Stages and Strata in Dialectal History—Case Studies of Heng County, Da County, and Shipo
Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1996
The study of dialectal history is an important part of Chinese dialectology. Ting Pang-hsin has r... more The study of dialectal history is an important part of Chinese dialectology. Ting Pang-hsin has recently published an article (1992) explaining the principles of such study. In general, the search for dialectal affiliation, analysis of reading and spoken pronunciation, reconstruction of older speech, and periodization of features to correspond with documentary evidence are all worthwhile tasks in the study of dialectal history. The aim of this short article, however, is to concentrate on a few anomalies. One finding is that dialectal anomalies often indicate different stages or strata in the history of a dialect. An accurate grasp of such anomalies is bound to help us in better understanding diachronic change in dialects and can coordinate effectively with the tasks mentioned above.
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