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Languages of the World--Sino-Tibetan REPORT RESUMES ED 010 359 48 LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD -- SING - TIBETAN FASCICLE THREE. .11Y VOEGELIN, C. F. VOEGELIN, FLORENCE H. INDIANA UNIV., BLOOMINGTON REPORT NUMBER NDEAVI6312 PUB DATE APR 65 CONTRACT OECSAE9488 EDRS PRICEMFS0.16 HC -$3.32 83P. ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS, 7(4)/1..47, APRIL 1965 DESCRIPTORS- *SINO TIBETAN LANGUAGES, *CHINESE, *LANGUAGES, ARCHIVES OF LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA THIS REPORT CONTAINS A LIST ANC DESCRIPTION OF THE LANGUAGES OF THE CHINA -TIBET -BURMA REGION OF ASIA, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE MIAO -YAO LANGUAGE FAMILY AND THE CHINESE DIALECTS. (THE REPORT.IS PART OF A SERIES, ED 010 350 TO ED 010 367.) (JK) b3 PART I AnthropologicalLinguistics Volume 7 Number 4 April 19 65 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATIONAND WELFAkE Office, of Eiucation This document has been reorroduce6 exactlyas received' from nit person or organizecn originating ft. Points of viewor opinions stated do not necessarily represent officialOffice of Education poeitiOnOf policy. LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD: SINO-TIBETAN FASCICLETHREE A Publication of the ARCHIVES OF LANGUAGESOF THE WORLD Anthropology Department Indiana University glo ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for the immediate publication of data-oriented papers for which attestation is available in the form of tape recordings on deposit in the Archives of Languages of the World. This does not imply that contributors will be re- stricted to scholars working in the Archives at Indiana University; in fact, one motivation for the publication of ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is to increase the usefulness of the Archives to scholars elsewhere by making publishable data and conclusions and their tape recorded attestation more widely available.(Recorded attestation of papers from scholars elsewhere will be copied by the Archives and the original recordings returned to the collector; others may then work with the tape copy either in the Archives or elsewhere by having a copy sent to them.)In addition to heavily exemplified papers in the form of preliminary or final statements on restricted problems in phonemics, morphophonemic:, morphemics, syntax aced comparative grammar, ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUIS- TICS will include lexical lists and analyzed texts (especially in the otherwise hard-to-publish range of 20 to 100 pages) and theoretical and methocloiogical papers(especially in the form of papers from sYmPosia). Each vahane of ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS consists of nine numbers to be irsuc-d during the months of January, February, March, April, May, June, October, November and December. Subscriptions ($330 a year) and papers for publication should be sent to the editor, DiFlorence M. Voegelin, Anthropology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Entered as second class matter at the postoffice at Bloomington, Indiana LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD: SINO-TIBETAN FASCICLE THREE C. F. and F. M. Voegelin Indiana Univerdity 3.0. External and internalrelationships of languages in theMiao-Yao family 3.1. Miao branch 3.2. Yao branch [Supplement to Sino-TibetanFascicle One]: 1 6 0 Chinese languages and dialects, andtheir phonologies .6. 1. Wu dialects (Soochow-Shanghai) 1 6 22 Cantonese dialects (Canton) 1 6 3 North Min dialects (Foochow) South Mm dialects (Amoy) Hakka dialects Hsiang dialects Litaj..Sample of six Mandarin dialects 1.6.7.2. Non-unique phonemicizations of PekingMandarin 1.6.7.3. Non-unique phonemicizations of Szechwandialects (Sbntliviesten Mandarin) The research reported hereinwas performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Office ofEducation, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. 1 3.MIAO-YAO FAMILY 3.0. In thecase of the Mia.o-Yao family, thesimilarity betwt.en the few daughter languagesspoken today is auch thatno one would question the possi- bility of reconstructingPrato Miao-Yao. There are here, however,more than the usual SoutheastAsian possi- bilities of more distantphyla relationships withthe homogeneousMiao-Yao family. Fang KueiLi and other Chinesescholars place Miao-Yaospecifically with Kaur Thai andHan Chinese ina Sinitic as opposed to a Tibeto-Burman division ofSino-Tibetan (see Sino-TibetanFascicle One, 0.3 AL 6:3). It is here included as a family of languages withinthe Sino-Tibetanphylum. It may well be that the Miao-Yao familybelongs in a phylumenlarged beyond Sino-Tibetan one that would includeMiao-Yao and Kam-Thaiand Han Chinese and Austronesianin one huge macro-phylumin which the four would be coordinstelyrelated as languagefamilies. In short, itmay turn out that special similaritiesrelate the Miao-Yaofamily quite immediatelyto the Kam- Thai family and to theAustronesian family,as Rufus Hendon suggests. But special similaritiesof the Yao branch ofMiao-Yao suggestsimilarly immediate relationshipswith Han Chinese,especially because ofsimilarities to Hakim and Cantonese, as members of the HanChinese family. Andlong