Proto-Sui: A questionable hypothesis

3.3.1 Proto-Sui: A questionable hypothesis

The internal homogeneity of Sui is widely agreed Zhang Junru 1980, James Wei 2011, Pan and Wei 2004. Cognate percentages indicate that all Sui dialects form a separate cluster from other Kam-Tai languages see chapter 6. All Sui speakers share the common autonym [ sui³], as well as many cultural traditions. The hypothesis that all Sui dialects descended from a common ancestor language, Proto-Sui, would therefore seem justified. Based on this assumption, Zeng 1994, 2004 made a carefully thought- out reconstruction of Proto-Sui initials, drawing on evidence from a wide range of other Tai-Kadai languages. Castro 2011 suggested that a more complete reconstruction of the Proto-Sui sound system would be a valuable first step towards an in-depth investigation into the nature of Proto-Kam-Sui. Data collected for the current survey, however, reveals that one particular dialect of Sui, Yang’an, bears a striking resemblance to Kam, both in terms of its lexicon and several key sound changes. According to Pan and Wei, seemingly the only scholars who have noted this resemblance, speakers of Yang’an dialect are referred to as [ sui³ kam¹], literally meaning “the Kam Sui” or “the Sui resembling Kam” Pan and Wei 2004:391, Weng 2001:560. They also document a memorial tablet of a family in Banliang village Yang’an dialect area which records that their ancestors lived in Huangzhou 晃州 , now Xinhuang county 新晃 县 in Hunan province, a predominantly Northern Kam area. They conjecture that the speakers of Yang’an dialect originally lived in close proximity to Kam, thus their language has taken on various traits of Kam. In chapter 4, we observe a series of words in Yang’an dialect whose tone categories contrast with those in the other Sui dialects i.e., even-numbered tones in Yang’an dialect and odd-numbered tones in the rest of Sui, or vice versa. For these words, the tone categories in Yang’an dialect consistently match those in Kam dialects. Corresponding onset changes lead us to the conclusion that Yang’an Sui had already undergone several sound changes in common with Kam before the voicing-conditioned tone split took place see chapter 4, but after the other Sui dialects had split off from Proto-Kam-Sui. This is perhaps best illustrated by the following diagram figure 3.3: Figure 3.3. Suggested historical progression of Sui dialects in relation to Kam. If this hypothesis is correct, the notion of “Proto-Sui” as a daughter of Proto-Kam-Sui and as an ancestor language from which all Sui varieties have evolved is a fallacy. Therefore we refer primarily to Proto-Kam-Sui forms rather than to Zeng’s Xiaoyu 1994, 2004 Proto-Sui initials when comparing the Sui dialects. voicing conditioned tone split Proto-Kam-Sui Sui Pandong, Sandong Sui Yang’an Kam

3.3.2 Lack of thorough and reliable reconstructions