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4 Historical Development of Tones
Andy Castro
4.1 Summary of argument
In this chapter we examine the historical development of Sui tones. Based on shared tonal innovations, we claim that Yang’an Sui does not belong to the Sui branch of Kam-Sui at all; rather, it groups with
Kam, Then and Mulam. We also show that Southern Sui split off from other Sui varieties relatively early on before the “Great Tone Split”, see section 4.2 below and that Pandong Sui shares some tone-split
timings with Western Sui varieties TP, TZ, AT. Finally, we note the apparent tonal distinctiveness of Sui including Yang’an dialect in that it is “voiced-high” whereas other Tai-Kadai languages in southwest
China tend to be “voiced-low” see section 4.5. We show that the “voiced-high” nature of Sui is an areal feature which has diffused across several languages in the region including Sui, Bouyei, Chinese and
Miao.
4.2 Background
As with all other Tai-Kadai languages, the modern tone categories in Sui developed from just four tones in the proto language, commonly denoted with the letters A, B, C and D Thurgood 1988. The first three
tones occurred on unchecked or “live” syllables and the final one on checked or “dead” syllables ending in -p, -t or -k. Hmong-Mien and Sinitic languages share an equivalent set of historical tone
categories.
1
A summary of the parallel tone development that took place in Sui and Chinese is given in appendix B.
Confusingly, the letters regularly used by linguists to denote the tone categories in Hmong-Mien and Sinitic languages are arranged slightly differently than in Tai-Kadai, with tone letter B corresponding to
Tai-Kadai’s tone C and tone letter C corresponding to Tai-Kadai’s tone B Edmondson and Solnit 1990, Castro et al., 2012. Middle Chinese A, B, C and D are referred to respectively as Píng
平 ‘level’,
Shǎng 上
‘rising’, Qù 去
‘departing’ and Rù 入
‘entering’ in Chinese philology.
2
Historical linguists generally hold that at some point during or just after the Yuan dynasty thirteenth or fourteenth centuries AD, a seismic set of tone splits, referred to collectively as the “Great
Tone Split” by Brown 1975, swept through China and South-East Asia. This resulted in a proliferation of complex contour tone systems in Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan languages Brown 1975,
Liang and Zhang 1996. In northern Chinese, the Great Tone Split had already occurred by the early Yuan dynasty late thirteenth century, by which time the language of the capital greatly resembled
Mandarin spoken in Beijing today Pulleyblank 1991. In Thai, the Great Tone Split probably occurred after the codification of Sukhothai Thai writing in the fourteenth century Diller 2008b:53–55.
It is generally accepted that the Great Tone Split was induced by the laryngeal state of initial consonants. Syllables with voiced onsets acquired a different set of tones from those with voiceless or
preglottalised onsets. In most languages such as Kam, Zhuang and most Thai dialects, sometimes called “voiced-low” languages, voiced onsets induced a lower pitch register and voiceless onsets induced a
higher pitch register, resulting in four “low” tones and four “high” tones. In a few “voiced-high” languages including Shan and Sui, the opposite is evident, either due to a post tone split tonal “flip-
1
Many linguists have claimed that tonogenesis originally occurred in old Chinese and that the resulting four-way tonal system was then borrowed wholesale into Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien languages Benedict 1975. However,
Ratliff 2002 makes a good case for claiming that tonogenesis occurred in all the languages of the Sinosphere at roughly the same time, after most early borrowings from Chinese into Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien.
2
Middle Chinese refers to the Chinese language as spoken in the imperial court during the Sui, Tang and early Song dynasties Pulleyblank 1991.
flop”, or possibly due to different processes of tonogenesis Brown 1975, Yue-Hashimoto 1986. In most languages which underwent the Great Tone Split, the original voiced-voiceless distinction on the onsets
was subsequently lost. Tones on syllables which originally had voiceless onsets are designated
yīn 阴
tones by Chinese linguists, whereas tones originally induced by voiced onsets are designated yáng
阳 tones. Western
linguists tend to refer to them as class 1 and class 2 tones respectively thus Tone A1 refers to the tone associated with voiceless onsets in the proto-language which split from Proto-Tone A; Tone A2 refers to
the tone associated with voiced onsets on syllables bearing Proto-Tone A, etc.. The resulting eight tone categories in modern Tai-Kadai languages are often transcribed by means of
the superscript numbers 1 to 8. Odd-numbered tones are yīn tones and even-numbered tones are yáng
tones. Tone numbers 1 and 2 in Sui refer to tones A1 and A2 respectively, 3 and 4 refer to tones C1 and C2, 5 and 6 refer to B1 and B2 and 7 and 8 refer to D1 and D2 note that B and C are reversed in this
numbering system in order to ease comparison between Sinitic and Tai-Kadai languages. In many Tai- Kadai languages, the “entering” tone tone D, on checked syllables saw a further split conditioned by
the length of the tone-bearing vowel. Tone categories associated with original short vowels are notated by the numbers 7 and 8; those associated with long vowels are notated by the numbers 9 and 10. A
further series of aspirated onset induced tone splits took place on the
yīn tones in many Kam dialects. These tones are commonly denoted by means of a prime mark after the source tone number. The
resulting rather complex system of tone notation in Chinese and Tai-Kadai languages is summarised in table 4.1.
Table 4.1. Tone category correspondences in modern and proto Chinese and Kam-Sui adapted from Edmondson and Solnit 1990:8
Middle Chinese tone category
平 Level
上 Rising
去 Departing
入 Entering
A B
C D
Post tone split Chinese dialects
voiceless, glottalised yīn
A1 阴平
B1 阴上
C1 阴去
D1 阴入
voiced yáng A2
阳平 B2
阳上 C2
阳去 D2
阳入 Proto Tai-Kadai,
Proto Kam-Sui A
C B
DS short
DL long Modern Kam and Sui
voiceless, glottalised 1
3 5
7 9 Kam
aspirated Kam 1
3 5
7 9 Kam
voiced 2
4 6
8 10 Kam
Historical linguists agree that shared innovations provide the most robust evidence for subgrouping dialects and languages Thurgood 1982, 2003, Campbell 2004. Furthermore, shared innovations in
morphological systems and paradigm-like sets are better measures of genetic affiliation than individual sound changes Nichols 1996, Dixon 1997. For isolating languages which are morphologically and
grammatically non-complex, such as members of the Tai-Kadai branch, Pelkey 2011:271 suggests that internal tone system innovations “provide a potential lode of robust, paradigm-like criteria for
identifying exclusive internal subgroupings.”
Unfortunately, the tone systems of all Kam-Sui languages are virtually identical and there are few internal tone system innovations which can be used for subgrouping. Some, though by no means all,
dialects of Kam have undergone secondary tone splits induced by onset aspiration, but whether these tone splits can be used to produce a meaningful subgrouping of Kam dialects remains to be seen.
Nevertheless, our evidence shows several divergent tonal developments which are a result of shared onset innovations occurring either before or after the Great Tone Split which swept across the region. We
will argue that the shared timing or otherwise of these onset innovations in relation to the timing of
the Great Tone Split does provide strong evidence for subgrouping languages and dialects in the Kam-Sui branch.
4.3 Divergent tonal development in Sui dialects