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Language Intelligibility As a Constraint on Phonological Change

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Language Intelligibility As a Constraint on Phonological Change Dialect Variations in Chinese, 81-95 Papers from the Third International Conference on Sinology, Linguistics Section 2002-4-001-002-000032-2 Language Intelligibility as a Constraint on Phonological Change Chin-Chuan Cheng City University of Hong Kong Languages Change all the time. But communication across living generations does not break down. On-going phonological changes in Chinese dialects were examined. The highest number of changes involved only six types. Moreover, in terms of phonology the maximal loss of mutual intelligibility index across living generations in about 100 years was 0.08. As an exercise of the predictive power of the constraint on phonological change for maintaining mutual intelligibility, this level of loss was compared with the calculated mutual intelligibility between the sound system of the Zhongyuan Yinyun of the 14th century and that of modern Beijing. The idea of the mutual intelligibility constraint can be utilized to evaluate historical reconstructions. Lu Fayan (601) in Qieyun pioneered the Chinese phonological analysis for the ensuing millennium and a half. Within this tradition, sounds are analyzed in terms of the structure of the syllable consisting of initial, final, and tone. This tradition has provided useful constructs for research on historical evolution and dialect grouping. Modern linguistics in general also has a focus on structure, attempting to uncover the rules and conditions that interact to make up the language. We propose to do linguistics with a different concern. The Chinese language has a long recorded history. We can study the underlying principles that both allow and constrain historical changes. An underlying principle has to do with the maintenance of language intelligibility from one generation to another. Language is a common code for communication shared by a speech community. It could not change in large scale within a short period of time to interrupt communication. Maintenance of language mutual intelligibility 82／Chin-Chuan Cheng therefore is a constraint that prevents drastic innovation. Consequently finding out the degree of the constraint is a significant linguistic inquiry. My proposal for calculation of dialect mutual intelligibility in terms of phonology has been given in other writings (Cheng 1994a, 1996). Essentially the calculation involves the use of weights for various types of sound correspondence between two dialects. A syllable is divided into the initial, medial, vocalic elements, ending, and tone. The correspondence of these five elements can be regular with a large amount of cognate items to make a general rule. It can be irregular with only a few items and requires individual attention for understanding in communication. The regular correspondence is assigned a positive value and the irregular type a negative value. Later we will see more detail of the calculation in the Appendix. While reviews of the method have been published (Chen 1996, Zhang 1998) and minor improvements have been proposed (Cheng and Kuo 1999), here I will use the original quantification to work on the generational differences to derive intelligibility indices for a meaningful comparison with previous mutual intelligibility indices across dialects. I will examine the intelligibility index between old and young generations. This intelligibility index will then be used to predict the intelligibility between the speeches of historical stages from Middle Chinese to modern Beijing. Phonological change between living generations In a recent study of the phonological differences between the old and young generations as given in the Hanyu Fangyin Zihui Second Edition (Beijing University 1989), I have proposed the following views (Cheng 2000): (1) 1. Putonghua dominance is a significant cause of current generational differences; 2. the most active changes in the speeches of the 20 dialect localities involve sibilants and nasals; 3. the number of the types of innovation in a language Language Intelligibility as a Constraint on Phonological Change／83 community normally does not exceed six; 4. the mutual intelligibility index between the old and the young generations is normally around 0.92 out of a perfect score of 1.00. The last two points are matters of language intelligibility. The number of phonological change is small in comparison with historical changes. For example, from Middle Chinese to modern dialects Chen (1976), Tsai-Fa Cheng (1985), and Ting (1982) list over a dozen types. I have examined the young generation innovations in the 20 dialects and found the highest number to be 6. Changes that involve modification of the phonological system, phonotactic conditions, or word contrasts can cause