Languages of China in their east and southeast asian context

Author(s):

Chappell, H.

Format:

Book section

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Language:

English

Abstract:

After describing the nature of the correspondence between demography and the principal language families or groups found in China, this chapter next outlines the main sets of features used to support the proposal of continental East and Southeast Asia as forming a single linguistic area. Second, in light of these areal features, three case studies will be treated as the main part of this chapter, two located in frontier areas of China and one in its interior: (i) Gansu-Qinghai in northwestern China where a variety of different Mandarin languages meets Mongolic, Tibetan and Turkic languages, (ii) Guangxi in the south of China where Zhuang (Tai) languages intermingle with western dialects of Cantonese Yue and the little explored Pinghua Chinese, (iii) Hunan in central China where Southwestern Mandarin and Xianghua, an unaffiliated Chinese language, are spoken alongside Hmong (Hmong-Mien) and Tujia (Tibeto-Burman). The purpose will be to describe the clustering of shared features in these micro-areas, if not the degree of linguistic impact, given the protracted periods of contact between the communities in question. It is only in recent decades that studies on contact-induced linguistic change have begun to be examined in China from the point of view of transferral from non-Chinese languages into Sinitic. The first two case studies report on this recent research. The third is a case study of language contact between related Sinitic languages, a contact situation which is only at an early stage. China and its Languages: A Linguistic Demography The principal language families in continental East and Southeast Asia are the following six: Sino-Tibetan, Altaic, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic and Austronesian, each of which is briefly discussed in turn below, with respect to China, the focus of this chapter. While 91.5 per cent of China's population are of Han (?) stock, that is, belong ethnically to the Chinese nationality according to the most recent 2010 census, the remaining 8.5 per cent comprise the so-called ‘national minorities’ including Zhuang, Uygur, Tibetan and Korean of which there are 55 recognized ethnic groups. Sino-Tibetan (Sinitic, Tibeto-Burman) As the family name suggests, the Sino-Tibetan family comprises the two main branches of (i) Sinitic, the technical term for Chinese languages, and (ii) Tibeto-Burman, a family tree configuration which continues to be contested; for differing viewpoints, see Sagart (2005) on Sino-Austronesian and van Driem (2011) on the Trans-Himalayan linguistic phylum. © Cambridge University Press 2017. All rights reserved.

ISBN:

9781107279872 (ISBN); 9781107051614 (ISBN)

Identifier:

HmongStudies0450