Chadong Language Chinese Loanwords

In historical linguistics, stratum refers to a system of foreign parts existing in a certain language or dialect, which are the results of language contact. Language contact usually begins with loanwords. As a linguistic system, loanwords have the features of the source language on the one hand and are constrained by and become an integrated part of the linguistic system of the target language on the other. So the study of loanwords is of great and unique significance. Firstly, as the results of language contact the study of the loanwords, particularly those from the languages under the way of contact, can reveal the mechanism of language contact among different languages. Secondly, from the perspective of linguistic history, though loanwords are usually deleted in historical comparative study, they retain some phonological features and historical information of the source language, so the study of loanwords can also display some information which used to be some features of but now no longer exists in the source language in the course of language development.Chadong, a newly-discovered language spoken by some 20,000 people inhabiting most of the villages of Chadong Township, Lingui County, and some villages of the neighboring Liangjiang Township and Longjing Township of Yongfu County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is so temporarily'named after their residency as no autonym or extonym is found so far. Preliminary comparative study shows that Chadong should be grouped into the Kam-Shui branch of the Tai-Kadai family.Like other minority languages in the area, Chadong has been influenced by and has thus absorbed lots of loanwords from the neighboring Chinese, Zhuang, Yao and other languages, with Chinese being the main source language. The significance of the historical stratum study of these loanwords lies in:(1) providing a better understanding of the historical phonological change of Chatong through the study of the features of the loanwords at different phases; (2) being helpful in understanding Chinese and other minority languages as source languages as well as the local history and ethnology at different historical periods; (3) setting up the basis for the differentiation of cognates and old loanwords, which are difficult to tell apart; (4) providing valuable first-hand data for the study of language contact.The present study is largely based on the methods in studying stratum proposed by Sagart and his collaborators, Xu ShiXuan, Zeng Xiaoyu, etc., which includes the following hypotheses:(1) The different pronunciations of one word are derived from different historical/dialectic substrata.(2) The initial consonant, the vowel and the tone of the same syllable belong to the same substratum.(3) Different syllables in one word belong to the same substratum.(4) Disyllabic words were usually formed later than the monosyllabic words.(5) After the earliest strata, those words in minority languages that show Chinese-minority phonetic correspondences of various strata are Chinese loanwords.The five hypotheses above are logic and practical as a whole except the third one which needs to be analyzed on a case by case basis. Based on these hypotheses, the method of studying historical strata of the loanwords can be specified as follows:(1) As many reference phonologies or phonetic correspondences as possible should be provided as the basis for selecting loanwords and setting stratum. The reference phonologies can come from any related language (mainly Lingui Mandarin dialect, Nanning Tingzi Ping dialect, Lingui Yining Ping dialect, Lingui Sitang Ping dialect involved in this study), or a reconstructed phonological system like Chinese phonological systems of ancient, mediaeval or contemporary times, of which the phonological change with historical characteristics is of vital importance in bordering loanword strata.(2) Find out as many loanwords as possible. Historical stratum analysis is based on a detailed comparison of the materials and needs to avoid the limitation of "not seeing the wood for the trees ".(3) Set up and explain the main phonological differences between strata and the main phonetic correspondences, upon which the bordering of historical strata is based.Accordingly, the analysis of the historical strata of Chinese loanwords in Chatong follows the following steps:(1) The Chadong-Chinese correspondent words in Chatong are divided into two main strata:contemporary and ancient ones. The contemporary stratum is not difficult to tell apart as the sound system is quite near to that of the local Chinese dialect (Lingui Mandarin dialect).(2) Discriminate the mediaeval Chinese loanwords from the ancient ones. Some scholars such as Liangmin, Zhang Junru, Pan Wuyun, among others, have ever put forward a hypothesis:in ancient time, there might be a proto-Chinese dialect, from which Ping dialect derived and ancient loanwords in Chatong might have come. This hypothesis is proved in this study (see section 2 of Chapter 3) by setting the phonologies of Guinan and Guibei Ping dialects as the frame of reference and then comparing those loanwords in Chadong with them:those with a similar phonetic system to Guinan and Guibei Ping dialects are mediaeval Chinese loanwords and otherwise ancient ones.(3) The contemporary and mediaeval substrata form the majority of the Chinese loanwords in Chatong. As for the rest, those that are close to Lingui Ping dialect are considered as modern stratum and those that are close to the ancient Chinese phonological system reconstructed by Zhengzhang-Pan are marked as archaic stratum.(4) Those that fail to fall in any of the above strata need more study.