A 50-YEAR COMPARISON OF REGIONAL DIALECT VARIATION IN THE SUI LANGUAGE 72 James N. Stanford Dartmouth College <
[email protected]> Abstract This Sui dialect geography study conducted new fieldwork to examine changes among regional dialects across a time span of 50 years. The new field results were compared to an unpublished 1950s Sui dialect survey, Shuiyu Diaocha Baogao . The results provide new insights about this particular Tai-Kadai language and also new perspectives for the study of dialects and physical space in other small, rural indigenous communities across Southeast Asia. Key words: Dialects, Dialectology, Sui, Tai-Kadai, Sociolinguistics 1. Introduction Prior work has provided a great amount of progress in understanding the structure of Tai- Kadai languages and their historical/comparative relationships (e.g., Edmondson & Solnit 1988, 1997; Diller et al. 2008). But dialect geography tends to be understudied in Tai- Kadai research, especially in small, rural communities. This is unfortunate since physical space has long been viewed as an important aspect of human language (e.g., Bloomfield 1933:476; Auer & Schmidt 2010). Recent dialect geography in other parts of the world, such as the Labov et al. (2006) Atlas of North American English and Kretzschmar’s analysis of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (e.g., 2009:64-145), have provided new knowledge about characteristics of human language from the perspective of well-known languages. New dialect geography research is now needed for understudied Tai-Kadai languages. In the same way that structural or historical analyses of a particular Southeast Asian language can shed light on area languages, Sui dialectology can provide insights for area languages as well.