Why the Quanzhou 8 tones are important

[tadpole]

Per Mark Yong's suggestion, I am posting a separate thread.

This is what I just posted yesterday in the Peking University Forum:

http://www.pkucn.com/viewthread.php?tid ... 1218583451

For those that cannot read Chinese well, basically I was pointing out that the YangShang tone category in Quanzhou dialect has strong correlation with auxiliary verbs or certain prepositions (these are what I would call "soft verboid terms", I need to come up with a better name, maybe something like "regressive verbates", as opposed to "aggressive verbs".) The underlying conjecture is that this shows the plausibility of Hokkien or Chinese being a tone-less language at an earlier stage.

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引用:
原帖由 musa 于 2009-9-11 11:33 发表
听了视频 闽南话读宋词 念奴娇 赤壁怀古
发现闽南话许多音也和普通话挺对应的，能听懂某些字，以前只知道粤语和普通话很对应，没想到闽南话也如此，差异没有想象的那么大
http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/-N2z ...
我个人对这种用粤语，客家话，闽南语等念古诗的做法很没兴趣。

倒是对 BioPolyhedron 君的中古汉语非常赞同。要念古诗，不必轮到用方言。中古汉语重建又不是没人搞：http://www.youtube.com/user/biopolyhedron

尤其是闽南语，这种双调语言根本不必去跟中古汉语那种单调语言去搞画虎不成反类犬。自己有自己的特征，却不会去珍惜。不知道要等到那一天，闽南群族才会清醒，才会了解他们有非常独特的语言，而这种语言的双调构造是中古汉语所无的。比去搞这些不伦不类的闽南音汉语古诗，还不如发时间把中古或半古闽南音找出来，让漳泉厦台潮五地能了解他们的前身共同语。

另外，了解泉州八调，才能了解闽南语的漂亮的对称性（symmetry）。闽南语确实已经有点接近古代无声调的语言特征。跟英语文法声调类似无比。动作性动词跟英语一样用高降调，助动词跟英语一样用低声调（*）。这么漂亮的声调及文法的相关性，真的要好好去进一步研究。搞不好，还能解开汉语 tonogenesis 之谜。闽南语真的不需要去讨好或模仿中古汉语。

（*）用英语念念 make, put, watch, love ，你会发现是用高降调。用英语念念 have (as in "I have a cat"), may (as in "you may go"), as, in/at/on ，你会发现是用低声调。闽南语 （做，囥，看，爱） 都是阴去调，（有，会，像，佇）都是阳上调。这不可能算是巧合。这可能代表的是，汉语，或是闽南语，在上古时期，应该是无声调语言。汉语声调，或是闽南语声调，是有资讯价值的。阴去声跟动作性动词有关，在普通话里也看得出来。但是阳上声跟助动词/软性词类有关，可能就只能从闽南语看得出来。

[tadpole]

Internet is amazing. Now I finally found some Quanzhou teaching material on line!

http://bbs.qzwb.com/thread-3962-1-1.html

For Southeast Asian Hokkien people (Singapore, Malaysia), you guys will probably find the accent familiar, but vocabulary a bit different. The mainstream Hokkien has been very much influenced by Amoy and Taiwanese. Quanzhou so far has been a lot less glamorous, but this will gradually change. Singapore/Malaysia probably has a little bit more Quanzhou heritage than Taiwan, originally. Taiwan has sided heavily towards the Zhangzhou direction. For instance, the pronuncation of 你 (lyl) in Taiwan basically has evolved to (lil), but in Singapore/Malaysia you can still find a lot of people using the Quanzhou/Teochew version of the vowel.

Zhangzhou subdialect is considered relatively "younger" than Quanzhou or Teochew. I have my own theory about it. I think Zhangzhou area was heavily developed during the Southern Song dynasty. Southern Song's official language has already lost the YangShang tone category. To put it more straight, Zhangzhou area originally had a lot of She 畲 and Hakka people, who acquired their languages as a creole from the Southern Song's military/government. Southern Song needed to recruit the She 畲 people badly, because they needed a stronger army to defend themselves from the Jin 金 dynasty (and later, from the Mongols.) Quanzhou was more established back then, so the Southern Song's military/government did not make as much an impact there. The She 畲 and Hakka people later mixed with the Hokkien/Hoklo people, and lost their She/Hakka languages to speak Hokkien instead. That is my guess why the Zhangzhou version of Hokkien has lost the YangShang tone category, and undergone some vowel simplification. An architectural heritage developed during the Southern Song era: the famous 福建土樓/客家圓樓: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/福建土楼 http://www.gtes.tp.edu.tw/hakka/report/re-6.htm . If you look at the distribution of these architectural styles in 福建, you will find out their locations correlate with the YangShang-less tone areas.

[xng]

For instance, the pronuncation of 你 (lyl) in Taiwan basically has evolved to (lil), but in Singapore/Malaysia you can still find a lot of people using the Quanzhou/Teochew version of the vowel.

If all the "y" vowel is "i" vowel in zhangzhou, then why is it that Penang hokkien use 'Lu' instead ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoy_dialect#Accents

Zhangzhou subdialect is considered relatively "younger" than Quanzhou or Teochew. I have my own theory about it. I think Zhangzhou area was heavily developed during the Southern Song dynasty.

