Liangshan Yi Paddy Fields, Then The Investigation

In this paper, Shuitian speech of Yi-Liangshan, including the phonetics, the lexics and the grammar, is the main research object. Based on the comparison with Yi language in the mountain and Chinese loanwords of middle ancient, we try to trace the laws of historical phonetic and lexical development in Shuitian speech.Shuitian speech is the northern dialect of the Yi language, which is in the sub-classification of Shengzha speech. In the history, Shuitian people lived with Han people, which makes the external reason of the formation of Shuitian speech. Therefore, the basic features of Shuitian speech reflect the affection of Han language. They have much in common in respect of typology.Compared with Yi language in the mountain, the voiced prenasalized clusters have disappeared. And a trend of devocalization in sonant can also be found. Some vowels have changed with the affection of Han language. We have found some correspondence laws.The word formation features of Shuitian speech are as the following: Monosyllabic words and word roots constitute the main method. Based on that, a majority of compound words are formed. Most of complex tone words are not single word. Besides, there are many Chinese loanwords in Shuitian speech. We can thus see that both middle ancient loanwords and the contemporary loanwords have their forms in Shuitian speech. We can trace the phonetic correspondence laws between Shuitian speech and Chinese loanwords of middle ancient. Here, an important language phenomenon is that in Shuitian speech the tone has lost its correspondence laws. Much more information can be found in addendum 3 and addendum 4.The grammar features of Shuitian speech reflect the commonness with Yi language in the mountain.Language material, namely "Man Contest with Ghost in intelligence", has been attached in addendum 2. And also a vocabulary list of Shuitian speech has been attached in addendum 1.