixes and it has also lost palatalisation
which is retained by other Southern lects on many words. Furthermore, as we noted in chapter 4, section 4.4.2, Shuiyao has undergone a merger of Tones 7 and 8 on rimes with short vowel nuclei.
5.6.3 Central, Western, Eastern and Pandong
When it comes to the remaining Sui dialects, the main problem is the subgrouping of Pandong dialect. Pandong shares several sound changes with Eastern Sui and several other different sound changes with
Western Sui. Thus one could argue for both subgroupings. Our evidence suggests that sound changes shared by Pandong and Eastern occurred more recently than those shared by Pandong and Western. We
therefore propose that, from a historical perspective, Pandong and Western group together and branch off from the same node in the Sui branch as depicted in figure 5.1 at the beginning of this chapter.
More recent sound changes, along with distinctive shared lexical items see chapter 6, lead us to group DJ, SJ and RL together into an Eastern subdialect, separate from other Sandong varieties.
Table 5.56 lists the shared sound changes in Central, Western, Eastern and Pandong Sui dialects and subdialects. The key to accurate subgrouping is to discern which sound changes occurred at an earlier
stage and which at a later stage. We refer to external evidence to help us in this quest. Table 5.56. Shared sound changes in Pandong, Eastern and Western subdialects. Reflexes
which are a result of shared sound changes are enclosed in double lines. Phonemic mergers are shaded in grey. PKS is ours unless indicated otherwise
Sandong Pandong
Sandong Eastern
see Table
Central Western
PKS SD
TP JL
PD RL
DJ ʔb-
ʔb- ʔb-
ᵐb- ᵐb-
ᵐb- ᵐb-
5.2 ʔd-
ʔd- ʔd-
ⁿd- ⁿd-
ⁿd- ⁿd-
5.3 ʔr-
ʔɣ- ʔɣ-
ɣ- ɣ-
ɣ- ɣ-
5.4 ʔN-
ʔN- ʔN-
N- N-
N- ʔN-
5.5 ʔj-
ʔj- ʔj-
j- j-
j- ʔj-
5.6 m̥V-
m̥- m̥-
hwṼ-, m- hwṼ-, m- hwṼ-
m̥- 5.11
n̥V- n̥-
n̥- hṼ-
hṼ- hṼ-
n̥- 5.12
ȵ̥V-, ŋ̥V- ȵ̥-, ŋ̥-
ȵ̥-, ŋ̥- hjṼ-
hjṼ- hjṼ-
ȵ̥-, ŋ̥- 5.12
kʰj- __i ȶʰ-
ȶʰ- ɕ-
ɕ- ɕ-
ɕ- 5.30
c- ts-
ts- ȶ-
ȶ- ts-
ȶ- __i ts- ȶ- __i 5.27 kʰj- ‘hot’, ‘dry’ s-
kʰ- kʰ-
kʰ- s-
s- 5.31
tɕ- s-
z- z-
j- s-
s- 5.33
kʰl- ‘to pare’, ‘crispy, ‘rib’
kʰ- h-
kʰ- h-
kʰ- kʰ-
5.35 C.mr- Ferlus
ᵐbj- mj-
mj- mj-
ᵐbj- ᵐbj-
5.13 -ja
-ja -
iːa -
iːɛ -
iːa -ja
-ja 5.39
- jaːN
- jaːN
- iːeN
-iN -ieN
- jaːN
- jaːN
5.40 -jeN
-jeN -ieN
-ieN 5.40
-wa -wa
- uːa
- ɯːə
- uːə
-wa -wa
5.42 Firstly, as noted in section 5.2.1, the loss of preglottalisation is by no means uniform across the
Eastern Sui region. Dujiang DJ retains preglottalisation on all nasals and approximants. Sanjiang SJ retains preglottalisation on
ʔj-. Only Renli RL is completely consistent with Pandong in having lost preglottalisation entirely. Geographically, Renli is the furthest data point from the Pandong dialect area.
Loss of preglottalisation, then, appears to be a sound change which is gradually diffusing across eastern and northern Sui areas, from east to west. It is of course possible that Renli and Pandong share a common
ancestor dialect, but Renli shares none of the other sound changes in the lower half of table 5.56 which
Pandong shares with Western varieties. Furthermore, merging of preglottalised stops with their plain, voiced counterparts is a relatively common sound change, occurring in such widely diverse language
families and branches as Mon-Khmer Matisoff 2003, Nungish Sun and Liu 2009 and Indo-European Kortlandt 1985.
Secondly, the transfer of nasality from voiceless nasals which became voiceless glottal fricatives to the following vowels seems to be a recent sound change. In Dujiang, this sound change has not occurred
at all. In Yang’an dialects, it has occurred only on bilabial nasals. Since we know that Yang’an branched from an entirely separate node of Kam-Sui, this sound change must have occurred independently from
Pandong and Eastern see section 5.2.2.
33
As we noted in section 5.2.2.1, older speakers in Sanjiang SJ still retain the original voiceless nasals. Moreover, SDB 1958:52 documents that in Rongjiang their
data point was just 4 km south of RL, voiceless nasals were largely preserved, although there was evidence of the emergence of a “nasalised fricative” which they transcribed as
ŋ̥w-. The situation has clearly changed over the last fifty years.
Furthermore, shared phonemic splits or mergers are far more compelling evidence for subgrouping than simple alternative pronunciations, however “innovative” they may be. This transfer of nasality has
generally not resulted in phonemic mergers, since hṼ-, hjṼ- and hwṼ- are all phonemically distinct and
directly correspond to n̥-, ȵ̥- or ŋ̥-; this is a mini merger and m̥- in other Sui dialects.
On the other hand, sound changes shared by Pandong and Western Sui varieties, at least five of which do constitute phonemic mergers, seem to have occurred at an earlier stage, evidenced by
accompanying shared yīn-yáng tone assignments see chapter 4, tables 4.6 and 4.7. Thus we argue that
Pandong dialect and Western Sui dialects should be grouped together. Of particular significance are C.mr- mj- merging with mj-, the merger of -
jaːN and -eN, and the dithphthongisation of the vowel nucleus in
jVːC and wVːC. Synchronic phonetic similarities between northern and western Sui varieties and Pandong varieties observed by Stanford 2011 add weight to a Pandong-Western
subgrouping.
5.7 Cross-dialect similarities and “Sui-ness”