The linguistic geography of southern China: language origins and dispersals Andrew Hsiu (CRCL) [email protected] 21st Himalayan Languages Symposium (HLS 21) Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal June 2-3, 2015 Outline Purpose: Provide “Big picture” Riverine dispersal theories that I will propose: KD + HM Macrophyla: Austro-Tai, Yangtzean Linguistic areas that I will propose: (1) Lingnan area (2) Plateau area Southern China: ~ 1,000 – 500 B.C. Homelands Inferred mostly from present-day geographic distributions, and some Chinese historical records: Henan, Shaanxi: Sinitic Shandong: Dongyi (TB? “Etruscan of China”?) Hunan: Hmong-Mien Jiangxi: “Para-Hmong-Mien”? Chongqing: Tujia [TB] Sichuan: Qiangic [TB] Yunnan: Bai, Loloish [TB] Guizhou: “Macro-Bai” (Cai-Long) [TB] Guangdong, Guangxi ( = Yue): Kra-Dai Fujian, Zhejiang: Pre-Austronesian Spread of Sinitic Massive expansion of Chinese empire, culture, language starting around 2,000 B.P. (Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty) Chinese expansion brings about tonogenesis & monosyllabification = creolization processes Parallel to expansion of Roman Empire and Latin / Romance languages TB, KD, HM, AA had also been expanding prior to 2,000 B.P.; they would have wiped out various isolates. KD + HM riverine dispersals I noticed that present-day distributions of KD and HM branches overlap a lot with drainage basins. KD: Pearl River Kra: Hongshui River Kam-Sui: Liu River Tai: Yong River Explains why KD spread west HM: Xiang River Hmongic: Yuan River Mienic: Xiang River Explains why HM spread southwest Kra-Dai riverine dispersal: ~ 3,000 B.P. Former distribution of Buyang (Kra) Source: Li Jinfang (2000). Buyang yu yanjiu. Beijing: Minzu University Press. Hmong-Mien riverine dispersal: ~2,500 B.P. Hmongic: Guizhou, Western Hunan Mienic: Southern Hunan Double-crop rice and languages Single-crop rice and languages Yangtzean, Austro-Tai Yangtzean Stanley Starosta‟s proposal KD & HM: agricultural expansions Hmong-Mien: Daxi culture Para-Hmong-Mien: Jiangxi = perfect geography and conditions for a Hmong-Mien sister family (cf. double-crop rice map) Proto-Yangtzean / Pre-Hmong-Mien would have been in Hubei, perhaps Anhui. HM & KD are “not quite that diverse”, vs. TB (Blench, van Driem, Starosta). Austro-Tai Paul K. Benedict (1942, 1975); Weera Ostapirat (2005) Austro-Tai: Majiabang, Hemudu cultures Fujian coast archaeology (Tianlong Jiao 2007) Fujian to Taiwan migration: 6500-5000 B.P Fujian-Taiwan contact maintained until 3500 B.P. Austro-Tai Proto-Austro-Tai: Fisher-foragers along the Fujian coast (Jiao 2007); no rice agriculture yet. Splits to Proto-Kra-Dai and Proto-Austronesian. Proto-Kra-Dai: Rice agriculturalists in Guangdong (Pearl River Delta), dispersed via rivers. Proto-Austronesian (Formosan): Millet agriculture, no wet-rice agriculture (Blench); no outriggers (yet). Multiple migrations from Fujian (cf. Ross‟ and Li‟s Formosan classifications). Guizhou: earlier languages Guizhou before Tai, Sinitic, HM, Loloish Boren: May be Lachi (Kra branch) (Edmondson & Li 2003) Caijia, Longjia: unclassified TB languages Gelao, Mulao: Kra Tujia (TB isolate branch) Bolyu: AA, Mangic / Pakanic branch; migrated from Guizhou to Guangxi in the 1800‟s with Gelao (Li 1999) “Macro-Sinitic” ≠ Bai (Sagart) “Macro-Bai” (incl. Sinitic) KD-HM, KD-TB, TB-HM contact Lolo-Burmese dispersal: overland Source: Lama, Ziwo (2012). Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages. Ph.D. thesis, UT Arlington. Austroasiatic branches: dispersal Credits: Paul Sidwell, Roger Blench Austroasiatic branches: contact Linguistic areas Linguistic areas Linguistic areas formed AFTER Hmong-Mien, Kra split up Language Plateau Lingnan group area area Kra Gelao, Buyang, Lachi Qabiao Hmong- Hmongic Mienic Mien Linguistic areas: origins Formed between 500 A.D. – 1500 A.D. (around or after split-up of Middle Chinese, but before the Qing Dynasty) Plateau area primary influences: Tibeto-Burman + Old Sinitic lects in Sichuan and Hunan Lingnan area primary influences: Tai + Yue Chinese Qiangic: linguistic area but not coherent subgroup (Chirkova) Plateau area Loss of final stops (-p, -t, -k) Tendency for disyllabic and trisyllabic lexical forms (many “dummy” prefixes such as ka-, qa-, ta-, pa-, etc.; PTB *tsa suffix common) Simpler tone systems (many with only 4 tones) Centered in Guizhou Lingnan area Preservation of final stops (-p, -t, -k) Tendency for monosyllabic forms More