Zhangzhou is younger than quanzhou. Quanzhou was formed in 3 kingdoms dynasty whereas Zhangzhou was formed in Tang dynasty. (not sung dynasty). Please read the chinese version of Minnan in wikipedia for the history.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/闽南语#.E6.AD.B7.E5.8F.B2

[tadpole]

If all the "y" vowel is "i" vowel in zhangzhou, then why is it that Penang hokkien use 'Lu' instead ?

I am frankly not expert in Penang Hokkien. My experience in SEA Hokkien is only through Youtube clips, where I can notice some features that are closer to Quanzhou. 你/汝 's pronunciation stands out as one of them. Usage of rising tone for YinShang running tone is another one of them. SEA is a big melting pot, where Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Teochew have mixed, at least that's what some more experts have told me in 海墘閩語論壇 http://bbs.gophor.com/hokkien/ .

Zhangzhou is younger than quanzhou. Quanzhou was formed in 3 kingdoms dynasty whereas Zhangzhou was formed in Tang dynasty. (not sung dynasty). Please read the chinese version of Minnan in wikipedia for the history.
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/闽南语#.E6.AD.B7.E5.8F.B2

Zhangzhou existed in Tang dynasty. But it was during Southern Song dynasty that it was expanded. 《漳州谕畲》 is an important book describing the She situation in the Southern Song era, and the development of the Zhangzhou area. During the Southern Song dynasty, there was still basically no distinction between the She and Hakka people. Zhangzhou area was full of She people. I wouldn't venture to describe the Hokkien linguistic situation there: it must have been really chaotic, with quite a few non-Hokkien languages around: you have the original She, you have the Southern Song official language used by the military garrisons, you have the sinicized She/Hakka, and of course some Hokkien-like language from Quanzhou, and probably still some remanants of Hmong-like people (where 閩/苗 got its name from. I invite you to listen to Hmong language and you will soon notice similarities with Hokkien, especial in tonal values and nasalization.) Southern Song was the dynasty that really shaped Zhangzhou. The 福建土樓 was one of the legacies that Southern Song brought into the area.

One problem with many of the writings about Hokkien's history is that they are all from historical Chinese records. That really does not stand well scientifically. Today's social sciences rely much more on other facts than just historical records. Matter of fact, the ex-head of the archeological society of China Su Bingqi 蘇秉琦 basically declared independence of Chinese Archeology from written history. I like what some American anthropologists do: they consider anthropology as a four-field discipline: cultural, biological (also called physical), linguistic, and archaeology. I'll give you some big names in each discipline when it comes to analyzing Southern Chinese: (1) cultural: Ling Shun-Sheng 凌純聲, (2) biological: Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, (3) linguistic: Paul K. Benedict 白保羅, (4) archeology: Su Bingqi 蘇秉琦. Notice that "historical" per se is not part of anthropology, history is only used as auxiliary device.

What I want to say is, Fujian area's history is nothing like you'll find out from Chinese written records. Cannibalism was still in practice during Yuan dyansty, as reflected in Marco Polo's book. Ethnically, DNA studies reveal time and again that Southern Chinese (including Fujian), have very little to do with the original Han immigrants. Cultural practices studied by Ling Shun-Sheng 凌純聲 reveal things like dental mutilation (鑿齒), second burial, tatooing, etc, that are shared by Austronesian tribes at large. Archeological findings like chipped pebble tools also reveal the Austronesian and Taic connections. Linguistically, you also find some striking facts. For instance, in colloquial Hokkien, grandchild and nephew are both called 孫仔. This overlap is actually observed in a large number of Taic/Austronesian languages (as found by Paul K. Benedict), and even Vietnamese, which is an Austroasiatic language. (Each one of them have a different word/pronunciation, but what overlaps is they use the same term for grandchild and for nephew.)

If you just read from Chinese records, it will make you think that Han immigrants into Fujian area are overwhelming, while in reality, from DNA studies, we know today that Han immigrants constitute only between 10% to at most 20%. (In the case of Fujian, should be much lower than 20%). The rest are local aborigines. So the migration history should be taken with a grain of salt.

[xng]

.

There's no such thing as a single 'SEA hokkien', each region or state has their own hokkien dialect.

[tadpole]

http://www.huachengnz.com/article/view_22544_1.html

This article has a good description of the chaotic situation in Zhangzhou in Southern Song period. It also has a good discussion on the historical attitude of people towards the Chinese character 閩.

As for Hmong, there are plenty of clips on Youtube. This is a random example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx8YTnttljU Frankly, sometimes I heard Hmong speech and if I was not paying attention, I often thought I was hearing Hokkien. Of course, if you start to pay attention, the two languages are quite different.

[tadpole]

There's no such thing as a single 'SEA hokkien', each region or state has their own hokkien dialect.

I guess we all know that.

[amhoanna]

"Stumbled upon" this 1984 paper with an interesting take on tone sandhi and tonogenesis in southern coastal "Tn̂gsoaⁿ":

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/pr ... _13_1_1142

Some really interesting posts in this thread! Tadpole talks in some detail about the history of Ciangciu. The subject of creoles comes up too, in passing. Like him, I was struck by the surface resemblance of Hmong to Hoklo, when I passed through Fresno, West América, and stopped into a Hmong grocery store for drinks. At a distance, it sounded like they were speaking Taiwanese, but it was Hmong. They spoke to me in Hmong too. They were surprised to the hilt when I said I couldn't speak it. We "exchanged" equivalent words in the two languages, Hmong vs Hoklo, before I got back on my way. To close, I'm under the impression that Hmongs eat a lot of pig's blood, as do Hokkiens, or at least the people on the "culinarily Hokkienized" islands of Taiwan and the Phils.