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3 Historical Development of the Sui Dialects: Introduction
Andy Castro
3.1 Background
The currently accepted subgrouping of Sui dialects was made primarily on the basis of shared phonetic and phonemic traits SDB 1958, Zhang Junru 1980, James Wei 2008, Stanford 2011. In chapters 4 and
5, we take another look at Sui subgrouping from a diachronic perspective. In other words, we examine how the Sui dialects have changed and diversified over time. Linguists generally agree that shared
linguistic innovations provide the most robust basis for subgrouping related speech varieties Thurgood 1982, 2003, Campbell 2004.
A thorough examination of the sound changes which have occurred in the various Sui vernaculars leads us to the conclusion that, while the traditional grouping of Sui into three broad dialect groups
holds up from a synchronic perspective, the genetic affiliations are more complex. For convenience, we break Sandong dialect into four subdialects: Central Sui SD, ZH; Western Sui TP, AT, TZ; Eastern Sui
DJ, SJ, RL; and Southern Sui JQ, JR, SW, SY. Historically, Pandong is most closely related to Central, Western and Eastern Sui, possibly branching off with Western Sui before undergoing some sound
changes in common with Eastern Sui e.g., loss of preglottalisation and mutation of voiceless nasals. Southern Sui most likely branched off from the rest of Sui relatively early on, undergoing several unique
phonemic innovations of its own most of which were described by Castro, 2011. Thus Southern Sui is genetically more distant from Central Sui than Pandong dialect is.
Most strikingly, we find that the Yang’an dialect shares a large number of phonological innovations with Kam, so much so that in many ways it bears more resemblance to a dialect of Kam than of Sui. We
tentatively suggest that Yang’an actually belongs to the Kam branch and, genetically at least, is not a dialect of Sui at all.
Finally we show that although the Sui dialects may have different historical origins, there are some cross-dialect similarities which lend a certain “Sui-ness” to all Sui dialects including Yang’an. Cross-
dialectal borrowings and later sound changes which diffused across the Sui area have helped to engender a common Sui identity over the entire Sui region.
By way of introduction, we first present a phonology sketch of Sandong Central Sui. An understanding of Sui phonology assists greatly in informing our investigation into historical sound
changes in the Sui dialects. We then note the specific challenges that such a historical comparison presents in the Sui context. Finally we describe our data sources and the transcription conventions that
we employ in our historical analysis. Our analysis is expounded in chapters 4 tone and 5 onsets and rimes.
3.2 Sui phonology sketch
The phonology of Sui has been described by numerous scholars e.g., Zhang Junru 1980, James Wei 2008, 2011. We provide only a summary here. Sui is largely monosyllabic, although sesquisyllabic
forms comprising a minor and a major syllable do exist see section 3.3.3 of this chapter and section 4.3 of chapter 4. Our phonology sketch here is based on the pronunciation of Central Sui in Shuigen village,
Sandong SD. Simple phonology sketches for each of our sixteen data points are given in appendix G.
3.2.1 The Sui syllable
The Sui major syllable consists of an onset and a tone-bearing rime. The onset can either be viewed as a single consonant with optional secondary articulation palatalisation or labialisation or as a consonant
with an optional glide medial j or w. The latter configuration is depicted in figure 3.1. Stanford 2011 suggests that the glide medial could possibly be viewed as part of the rime see chapter 5, section 5.3,
but we adhere to the traditional interpretation presented here. The rime comprises a nucleus vowel and a coda vowel or consonant. The rime may also constitute a monophthong, in which case there is no
coda.
Figure 3.1. The Sui syllable. The dotted box indicates an optional component. Minor or “reduced” syllables occur only in combination with and almost always preceding major
syllables which follow the above configuration. A minor syllable is always unstressed and consists of an onset and a neutral vowel
ə rime which does not bear contrastive tone.
3.2.2 Consonants
Sui has 42 consonants which occur in the initial position. Six of these can also occur as codas. The traditional transcriptions of these consonants are shown in table 3.1, with alternative transcriptions,
sometimes found in the literature, in parentheses.
1
There are two phonemically contrastive forms of secondary articulation: palatalisation, which can occur on labial, alveolar or, extremely rarely, velar
consonants; and labialisation, which can occur only on alveolar or velar consonants.
2
This yields a total of over 60 phonemically distinct onsets. As we mentioned earlier, palatalisation could also be analysed
as a j medial and labialisation as a w medial.
1
By “traditional transcriptions” we mean the transcriptions adopted by most Sui scholars when transcribing Sui language data e.g., Zhang Junru 1980, Pan and Wei 2004, Wei Maofan 2011.
2
For example kjeu⁵ ‘addictive’ JQ and kʰjui³ ‘poor’ SD. We have found no examples of palatalisation occurring on
ʔw- or labialisation occurring on ʔɣ-, although these combinations are possible according to the phonemic framework we set out here.
syllable σ
onset ω
medial μ
j or w rime ρ
nucleus ν
V coda
κ V or C
tone τ
initial ι
C +
Table 3.1. Sui consonant system. Consonants shaded grey can serve as rime codas. Alternative transcriptions sometimes found in the literature are shown in parentheses
Labial Alveolar
Alveolo- palatal
Velar Uvular
Glottal
Stops pʰ
tʰ tsʰ
ȶʰ kʰ
qʰ p
t ts
ȶ k
q ʔ
ᵐb b ⁿd d ʔb
ʔd Continuants
f s
ɕ x
h v w
z j ʑ
ɣ ŋɡ, ɡ ʁ ɴɢ, ɢ
ʔw ʔj
ʔɣ ʔɰ, ʔɡ l
Nasals m
n ȵ
ŋ m̥
n̥ ȵ̥
ŋ̥ ʔm
ʔn ʔȵ
ʔŋ ɣ and ʁ are realised as [ŋɡ] or [ɡ] and [ɴɢ] or [ɢ] in many dialects, including Sandong see
James Wei 2008:586. We have also observed that ʔɣ is pronounced as [ʔɡ] by some speakers in
Sandong. James Wei 2011:44 claims that ʔb and ʔd are actually implosives [ɓ] and [ɗ], although
acoustic evidence examined by Edmondson et al., 2004:63 showed that there is “little or no implosion of preglottalised consonants in Sui”. Data collected for this survey corroborates Edmondson et al.’s
finding in this regard. The voiceless velar fricative x occurs as an independent phoneme only in Southern Sui. We have
also observed ɥ-, typically in the word ‘fire’ ɥi¹, which we believe to be the phonetic realisation of the
sequence wj. Other alternative pronunciations either in free variation or dialect-specific can be found by referring to the phonetic transcriptions of our wordlists in appendix H.
3.2.3 Vowels