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
Sui has a perfectly symmetrical vowel system, summarised here in figure 3.2. There are seven basic vowels which can act as the rime nucleus, with short a and long aː counted separately. Short a and
long aː are often distinguished by vowel quality, with short a phonetically closer to [ɐ]. However, a does not exhibit contrastive vowel length when it occurs on open syllables.
The five vowels i, e, u, o and a can occur as monophthongs without a consonant coda. Schwa ə
usually occurs without a coda only in a minor syllable and is therefore always short and unstressed.
3
The apical vowel -
ɿ occurs occasionally in recent Chinese loanwords such as laːu⁶sɿ³ ‘teacher’ and tsən¹tsɿ¹ ‘politics’. Diphthongs cannot occur with stop or nasal codas since the offglides -u and -i themselves act as
the coda and could thus, unconventionally, be transcribed as -w and -j respectively. Any basic vowel can combine with any stop or nasal coda, except for
ə which does not occur before -p or -m,
yielding a total of over 50 distinct rimes. The vowels i, e, o and aː are always long bearing full tonal contour when followed by a stop;
ə and a are always short; and u is long before -t and short before -p and -k.
3
Exceptions include modern Chinese loanwords such as ts ʰə³ ‘vehicle’ and tsən¹tsʰə² ‘policy’, and the pluralizing
prefix q ə³.
Figure 3.2. Sui vowel system. The exact phonetic realisation of vowels varies considerably between speakers and dialects. Their
pronunciation is sometimes conditioned by their surrounding phonetic environment. Table 3.2 gives the phonetic range of Sui vowels across the Sandong dialect area. Vowels occasionally merge in certain
environments, for example ə and i sometimes merge when following a palatal onset, ə raising to
[i] and i which is usually long [iː] shortening to [i]. Table 3.2. Phonetic range of Sui Sandong vowels
Monophthong or diphthong
Phonetic range and conditioning environments a
a ~ ɐ ~ ɑ; a ~ ɐ ___C; ɐ ~ ɜ C[+pal]___C aː
aː ai
ai ~ ɐi ~ ɜi ~ ɛi; ei C[+pal]___ aːi
aːi au
au ~ ɐu ~ ɔu ~ ou aːu
aːu ~ au i
iː ~ i ~ ɪ iu
iu e
eː ~ ɛː ~ æː JL eu
eu ~ ɛu ~ ɛːu; əu C[+pal]___ PD ə
ə; e ~ ɪ ~ i C[+pal]___C o
oː ~ ɔː; ɔ ~ ɔː ~ oɐ ___C; uɐ ~ uɜ ~ ʉɐ C[+pal]___C u
uː; ʉː ~ yː C[+pal]___; ʊ ~ o ___m, p, ŋ, k; u ~ uː ~ uə ___n, t oi
oi ~ ɔi ~ ɔɐi; uɐi ~ ʉɐi C[+pal]
ui ui
Note: Alternative pronunciations occurring in the same environments are separated by a tilde ~, different environments are separated by a semicolon ;.
i u
e o
a, a ː
ə
High Mid
Low Front
Central Back
Diphthongs:
__u __i
3.2.4 Tones