complex tone systems (many with 8 tones or more) Centered in Guangxi Vietnamese displays both Lingnan and Mon- Khmer features (Red River valley = Lingnan + Mon-Khmer areas). Mutual influences: families Mutual influences: AA-KD-HM triangle Routes facilitating early contact: coasts of Vietnam and southern China, and rivers. TB → HM: widespread influence (Ratliff 2010) TB → KD: heaviest influences in Kra (Ostapirat 2000) AA → HM: various AA loanwords / cognates in Proto- HM („water‟, „blood‟, „bone‟ etc.), but not in KD or TB or AN (Ratliff 2010) HM → AA: less likely than AA → HM, but possible AA → KD: sporadic AA loanwords in Kra KD → AA: widely attested; cf. Reid (2005) on Austric KD → HM: cf. Kosaka (2002) on Miao-Dai HM → KD: cf. Kosaka (2002) on Miao-Dai Whence the interphyletic similarities? Possible explanations for East Asian language family similarities. Austro-Tai =? Sino-Tibetan =? AA =? HM (1) They are all related (Starosta‟s East Asian macrophylum) (2) They are all borrowings (e.g., Blench‟s South Yunnan interaction sphere hypothesis) (3) Perhaps compromise of (1) and (2) Ongoing research SE Asian languages database: CRCL Bangkok Reconstruction work: Austroasiatic (Paul Sidwell), Kra-Dai (Peter Norquest) Flood of new data from China New research on genetics, archaeology, etc. Southern China: ~ 1,000 – 500 B.C. References Benedict, Paul K. 1942. "Thai, Kadai and Indonesian: a new alignment in south east Asia." American Anthropologist 44.576-601. Benedict, Paul K. 1975. Austro-Thai language and culture, with a glossary of roots. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press. Blench, Roger. 2015a. Origins of Ethnolinguistic Identity in Southeast Asia. In: Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology. Editors: Junko Habu, Peter Lape, John Olsen eds. Springer. Blench, Roger. 2015b. Ethnographic and archaeological correlates for an MSEA linguistic area. Paper for a volume from the Conference „Beyond the Sanskrit Cosmopolis‟. ISEAS, Singapore, November 2013. Andrea Acri, Roger Blench & Alix Landmann eds. ISEAS. Intended publication date, 2015. Edmondson, Jerold A. and Shaoni Li. 2003. "Review of 'LajiyuYanjiu' by Li Yunbing." In Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 26, no. 1: 163-181. Jiao, Tianlong. 2007. The Neolithic of Southeast China: Cultural Transformation and Regional Interaction on the Coast. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. Lama, Ziwo (2012). Subgrouping of Nisoic (Yi) Languages. Ph.D. thesis, UT Arlington. Lee, Yeon-Ju, and Laurent Sagart. 2008. "No limits to borrowing: The case of Bai and Chinese". Diachronica 25 (3): 357–385. Li Jinfang (2000). Buyang yu yanjiu. Beijing: Minzu University Press. Li Xulian [李旭练]. 1999. A Study of Lai (Bolyu) [倈语硏究]. Beijing: Minzu University Press [中央民族大学出版社]. References Matisoff, James A. 2003. Handbook of proto-Tibeto-Burman. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ostapirat, Weera 2000. Proto-Kra. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 23,1. Ostapirat, Weera 2005. Kra-Dai and Austronesian: Notes on phonological correspondences and vocabulary distribution. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas eds. 107-131. London: Routledge Curzon. Ratliff, Martha. 2010. Hmong-Mien language history. Canberra, Australia: Pacific Linguistics. Reid, Lawrence A. 2005. The current status of Austric. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez- Mazas eds. 132-160. London: Routledge Curzon. Shafer, Robert 1967. Introduction to Sino-Tibetan. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Sidwell, Paul, and Roger Blench 2011. The Austroasiatic Urheimat : the Southeastern Riverine Hypothesis. In: N. Enfield ed. Dynamics of Human Diversity in Mainland SE Asia. 317-345. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. Starosta, Stanley 2005. Proto-East-Asian and the origin and dispersal of languages of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. In: The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. eds. Laurent Sagart, Roger Blench and Alicia Sanchez-Mazas 182-197. London: Routledge Curzon. Van Driem, George L. 2008. To which language family does Chinese belong, or what‟s in a name. In: Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, Roger Blench, Malcolm D. Ross, Ilia Peiros and Marie Lin, eds. Past Human Migrations in East Asia: Matching Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. 219-253 London and New York: Routledge..