Tanguto-Chinese Elements in the 12th Century Dialect of Hexi

Abstract

The Hexi dialect of the 12thc. recorded in Tangut literature, such as Fanhan Heshi Zhangzhongzhu, was a Tangut-Chinese language, i.e., an ethnic variant of the ancient Chinese Northwest Dialect. Under the influence of their native languages, non-Chinese people tend to make phonemic alternations, additions and deletions when they speak Chinese. These phonetic variants have nothing to do with diachronic evolution and cannot be brought into the sequence of Chinese phonological development as real forms of dialectal evolution. In researching Ancient (Middle) Chinese on the basis of the Chinese and non-Chinese transcriptions, only by stripping out phonetic variants and by carefully analyzing phonological divergences between Chinese and non-Chinese languages can we restore ancient forms better.