Regularities and Irregularities in Chinese Historical Phonology

With a combination of methodologies from Western and Chinese traditional historical linguistics, this thesis is an attempt to survey and synthetically analyze the major sound changes in Chinese phonological history. It addresses two hypotheses – the Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis and the unidirectionality hypothesis – and tries to question their validity and applicability. Drawing from fourteen types of “regular” and “irregular” processes, the thesis argues that the origins and impetuses of sound change is far from just phonetic environment (“regular” changes) and lexical diffusion (“irregular” changes), and that sound change is not unidirectional because of the existence and significance of fortifying and bi/multidirectional changes. The thesis also examines the sociopolitical aspect of sound change through the discussion of language changes resulting from social, geographical and historical factors, suggesting that the study of sound change should be more interdisciplinary and miscellaneous in order to explain the phenomena more thoroughly and reach a better understanding of how human languages function both synchronically and diachronically

Proceedings of the fifth International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics

This volume contains papers presented at the fifth International Conference on Asian Geolinguistics (ICAG) held at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, VNU, Ha Noi, Vietnam, from 4 to 5 May, 2023

Lalo dialects across time and space: subgrouping, dialectometry, and intelligibility

This volume is the first work to systematically investigate the diachronic and synchronic relationships between regional varieties of Lalo, a Ngwi (Loloish) language cluster spoken in western Yunnan, China. The empirical basis for the research is linguistic data, as well as intelligibility tests and sociolinguistic interviews on contact, dialect perceptions, and ethnolinguistic vitality from nineteen Lalo-speaking villages. The volume uses these data to present a phonological and lexical reconstruction of Proto-Lalo, as well as a phylogenetic subgrouping of the different Lalo varieties. As a complement to this a synchronic classification of Lalo varieties according to phonetic distance, intelligibility, and speaker perceptions is also given. This combination of methodologies and results enable an integrated synchronic and diachronic depiction of Lalo dialect diversit

Two-part Negation in Yang Zhuang

The negation system of Yang Zhuang includes two standard negators and an aspectual negator, all of which occur before the verb; the negator meiz nearly always co-occurs with a clause-final particle nauq, which can also stand as a single-word negative response to a question. Although it is tempting to analyze nauq with a meaning beyond simply negation, this is difficult to do synchronically. Comparison with neighboring Tai languages suggests that this construction represents one stage in Jespersen's Cycle, whereby a negator is augmented with a second element, after which the second element becomes associated with negation; this element subsequently replaces the historical negator. A Jespersen's Cycle analysis also explains the occurrence of nauq as a preverbal negator in some neighboring Zhuang languages

Proto-Ong-Be

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018