Language replacement and the spread of Tibeto-Burman

Nagano Yasuhiko and Ikeda Takumi (eds.) Grammatical Phenomena of Sino-Tibetan Languages 4: 1–23, 2021

This paper attempts to investigate the phonological development of Menglun Akeu, a lesser-known Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Mengla County of Yunnan Province of China. Using the author's firsthand data of Menglun Akeu and two related languages (Akha Buli and Youle Jino), both segments and suprasegments of the language are compared with those of written Burmese and the proto languages reconstructed by David Bradley and James A. Matisoff. The stop and affricate onsets in Menglun Akeu mostly preserve the VOT system of the Proto-Loloish or the Proto-Lolo-Burmese, whereas the fricative in Menglun Akeu corresponds to Lolo-Burmese languages in a complicated manner. The medial /-j-/ can be preceded by the velar onsets (/k-, g-/) in Menglun Akeu, which in some cases ('to steal' and 'nine') corresponds only to Youle Jino in the dataset of this paper. Syllabic nasal /n/ can be found in Menglun Akeu, which is the outcome of deleting the rime.

This paper presents the findings of a Miao dialect survey conducted in Honghe prefecture from May to July 2009. This survey was carried out as a cooperative project by SIL East Asia Group and the Honghe Hani-Yi Autonomous Prefecture Ethnic Research Institute. Honghe prefecture is home to around 274,000 Miao speakers, belonging to at least eleven different sub-branches. Each sub-branch speaks its own distinctive dialect. Although the Miao dialects display high functional intelligibility among each other, there are significant differences both in pronunciation and lexicon which have not been previously researched. This paper describes and categorises these differences, concluding that the eleven dialects which are considered can be grouped into four broad dialect clusters, each sharing common phonological and lexical characteristics.

Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2002

In Three Tibeto-Burman languages of Vietnam (2004) I outlined the Vietnam locations and situations of three Northern Loloish languages-Phu Kha (Phù Lá), Xá Phó, and Lôlô. 1 In this paper I present data and analysis on the remaining TB groups of that country-the Côông, the Sila, the Lahu, and the Hani, all found in Lai Châu Province in the far northwest and all belonging to the Central and Southern sub-groupings of the Loloish language. Like the three Northern Loloish language, all these are found very near the border with China and all-except possibly Sila-are presumed to have ultimately come from the north. However, we are only beginning to understand the obviously complex language history that has led to many linguistic groups living in close proximity and the sequencing of migration and conflict that are woven into the intricate tapestry of M ng Te District. 2 Indeed, until now there has been very little known in general about these four languages aside from basic information about their home territory, numbers, and some cultural features. That is not to say that all these languages have been points of utter darkness. The Lahu and Hani languages of Thailand and China, for example, have been described and analyzed in great depth. The work of Matisoff 1973, 1978 is especially notable for Lahu, and Hansson 1989 and Li and Wang 1981 have published much on Hani. But information about the other two languages-the smaller groups, Côông and Sila-has been brief and incomplete. These places do not allow of a full statement about any of these languages, but I hope, nevertheless, to provide more details about all these languages and how they compare to language forms outside Vietnam, cf. also my website 3 for a tabulation of about 500 items taken from my field study of language of this area. In the following, I will first discuss Côông and Sila and then go on to Lahu and 1 The research reported on here has been sponsored by a 1995 grant NEH RT-21754-95 from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the grants SBR 9511285 and SBR9729043 from the National Science Foundation to the author and Dr. Kenneth J. Gregerson all entitled "Languages of the Vietnam-China Borderlands". I wish also to acknowledge the assistance of Profs. Nguy n V n L i, Hoàng V n Ma, To V n Thang, who arranged and accompanied me on the field trips that led to the data and analysis here. Many thanks as well are due Pete Unseth, who spent many hours digitizing the data from my original tape recordings, and Tr n Thu n for help with some of the Vietnamese data. Most of all I wish to thanks Graham Thurgood who was able to unlock the system of tonal development in all of these languages. 2 Lai Châu province has the most complex linguistic situation of any place in Vietnam and much of that complexity is due to the number of groups in M ng Te. In addition to the Tibeto-Burman groups, one finds there White Thái farmers and the little studies Mon-Khmer grouping-M ng. 3 http://ling.uta.edu/~jerry/. 2. The Côông. The Côông people of M ng Te District live in five villages: Bo L ch (Can H Commune), N m Khao, N m P c (N m Khao Commune), Tác Ngá (M ng M Commune), and N m Kè (M ng Tong Commune). Their population was given as 1261 in the last official census 1989. The population is estimated to have reached 1560 by the year 2000 PV (1998:21). It is said that their ancestors originally came from China, but our informant, Mr. Lý V n Làng, about 55 years of age in June 1999, had no information about the time or source of this migration. Bradley (1977:68) states that the Côông probably fled China as a consequence of the Moslem uprisings in Yunnan Province during the 19 th century and the first decades of the 20 th century and then were resettled during the wars between the Burmese and Vietnamese into NW Vietnam. The Côông autonym is also a puzzlement. In EMPV (363) it states that the most widely used name is a toponym from one of their villages, Bo L ch, a White Thái designation meaning 'iron mine'. Thus the Côông refer to themselves in their own language as [sam 33 kho 33 (tsha 33 a 31)] 'iron mine people'. The [tsha 33 a 31 ] is used to designate 'people, group, ethnicity', such as [a 31 kha 33 tsha 33 a 31 ] 'Hani' and [za 33 z 33 tsha 33 a 31 ] 'Yao'. At N m Khao and N m P c the autonym [phui 33 a 31 ] is known but little used. It also resembles the name the Côông use for the Lahu [kha 55 ph i 33 ]. A number of people have also suggested the name Côông L Ma, which is said to refer to a place in China where they once lived. Bradley regards Côông to be a language closely related to Phunoi (1977:68, 1979, 1997), "In Vietnam, the Phunoi are called Côông, and speak a slightly different dialect…" Côông was first recorded by LeFèvre-Pontalis 1892, which we have not consulted. We, however, have been able to examine Bradley's word list. 4 In his description of Phunoi Bradley (1979:45-7) notes the existence of minor syllables, as the j in j-ba 33 'elephant', initial voiceless nasals /hm hn h hmj/, a voiceless lateral /hl/, and a voiceless palatal glide /hj/. Phunoi, moreover, has final consonants /-p-t-m-n/ and four tones described as high level, mid level, low level and low rising. The vowel nuclei are /i u e o ai a au/. Of the minor syllables, Bradley says (47) that the word for hand là also appears as a minor syllable [l ] in some compounds. 2.1. Distinctive features of Côông. The Côông of Vietnam has a high level tone (55), a mid-falling tone (31), and a 4 I was also able to listen to data recorded in the 70's in Vientiane, Laos by Jimmy G. Harris. There were about 1000 items in that list. Harris later trained this speaker how to write his language in a romanized script and how to organize a dictionary. 4. Lahu. There are three kinds of Lahu spoken in Vietnam: Yellow Lahu, Black Lahu, and White Lahu We were able to study only the Black Lahu of this area. The total Lahu population in 1989 was 5,319 and estimated by PV to have reached 6,600 by 2000. The Lahu have many names in M ng Te. The Black Lahu group often refer to themselves as Khucong or [khu 33 tsh 33 ]. They look down on their Yellow Lahu neighbors, calling them contemptuously [ne 53 tu 33 ] 'Jungle Spirits'. 6 According to the EMPV (354) the local White Thai majority term all the Lahu in M ng Te Xá Toong L ng, White Thai for 'Spirits of the Yellow Banana Leaves'. Other scornful exonyms are Xá Qu meaning 'Devil Savages'. In addition to these names the Lahu have distinctive monikers for each of their subgroups: (1) La H S or Yellow Lahu (living in the two communes Pa V S and Pa as well as in the villages of Là Pé, Nhu Tè, and Hóm Bô of the Ca L ng Commune, (2) La H Na or Black Lahu (living in the village of N m Phìn, as well as N m Khao, N m C u, Phìn H , N m X of Ca L ng commune), and (3) La H Phung or White Lahu (living often together with the Yellow Lahu in the villages of Xà H , Ma, Pha Bu, Pa and Kh Ma of Pa commune as well as Hà Xe of Ca L ng commune), It is reported that the Lahu originally came from the J npíng area of Yúnnán Province, China. 4.1. Distinctive features of Lahu. Since Lahu has been so exhaustively described in Matisoff 1973 and 1988 and Bradley 1978, I will dispense with sketching is features and simply note that it has the following inventory of initial consonants /p t t k q ph th t h kh qh b d g m n f h v j l/ and vowels /i u e o a /. The seven tones for Vietnam Black Lahu are 33, 35 53, 31 212, 53 and 31. 4.2. Comparative comments. The Lahu of M ng Te speak a language that differs some from the Black Lahu recorded in Matisoff 1988 and the Zàngmi ny y y n hé cíhu 1991 in many respects. These differences seem focused mostly in the lexical domain. One major difference is the variation of velar and uvular stops.

