Table 8.3. Dialects tested in each location Test location
Dialect area Dialects tested
Sandong SD Sandong Central
Central GC, Southern SY, Yang’an LW Zhonghe ZH
Sandong Central Central GC, Southern SY, Pandong PD
Tingpai TP Sandong Western
Central GC, Southern SY, Pandong PD Antang AT
Sandong Western Central GC, Yang’an LW, Pandong PD
Tangzhou TZ Sandong Western
Central GC, Southern SY, Pandong PD Shuiwei SW
Sandong Southern Central GC, Southern SY, Yang’an LW
Jiuqian JQ Sandong Southern
Southern SY, Central GC, Yang’an LW Jiarong JR
Sandong Southern Southern SY, Central GC, Pandong PD
Shuiyao SY Sandong Southern
Southern SY, Central GC, Yang’an LW Sanjiang SJ
Sandong Eastern Central GC, Pandong PD, Yang’an LW
Renli RL Sandong Eastern
Central GC, Yang’an LW, Southern SY Dujiang DJ
Sandong Eastern Central GC, Pandong PD, Southern SY
Pandong PD Pandong
Pandong PD, Central GC, Southern SY Jiaoli JL
Pandong Pandong PD, Central GC, Yang’an LW
Tangnian TN Yang’an
Yang’an LW, Central GC, Pandong PD Banliang BL
Yang’an Yang’an LW, Central GC, Pandong PD
8.4.5 Administering the tests sampling and procedures
The overall procedure we followed for administering the tests is summarised in figure 8.1.
Figure 8.1. Flowchart showing the RTT procedure in each location. Record five “hometown” sentences in local Sui
1. Explain research goals and testing procedure and ask for informed consent.
Consent
2. Ask screening questions: Male: Are you Sui and born and bred in this village?
Female: Are you Sui and do you come from the same region?
No 3. Play five hometown sentences
Subject completes successfully Subject struggles
4. Play 14 sentences in Dialect 1 for subject to retell in L2.
5. Ask post-test questions.
6. Play 14 sentences in Dialect 2 for subject to retell in L2.
7. Ask post-test questions. Consent not
8. Play 14 sentences in Dialect 3 for subject to retell in L2.
9. Ask post-test questions. In every test location:
For every test subject:
Conducting the test: Find another
test subject.
Yes
At each location we first found a Sui man who had been brought up in the village and asked him to translate five sentences from Chinese into the local Sui dialect.
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We read each sentence aloud in Chinese and gave him time to think about how to say it naturally in his own dialect of Sui. We then recorded him
speaking the sentences for use as a “practice test”. The five sentences were: 1.
The rain had stopped so everyone went out to work in the fields. Chinese
雨停了，大家都到田里去干活。 2.
She went to the market yesterday and bought two piglets. Chinese
昨天他到街上去赶集，买了两头小猪回来。 3.
While he was cooking the meal lots of flies were buzzing around in the house. Chinese
煮饭的时候，很多苍蝇在家里飞来飞去。 4.
The grandmother sweeps the house clean every morning. Chinese
每天早上，奶奶都会把房子打扫干净。 5.
He cut lots of grass to feed to the ox. Chinese
他割了很多草，要喂给牛吃。 After this we looked for people to take the test. In most places we tested nine people. The number of
test subjects had to be a multiple of three because of our test design see section 8.4.3 above. We generally found that nine was realistically the most number of subjects that we could test in the space of
time that it took for another researcher to transcribe and record the wordlist. For male subjects, we only chose those who had been born and brought up in the village. For female subjects, most of whom had
married into the village from elsewhere, we allowed them to come from other villages as long as they came from somewhere in the same dialect area.
We asked several screening questions to ensure that the subjects met our requirements. Our full questionnaire including pre- and post-test questions is given in appendix C. In particular, because we
were testing for inherent intelligibility see section 8.2 above, we tried to screen out subjects who had had extended contact with speakers of other Sui dialects. We excluded subjects whose wives or mothers
came from a different dialect area. We also established an ideal maximum education level of Lower Middle school. This is because Upper Middle Schools equivalent to high schools in an American system
are always located in either the local township or the county town, where students are likely to come from more than one dialect area. Additionally, we tried to establish each subject’s migratory history. We
excluded the results of those who had spent a lot of time doing migrant work with Sui people from other areas.
The questionnaire also gave us a picture of Sui language vitality in each village. Additionally, we included some questions aimed at uncovering the subjects’ attitudes towards their own language. All of
this information helped us to interpret our results. After conducting the pre-test questionnaire, we gave the subject the practice test which we had
prepared after arriving in the village. If they were able to do this without any problems, we continued with the main tests. If not, either because they were uncomfortable with the technique or had
insufficient proficiency in local Chinese dialect, we tried to find another test subject to replace them. We then administered the main tests, starting with the dialect closest to the subject’s own dialect.
Tests were conducted in a quiet place. Other people, who were potential test subjects, were not allowed to listen in so that their own performance would not be influenced by what they had already heard. After
playing each sentence, we gave the subject plenty of time to retell it, either in standard Mandarin or in their local Chinese dialect. Almost all subjects retold in local dialect. We played each sentence a
maximum of three times, giving the subject ample opportunity to display comprehension of the text. If the subject could not retell the sentence after three playings, we moved on to the next sentence.
As the subject retold a sentence, we recorded the retelling on specially prepared response sheets. The response sheets contained the original Chinese versions of each sentence separated by 4cm gaps. It
was not necessary to write down every word of the retelling. Rather, we simply drew a line underneath
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We chose a man because most women have married in from other villages and sometimes speak a different dialect.
the parts of the sentence which the subject retold correctly. We wrote down any parts of the retelling which diverged from the original text. By using a different coloured pen for each subject, we could
record the retellings of the three subjects who listened to the same sets of sentences on the same response sheets.
After testing each group of sentences we asked the subject a set of questions given in appendix C to find out their own perception of how much they understood and their judgement of how similar the
dialect was to their own dialect.
8.4.6 Scoring the tests