deterioration of mutual intelligibility. The observed maximum of six types may be significant in language cognition and communication. Naturally, if we record changes in the lexicon, many words disappear or appear during one’s life time. But introduction or demise of words has no particular effects on systematic configurations. I will use Guangzhou and Jinan to show the phonological generation gap. The Guangzhou young generation has the following change in phonology: (2) 1. Merger of zero and 1 initials into zero initial; 2. lost of the rounded medial after velars; 3. merger of n and l into n/l. These changes affected 466 of the 3,666 morphemes (including multiple readings) given in the DOC database based on the Hanyu Fangyin Zihui (Cheng 1994b). We calculated mutual intelligibility in two steps. First we take the speech of the old generation as the source language and that of the young generation as the target language and calculated the unidirectional intelligibility. Then we exchanged the source and target and calculated the second unidirectional intelligibility. Here for Guangzhou the calculated unidirectional intelligibility indices are 0.922 and 0.920, with very little difference. 84／Chin-Chuan Cheng Jinan has been reported to have the following phonological innovations: (3) 1. Merger of zero and 1 initials into zero initial: This change affects 40 words in 1 to merge with 404 words in zero initial. 2. 曾梗攝莊組 /t t+ / changed to /ts ts+ s/: 側側測嗇色 責策冊窄爭箏睜生生甥牲省 3. 日母合口 /l/ changed to //: 如如如如儒乳辱入褥蕊肉 軟戎絨茸 4. 通攝精組㆔等 finals /iu1, y/ changed to /u1, u/: 足俗 肅宿粟續宿蹤縱松 5. 曾梗攝㆒㆓等入聲 finals /ei, uei/ changed to /), u)/: 得德特勒則擇澤責策冊塞格隔克刻客嚇伯迫魄墨默陌 或白百柏拍麥脈摘宅窄拆北肋賊黑 These changes affected 483 of the 3,650 morphemes. And the two unidirectional intelligibility indices between the old and the new are 0.919 and 0.920. It is perhaps significant that the mutual intelligibility indices for both Guangzhou and Jinan are around 0.920. As the perfect score for intelligibility is 1, the loss of intelligibility score is 0.08 here. These two localities have more drastic living generation changes than other dialects. I will therefore postulate that the maximum of allowed phonological gap between the old and the young in a community is 0.08. To understand the 0.920 level or the 0.08 gap, we need to compare the mutual intelligibility across dialects. The figures calculated in a report published elsewhere (Cheng 1994b) are given in Table 1. As we can see in Figure 1, the highest mutually intelligible pair is Hankou and Chengdu with an index of 0.795. Empirically we know that these two speeches have no significant problems in communication. Beijing and Guanzhou are not mutually intelligible, and their index is 0.475. Language Intelligibility as a Constraint on Phonological Change／85 Table 1: Dialect mutual intelligibility 北 濟 西 太 漢 成 揚 蘇 溫 長 雙 南 梅 廣 廈 潮 京 南 安 原 口 都 州 州 州 沙 峰 昌 縣 州 門 州 濟 .719 南 西 .685 .768 安 太 .608 .607 .614 原 漢 .727 .588 .635 .582 口 成 .726 .657 .693 .616 .795 都 揚 .541 .568 .641 .631 .578 .610 州 蘇 .499 .511 .548 .558 .549 .545 .608 州 溫 .394 .428 .441 .442 .422 .441 .407 .512 州 長 .609 .556 .593 .524 .676 .660 .529 .525 .476 沙 雙 .490 .481 .488 .427 .530 .506 .459 .501 .448 .499 峰 南 .582 .498 .533 .564 .602 .618 .543 .540 .422 .543 .501 昌 梅 .528 .465 .490 .546 .562 .572 .502 .526 .451 .524 .436 .656 縣 廣 .475 .454 .455 .446 .470 .454 .467 .483 .471 .433 .371 .495 .547 州 廈 .480 .439 .471 .472 .507 .477 .459 .493 .398 .418 .424 .513 .523 .474 門 潮 .443 .415 .465 .516 .468 .499 .475 .469 .445 .445 .353 .495 .497 .435 .504 州 福 .513 .462 .481 .541 .482 .514 .496 .484 .452 .467 .402 .542 .548 .469 .516 .550 州 We use 0.08 as an allowed loss of intelligibility for living generations. What is the duration of a living generation? The answer depends on life expectancy. Perhaps living generations can span one hundred years. Let me now use 0.08 loss for intelligibility for every one hundred years as a general guide to view intelligibility between historical stages. 86／Chin-Chuan Cheng Intelligibility between historical stages The Zhongyuan Yinyun was compiled in 1324, six hundred years ago. During these six centuries the loss of intelligibility would be 0.08*6=0.48. Thus if we expect the intelligibility index between Zhongyuan Yinyun and modern Beijing to be around 1-0.48=0.52. The actually calculated unidirectional intelligibility indices are as follows: (4) Beijing - Zhongyuan: 0.608 Zhongyuan - Beijing: 0.623 The difference between 0.52 and 0.608 or 0.623 is larger than expected. In this connection we need to reflect on matter: is the rate of loss of intelligibility constant over time? The lexicon can change rapidly due to political or cultural power dominance or close contact with other languages. Phonology may also change at different rates over time. A view of constant loss of intelligibility over generations might not be realistic for all historical stages.
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