1999

Buwa, which are near urban centers, no longer have Qiang speakers. In the speech of the younger generation of Qiang speakers, whole semantic fields are being replaced by Mandarin; during my time in the village of Mianchi, I noticed that when my consultant's children were speaking to each other in Qiang, they used Mandarin numerals. Yu Xiaoping, a college-educated Qiang who works for the Mao county government, has estimated that in fifty years, no one will speak Qiang, due to the great linguistic pressure of Mandarin (p.c.). H. Sun (1983b) was the first in recent times to propose a separate Qiangic branch of TB; a grouping which corresponds rather closely to those that in the last century were termed "Hsi-fan" or "Sifan" (pinyin = Xi Fan) languages (Hodgson 1853, Lacouperie 1887:135), or, more recently, "Dzorgaish" (Benedict 19414). H. Sun dates the breakup of the Qiangic languages to the end of the Han dynasty (221 AD). Until H. Sun's 1983/1990 paper, Qiang (and Qiangic languages generally) were variously considered Loloish or Bodish, based on some surface similarities. Using shared features within phonology, morphology, and syntax, Sun shows that the ten languages Qiang, rGyalrong, Primi (Pumi), Ersu, Namuyi, Shixing, Minyak (M iyao, Muya), Guiqiong, Ergong, and Zh&ba5 4 Benedict's "Dzorgaish" seems to include Qiangic. sans iGyalrong(ic). Shafer (1955) uses "Dzorgaish" to refer to the Qiang language, and classifies it under Bodish. The other Qiangic languages are categorized as Loloish, with the exception o f rGyalrong, which is accorded its own branch. 5 J. Sun, the translator of this article has added the following footnote to H. Sun's description of this language: According to Huang 1987:19, Zhaba (a language recorded by Lu [Shaozun]) is mutually intelligible with Queyu, another Qiangic corridor language not mentioned in this article, which is spoken in Xinlong, Yajiang, Litang Counties of the Ganzi Autonomous Prefecture. Huang, on the other hand, mentions another distinct corridor language: Zhaba, spoken in the Zhaba District o f Daofu and Zhamai district of Yajiang, which is different from both Queyu and Liu's Zhaba. Data from all of these languages are to be found in ZYC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14 The vowel is compared to that o f "English sir, cut short." This is probably similar to the Taoping vowel. 15 "Like English true, cut very short." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. be over-transcribed and under-phonemicized. J. Sun showed that a simpler phonological inventory can account for the phones observed in Q Y JZ , and that certain sounds (e.g., /e/) are phonemic in borrowings, but not in native vocabulary. Randy LaPolla and Huang Chenglong LaPolla 1996 (written with the assistance o f Huang Chenglong) is the second booklength treatment of Qiang, following Q YJZ. They present an in-depth analysis of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the Yadu dialect of Northern Qiang, followed by the first published Qiang texts with morpheme-by-morpheme translation (six stories). The book has an extensive glossary with phonemicized data from Ronghong Yadu (C. Huang's native dialect), and supplementary phonetic data from Qugu Yadu. Jonathan Evans The present author conducted fieldwork in Wenchuan Sichuan in 1997 on two varieties of Southern Qiang, Mianchi and Longxi. The data collected form the basis for Evans 1998a-c, and consist of phonological, morphological, and lexical information on dialects which were previously unpublished, with the exception of scattered forms in Wen's. H. Sun, and Liu's works. 1.5.2 Diachronic and comparative works Historical and comparative works on Qiang begin, of course, at a more recent time than the earliest descriptive works. Lacouperie (1887, pl34-5) appears to be the first to categorize Qiang into a larger family. He called this language family "Sifan," from the Chinese term for "Western barbarians." He grouped Sifan (pinyin: xi fan) within the "Tibeto-Burmese family" under Kuenlunic (Sino-Tibetan). Within this group he included the following languages (I have entered in the right column the currently accepted names or Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. subgroups of these languages, when decipherable): 17 Sifan group Pre-Chinese Kiang Qiang Meniak Muya (Minyak) Sung-pan Sifan Northern Qiang (?) Outside Mantze Northern Qiang (?) Li fan Mantze Southern Qiang Thotchu Northern Qiang Horpa rGyalrongic Takpa (may be Monpa) Lacouperie's grouping displays two insights that were quite forward-thinking. First, he grouped rGyalongic languages with Qiang, an analysis shared by Shafer (1974) and H. Sun, but not Benedict (1941). Second, he separated the Qiangic ("Sifan(ic)") languages into a distinct subgroup, independent from other TB groups. In this way he prefigured Benedict and Sun, although Shafer considered Qiang and rGyalrong to be Bodish ("Bhotish"), within the same subfamily as Tibetan. The differences are summarized in the following chart, which shows how each linguist categorized the languages now known as Qiang and rGyalrong: Qiailg rGvalrong Lacouperie Sifan Sifan Shafer Bodish Bodish Benedict Dzorgai17 Bodish or separate branch18 Sun Qiangic Qiangic Sun and Lacouperie's hypothesis of a separate Qiangic/Hsi-Fan branch is the one followed in this dissertation. Wen (1941) was the first to subcategorize Qiang into dialects, as mentioned in 1.4. Unfortunately, he did not use any data from Mao county, the area with the largest Qiang-17 Perhaps within Bodish-Himalayish (STO.5). 