ago Davis (1909) noted some such special similaritiesbetween /Lao and the Mon-Khmer family.More recently, K'unChang (1955) found thatreconstructed tones for Miao-Yaolanguages ,bore considerableresemblance to Vietnamese 2 Sino- Tibetan Fascicle Three tone (and Vietnamese may well be distantly related to the Mon-Khmer family). These reconstructions also show similarities between Miao-Yaotones and tones in the northern group III of the Kam-Thai family (Kam-Sui languages). But so far, no relationship has been convincingly demonstrated,it is said, for connecting Miao-Yao with the northerngroup III Kam-Sui lange.tges of the Kam-Thai family,nor with the Han Chinese family, nor with the lang- uage families in the Tibeto-Burman division of Sino-Tibetan. There appear to be at least three separate Miao-Yao languages,if the Yao branch consists of one language (3.2).In the other i.e. Miao branch of Miao-Yao "'IPthere are at least two languages whichare known to be mutually unintelligible, and hence separate languages (3.1).But, possibly, e. language barriers than this will be found in the Miao branch, thereby attesting more than two separate Miao languages. 3.1. From their area of greatest concentration inKweichow Province, Miao tribes are spreadover the southwestern provinces of China (Hunan, northern Kwansi, and southern Szechuan) and intothe Indo-China peninsula (in scattered areas of North Vietnam andnorthern Thailand). A Chinesesource estimates that in 1956 therewere 2,,510,000 Miao in southest Kweichow and western Hunan; a more recent estimate gives 3,000,000 for thetotal number of Miao speakers in allareas. These figures may be higher than the actual number of speakers of Miao languages, since !Miao'is used in China as a cover term for many diverse liill tribes. According to Savina (1930), there 4 Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 7,No. 4 were about 200,000 Miao in NorthVietnam (Tonkin) and Laos.Estimates based on 195 3census information give about 60,000 forthe present total of Miao and Yao in Laos (wherethe Yao are called Man). (Halpern(1960)says most Miao men in Laosnow speak a little Lao.) Though summariesbased on the 1957 census of Thailand indicate thepresence of Miao and Lao in Thai- land, our sources didnot give actual population figures foreither. The degree of diversity inthe speech of the Miao isnot actually known, but it is certainly notas great as the diversity of Miao tribalnames might imply. Lists of Miao tribesin Hunan includeas many as twenti-two names, but some of theseare probably simply different localnames for the same group and others certainty arenames for Thai-speaking groups mistakenly labelled as Miao. Linguistically,all of the really Miao-speakinggroups of Hunan can probably be subsumedunder those of Kweichow. InKweichow five Miao groups are distinguished Black or Hei Miao, Red Miao,White Miao, Green Miao, and Flowery Miao.The Yi or Thai Miao, who liveamong the Northern Thai tribes, probablybelong to either the Greenor the Flowery Miao. Black Miao is knownto be definitely not mutually intelligiblewith any of the others; the other fourare said to be probably mutually intelligibleto some degree. Thus, thereare at least two Miao languages Black versus the rest; but ofcourse there may be as manyas five, depending on the degree of mutual intelligibilityof the rest. Yao has m, n,0, p, t, and k as consonant finals. Miaolanguages differ in havingno consonant finals excepta nasal (uivally [0]),which in at Sino-Tibetan Fascicle Three 5 least some dialects may be realizedas nasalization of the preceding vowel, and in others varies between nasal velar andnasalization of the preceding vowel. The Yi (Thai) Miao dialect described byK 'un Chang (BIPH 29.11-9, 1957) is spoken in the Kwang-Shundistrict of Kweichow province. In Yi Miao the following single consonants andconsonant clusters occur initially: P t c k kw ph th kh py ty cy [E] pyh cyh mp nt ric uk ukw mph nth nch ukh mpy nty ncy mpyh . ncyh pr tr [t] kr[q] prh trh crh [f] krh mpr ntr ukr mprh ntrh ukrh pl kit plh krlh mpl ukr1 mplh 6 Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 7, No 4 mh nh my ny rrLyh nyh mr mrh r initial and after p] rh 1 lh w y wh Pp] yh The following single vowels,vowel clusters andsequences of vowel plus u occur finally: tu tin e ,ozj ai ai au au atu aux aj a Sino- Tibetan Fascicle Three Of the seven phonemic tones, thr occur with all initials while four oc- cur only with aspirated initials (and the glottal stop is generally counted among the aspirated initials).Thus, tone 1 is called mid-rising, and has the value of mid-rising when itoccurs with aspirated initials;it also occurs as a level tone, a bit above mid, with unaspirated initials and with the glottal stop /9/,which is here counted (exceptionally)as an unaspirated Tones 2 (high-rising) and 3 (mid-level) occur with all initials. Tones (4), (5), (6), (7) nccur with all initials thatare not generally counted as aspirated: high-level (4), mid-falling (5), low -level (6), low-falling (7). The Miao described by Savina, Histoire des Miao (1930) is similar in inventory and list of clusters with nasalsas initial members or liquids as second members (here both / r/ and /1/).
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