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Classifying Siyi Cantonese Using Quantitative Approaches

Tan, Yutian
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1502688160423343

Abstract Details

2017, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, East Asian Languages and Literatures.
Siyi Cantonese is spoken in the southwestern Pearl River Delta region of the Guangdong Province of China. It has not received much attention from researchers, especially with respect to its internal variation. This dissertation fills this gap and conducts a detailed study of the varieties spoken at seven Siyi dialect points. The study is conducted from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The seven Siyi dialect points are Doumen, Jiangmen, Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping, Enping, and Heshan. Quantitative methods, such as Levenshtein distance, cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling (MDS), are employed to measure dialect distance and visualize the classification results. In the synchronic study, classifications among the seven Siyi dialects are conducted by using phonological and lexical criteria. In the phonological classification, dialect distance is calculated at the segment-tone and feature levels. For each level, three phonological traits are adopted as the classification criteria: 1) consonants and vowels; 2) tones; and 3) combination of consonants, vowels and tones. In the lexical classification, 63 lexical items from the Swadesh list of 100 core vocabulary items are adopted as the classification criteria. Two major findings can be observed from the cluster trees and MDS maps of the synchronic classification results. First, Heshan is the most marginal member within Siyi; second, with Heshan excluded, the remaining six Siyi dialects can be divided into two major clusters. Cluster 1 consists of Taishan and Kaiping, while Cluster 2 consists of Xinhui, Jiangmen, Doumen, and Enping. Within Cluster 2, Enping is phonologically the most marginal member, whereas Jiangmen is lexically the most marginal member. As is evident in the synchronic classification, historical, social and geographical factors have affected phonological and lexical traits in the territory where Siyi dialects are spoken. The diachronic study of Siyi dialects contains two major sections. The first section presents two examples of historical sound changes in Taishan and Xinhui dialects. The first example is found in the sibilant initial consonants and a set of three sound changes from postalveolar to alveolar that can be observed in affricates and fricatives. The second example of sound change deals with the syllabic nasal, with its place of articulation changing from velar to bilabial. The diachronic classification uses seven historical sound changes in a specific group of Siyi’s initial consonants as the criteria. The diachronic result divides Siyi into two major clusters: Cluster 1 consists of Kaiping, Heshan, Taishan, and Doumen, while Cluster 2 consists of Jiangmen, Xinhui, and Enping. The members of Cluster 1 generally have a closer relationship to one another than do the members of Cluster 2. A diachronic tree is constructed that plots the genetic relationship of the seven Siyi dialects. I propose that the arising time of the parent of Kaiping and Heshan is potentially from the 17th to the 18th century, whereas the arising time of the parent of Taishan, Kaiping and Heshan is potentially from the late 15th to the 17th century; this is determined by reviewing the decreeing history of some Siyi districts.
Marjorie Chan (Advisor)
Mary Beckman (Committee Member)
Xie Zhiguo (Committee Member)
335 p.
Foreign Language; Linguistics
Language Classification; Quantitative Methods; Chinese Dialectology; Siyi Cantonese

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Citations

  • Tan, Y. (2017). Classifying Siyi Cantonese Using Quantitative Approaches [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1502688160423343

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Tan, Yutian. Classifying Siyi Cantonese Using Quantitative Approaches. 2017. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1502688160423343.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Tan, Yutian. "Classifying Siyi Cantonese Using Quantitative Approaches." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1502688160423343

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1502688160423343
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© 2017, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Classifying Siyi Cantonese Using Quantitative Approaches by Yutian Tan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.