18 rGyalrong ("Gyarung") is mentioned in the text (STO.7) as Bodish, but appears in the chart of subgrouping (STC:6) as a hypothetical separate branch "Gyarung (?)." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18 speaking population, so it is not clear whether he would have grouped the Northern dialects as closely as has H. Sun. Kun Chang used Wen's data, coupled with the data in H. Sun 1962, and his own materials on Zengtou to write a comparison of six SQ dialects, and to reconstruct PSQ phonology (Chang 1967). I have some disagreements with Chang's analysis (cf. Chapter III), nevertheless, it is a groundbreaking work in historicalcomparative Qiang studies. One of Chang's contributions is to further phonemicize Wen's data, although h e warns that "none of the published descriptions of the Ch'iang dialects presents sufficient data to demonstrate clearly its phonemic structure." (Chang 1967:426) For this reason. I have relied on Chang 1967 only for supplementary material in chapter m. Nearly all of Chang 1967 is devoted to comparison o f initials, which are more clearcut than are rhymes. Nevertheless, there are only a few 'good' sets (no irregularities) among the comparisons, further demonstrating the challenge that awaits the Qiang (and Qiangic) comparatist. Chiu-Chung Liao (1973) compares Qiang data from Wen (1950b) with PTB. PLB, Written Tibetan, and Written Burmese, and concludes that Qiang either belongs in its ow n branch, or is to be linked with Tibetan (Shafer's analysis). His argument is based on features that Qiang and Tibetan share (e.g., prefixes), phonetic correspondences, and glottochronology. H. Sun has pointed out that at least some of these similarities are due to areal influences (H. Sun 1983b). Chinfa Lien (1991) presents the fates of PTB *s-, *r-, *g-. *b-, *m-, and the effects of PTB prefixes and medials on Qiangic initials. Lien correctly identifies codas as secondary developments in Qiang. Some results of his research are included in section 3.3.1.8. LaPolla (1985) gives sound laws relating PTB to Mawo and Taoping Qiang. H e showed that ^prefixes and ^cluster initials are distinguished in Qiang reflexes, with Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19 prefixes disappearing; e.g., Mawo ju, Taoping %uss, PTB *s/m-rai] 'horse'. However, in some cases (such as this one), the addition of more data makes the analysis of PTB ^prefixes less convincing: Longxi k o , Mianchi ^ou Tiorse' point to some type of complex initial as late as PSQ; however, the exact nature of this * initial is not clear (cf. discussion o f *r, 3.3.1.3). 1.6 The database Much like the database in J. Sun (19??), the database I have used in this dissertation consists of both a primary and an auxiliary set of lexical data. The primary database consists of lexical data from the key dialects, including three SQ dialects (Longxi, Mianchi, Taoping) and two NQ dialects (Mawo, Yadu). Longxi (LX) and Mianchi (MC) data come from my own fieldwork, and the principal sources for Taoping (TP) and Mawo (MW) data are Q YJZ and ZYC. Yadu data come from four villages, Ekou (TBL), Ronghong (LaPolla 1996), Qugu (ibid.), and Moyu (a STEDT body-part questionnaire filled out by Huang Chenglong). These three varieties of Yadu are not identical, although the differences are slight. In general, I have consulted Ekou Yadu first, and then referred to the other (unpublished) data second. The auxiliary database consists o f two parts. The first is the SQ data from Wen and Chang. These data are used in chapters III and IV to clear up ambiguities, and also to show distinctions that may have been lost in the primary dialects. The second part o f the auxiliary database consists of data from other Qiangic languages, taken mostly from TBL and ZYC. These data are used to provide a "peek" at the Proto-Qiangic level, which has at least two advantages. First, it provides additional substantiation for certain PSQ roots where there is no established PTB etymon, but there are cognates in other Qiangic languages (e.g,. PQic *pram 'white' sections 3.3.1.8 .1 , 3.3.2.3). Second, consulting Qiangic languages assists in Reproduced with...

Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2017

The Tai dialect spoken in Cao Bằng province, Vietnam, is at an intermediate stage between tonal register split and the accompanying transphonologization of a voicing contrast into a dual-register tone system. While the initial sonorants have completely lost their historical voicing distinction and developed a six-way tonal contrast, the obstruent series still preserves the original voicing contrast, leaving the tonal split incomplete. This paper presents the first acoustic study of tones and onsets in Cao Bằng Tai. Although f0, VOT, and voice quality were all found to play a role in the system of laryngeal contrasts, the three speakers considered varied in terms of the patterns of acoustic cues used to distinguish between onset types, particularly the breathy voiced onset /b̤ /. From the diachronic perspective, our findings may help to explain why the reflex of modal prevoiced stops (*b) can be either aspirated or unaspirated voiceless stops.

2011. In S. Srichampa, P. Sidwell and K. J. Gregerson, Eds. Austroasiatic Studies: Papers from ICAAL4. Mon-Khmer Studies Special Issue No. 3. Canberra, Pacific Linguistics: 198-221.

Studies in Language, 2021

The “dynamic coevolution of meaning and form” of Bybee et al. (1994: 20) has been the subject of significant discussion as regards the languages of Mainland Southeast Asia. However, little work has focused on the mechanisms through which this coevolution occurs when it does surface in these languages. The current work considers phonological reidentification resulting from phonetic reduction in White Hmong (Hmong-Mien, Laos) involving four morphemes,ntshai/ntshe‘maybe’,saib/seb‘see if/whether;comp.cfact’,puag/pug‘locl;ints’, andniaj/nej‘each, every’. These morphemes exhibit an alternation where a rime is phonologically reidentified in a manner consistent with typical phonetic underarticulation patterns, such that an exemplar-model approach (Pierrehumbert 2001,inter alia) provides a straightforward explanation. Furthermore, the data show that the phonological reidentification patterns found in White Hmong exhibit parallels in other languages in the region, confirming that an areal app...

2019

The Relative Chronology of Tone Splits and Mergers in Tai dialects: