Gan Dialect Research Articles

중국 감 방언권 학습자의 한국어 어두 파열음 음성적 특징 연구

이 연구는 중국 감 방언권 학습자의 한국어 어두 파열음 발음 특성을 고찰하고 감 방언권 한국어 학습자를 위한 발음 교육 개선점을 제안하는데 목적이다. 우선, 한국어 어두 파열음을 구별하는 중요한 음향적 특성인 성대 진동 시작 시간과 후행 모음 시작점의 피치를 요인으로 삼고 중국 감 방언권 학습자, 한국인 화자, 중국 보통화권 학습자를 대상으로 음성 실험을 진행하였다. 실험 결과, 중국 감 방언권 학습자의 성대 진동 시작 시간과 후행모음 시작점의 피치는 모두 다른 두 집단과 유의미한 차이가 나타났다. 성대 진동 시작 시간의 비교 분석 결과, 감 방언권 학습자의 평음과 경음은 다른 두 집단보다 크게 나타났고, 격음은 양순음과 치조음에 있어서 중국 보통화권 학습자보다 크게 나타났으나 한국인 화자와 비슷하게 발음하였다. 연구개음에 있어서 한국인 화자보다 작게 나타났고 중국 보통화권 학습자보다 크게 나타났다. 후행 모음 시작점의 피치의 비교 분석 결과, 평음에 있어서 중국 감 방언권 학습자는 한국인 화자, 중국 보통화권 학습자보다 높게 나타났고 격음과 경음에 있어서 다른 두 집단보다 낮은 것이었다.<BR> 이 실험 결과를 통하여 중국 감 방언권 학습자는 감 방언의 영향으로 보통화권 학습자와 다른 발음 특성을 갖고 있는 것으로 추정할 수 있다. 중국에서 방언은 일상생활에서 빈번하게 사용되고 있는데 방언의 사용으로 인한 학습자 간의 발음 차이는 주목할 만하다. 따라서 중국인 학습자를 대상으로 한 한국어 발음 교육은 학습자의 방언권 요인도 함께 고려하면 보다 효율적인 발음 교육을 기대할 수 있다.

A Study on Aspectual Category of Jiangxi Suichuan Dialect

Suichuan County is located in the southwest border of Jiangxi Province, the southwest of Ji 'an City. The local dialect of Suichuan, namely Gan dialect, is mainly distributed in the county seat of Quanjiang and the suburbs of Yaoxia, Zhutian, Nanyuan, Yutian, Meijiang, Penzhu and other towns. The dialect is represented by Quanjiang Town and Yaoxia Town. There is a complete aspect and appearance system in Suichuan dialect. The aspect includes seven kinds: initial-aspect, progressive-aspect, continuous-aspect, perfect-aspect, experience-aspect, continuing-aspect and already-aspect. The appearance includes four kinds: short appearance, try appearance, repeated appearance and random appearance. On the basis of field investigation, according to the actual situation of Suichuan dialect, it analyzes its physical characteristics, grammatical composition and functional meaning. The biggest grammatical feature of the appearance of Suichuan dialect is mainly expressed by the marker words such as Yeha（耶哈） and Xilei（洗雷）. Some of the same marker words such as Yi（一） can express several different style meanings, which are not only the stylistic mark of perfect-aspect and already-aspect, but also the stylistic mark of continuing-aspect. The study also found that the modal particles in Suichuan dialect do not express body and appearance meaning; and the complement of Diao（掉） dialect is described as Ga（噶）.

The Characteristics of the Phonetic System of Shigang (Shangping) Dialect in Xinjian District, Nanchang

Xinjian District locates in the north of central Jiangxi Province,which belongs to Nanchang Dialect,and it is the representative point of Gan Dialect. Due to it’s geographical location and population migration, Nanchang Dialect retains the phonetic features of ancient Chinese relatively completely. However, influenced by the popularization of Mandarin in recent decades, it is more difficult to find the authentic Nanchang Dialect. What’s more, some variations in the dialect have arisen. Although the Shigang town(Shangping) Dialect discussed here belongs to the Chang-du group of Gan Dialect and has the common characteristics of the Changdu group, it also has it’s own distinctive features. For example, all voiced initial consonants are pronounced as aspirated stop or affricates, regardless of the level and oblique level; the Secondary voiced consonants [n], [l] are not in accordance with the Mandarin, with plum rhyme missed, and with the high and level tone (the first tone of the four Chinese tones) varied.

Analysis on the semantic evolution of Chinese Gan dialect from the perspective of cognition

The meaning of a word is the reflection of social life, and it is the result of the cognition of the object, phenomenon and relationship through the mental activity. The development and changes of lexical mean-ings essentially reflect the development and change of people’s cognitive activities, so people’s cognitive aware-ness is reflected in words, which is also reflected in the word meaning evolution of Chinese Gan dialect. Whether in the extended way or pattern, the linkage, radiation, complex comprehensive changes of the lexical meaning of Gan dialect in Chinese, all follow a rule: The expression of the meaning in cognitive process will corresponding-ly change with the continuous deepening of human cognition.

Ditransitives in three Gan dialects: valence-increasing and preposition incorporation

This paper studies ditransitive constructions in three Gan dialects, which are featured with the famous ‘inverted’ double object construction (DOC for short). It is schematized in the order of V-DO-IO. According to Zhang (2010), languages with inverted DOCs tend not to have GIVE verbs; instead of give, they use verbs like take, hold, and obtain in ditransitive constructions. Contra Zhang (2010), we argue that languages with inverted DOCs like Gan Chinese have typologically different GIVE verbs from their Mandarin counterpart: Mandarin has the R(ecipient) type of GIVE verbs, and Gan has the T(heme) type (cf. Margetts and Austin 2007). With synchronic cross-dialectal data, we attempt to figure out the relation between various ditransitive constructions in Gan. We argue that (i) ditransitives in Gan are often realized by the serial verb construction [GIVE-DO-Directional-IO], from which the inverted DOC is derived by deleting the directional element, and (ii) the T type of GIVE verbs can be shifted into the R type, as in the double GIVE construction [GIVE-DO-GIVE-IO] or in canonical DOC [GIVE-IO-DO]. This becomes possible only when GIVE absorbs the dative case.

Stature of Han Chinese dialect groups: a most recent survey

The height of 26,940 Chinese Han adults (16,503 rural and 10,437 urban adults) from 11 Han ethnic groups was measured and analyzed in the current survey. The top three highest dialect groups in rural Han populations are Jianghuai (male 167.3 ± 6.4cm, female 156.5 ± 5.6cm), North China (male 167.3 ± 6.4cm, female 155.7 ± 5.7cm), and Wu (male 166.7 ± 6.9cm, female 155.6 ± 5.9cm) groups. In urban Han populations, the top three groups are as follows: the Northeast China (male 169.5 ± 6.7cm, female 158.0 ± 6.1cm), North China (male 168.5 ± 6.2cm, female 157.3 ± 5.8cm), and Jianghuai (male 169.2 ± 6.2cm, female 157.1 ± 5.6cm) dialect groups. The Gan dialect group (male 164.0 ± 6.3cm, female 153.9 ± 5.0cm) was the shortest in both rural and urban groups. The different stature of Han dialect groups may be a result of interaction between genetic background and different environmental factors, labor intensity, diet composition and nutrition intake in different areas in China.

The tone pattern in dialect contact

The features of tones contact have been investigated between Xiang Dialect and Gan Dialect, by using the method of tone pattern in this paper. It is showed that the “transition” feature of the mixed dialect reflects in similar features of tones between mixed dialect and ancestor dialect or between mixed tones and target dialect, which includes as follows: the balance of the tone number, the mixing of tone category, the similarity of tone value, and the correlation of tone contour.

Body weights in Han Chinese populations

The body weights of 26,954 Han Chinese adults in 67 areas (16,503 in rural areas and 10,451 in urban areas) across China were measured from 2009 to 2013. The results showed that in China, the three areas (north China, northeast China, and Jianghuai Plain) were with the greatest body weight. Northwest Han Chinese populations were heavier. Southwestern dialect groups were at the middle level and lighter than northern Han Chinese populations, but were heavier among southern Han Chinese populations. Chinese Han who located in areas of Hangjiahu were the general level, and similar to southwestern dialect groups. The mean values of body weight in Hunan Han and Fujian Han were greater than other Han groups in southern China. Gan dialect groups and Cantonese dialect groups showed the minimum body weight value in all Chinese Han groups. Besides, the mean body weight of Hakka was heavier than Gan dialect groups and Cantonese dialect groups which were adjacent to Hakka. Body weight increases with an increase in height, bone diameter, subcutaneous fat on the limbs and trunk, chest circumference, and abdomen circumference. This study revealed that northern Han men were heavier than southern Han men, because the former were taller and had a larger waist circumference as well as thicker subcutaneous fat on their backs. Among women, height, bone diameter of the upper limbs, chest and abdomen circumferences, and subcutaneous fat on the limbs and trunks of northern Han exceeded those of rural southern Han. Consequently, body weight values of northern Han women were higher than those of southern Han women. While a significant difference in these values was found between urban and rural men, no significant difference occurred between urban and rural women. Body weight was associated with age in urban and rural men only in the case of minority groups. However, there was a positive correlation between body weight and age in the majority groups of both urban and rural women. The particular composition of genes involved in body weight traits of Han populations across the country has created a genetic foundation accounting for varying body weights of different Han populations. Environmental factors also play a role. As the Han are widely dispersed, their habitation areas vary according to factors such as topography, temperature, precipitation, humidity, and light. Moreover, labor intensity, food composition, and the intake of various nutrients also differ across Han populations. All of these factors have affected the development of body weight in Han populations living in different locations.

A production and perception study on tonal neutralization in Nanchang Chinese

In a production study of tonal contrasts in lexically stressed but grammatically stressless syllables vs. lexically stressless syllables in Nanchang, a Gan dialect spoken in southeastern China, we found that tonal neutralization only occurs in lexically stressless syllables. We argue that the main phonetic ground for such a tonal contrast distribution lies in the rhyme duration difference between syllables with and without lexical stress, namely, lexically stressless syllables have shorter rhyme duration than lexically stressed but grammatically stressless syllables, and the shorter the rhyme duration of a syllable is the fewer tonal contrasts the syllable allows. In terms of perception, we found that different tonal contrasts indeed become neutralized in lexically stressless syllables. However, the neutralization pattern at the perception level is not the same as the one at the production level due to word specific effects.

The Distinction between Zhi 支and Zhi 脂 / Zhi 之 and the Strata Analysis of Some Relevant Rhyme Groups in Hakka and Gan Dialects

This article probes into the reflexes of the Middle Chinese Zhi 支, Zhi 脂and Zhi 之rhymes of the Zhi 止 rhyme group in modern Hakka and Gan dialects. By using the method of strata analysis, two literary and three colloquial pronunciation strata of the unrounded Zhi 止 rhyme group are found in the Hakka and Gan dialects. The two literary pronunciation strata both show no contrast between Zhi 支 and Zhi 脂 / Zhi 之. They are the main pronunciations of Zhi 止 rhyme group in the Hakka and Gan dialects; the second literary stratum, which is quite similar to the pronunciation of Mandarin dialects, is more commonly found in the Gan dialects. Among the three colloquial strata, two of them have distinct pronunciations only for Zhi 支, and the other has no contrast between the three rhymes. Through observing and comparing the patterns of split and merger of the Zhi rhyme group in the Hakka and Gan dialects, this article analyzes the intricate and complex relationships between the pronunciations of Zhi 支 rhyme and the Guo 果, Yu 遇, Zhi 止, Xie 蟹, and other rhyme groups; furthermore, similarities and dissimilarities between the Hakka and Gan dialects are also discussed.

Re-examining the Devoicing of Middle Chinese Voiced Initials in Hakka: When and Where?

The voiced stops and affricates of Middle Chinese have basically shifted to their voiceless aspirated counterparts (henceforth, “devoicing”) regardless of tone categories in the following dialects: 1. the Hakka dialects;2. the Gan dialects;3. various Mandarin dialects spoken along the Shanxi-Shaanxi-Henan border;4. a small group of Mandarin dialects in southeastern Jiangsu; and5. a northwestern dialect spoken in the Late Tang period.It has been claimed that the above-mentioned dialects are closely related, based on the fact that they have undergone the same development of the Middle Chinese voiced stops and affricates. In this paper, we argue that the devoicing of Hakka took place in southern China, probably in modern-day southern Jiangxi, some time between the early 10th century and the late 17th century. The devoicing pattern shared by Hakka and other Chinese dialects should therefore be treated as parallel development rather than as evidence for closer genetic affinity among all these dialects.

Phonological Changes of the Shaowu Dialect in the past 100 years, with Special Reference to Shauu K’iong Loma T’se

This paper aims to examine the phonological changes in the Shaowu dialect as spoken in northwestern Fujian during the past 100 years. The study is based upon a close comparison of two recordings, produced by Rev. Joseph E. Walker (Shauu K'iong Loma T'se, 1887) and Chen Zhangtai et al. (Minyu Yanjiu, 1991), respectively. A wordlist in full romanization, Shauu K'iong Loma T'se (hereafter LMT) contains 1,589 readings of both colloquial and literary forms in the Shaowu dialect. The phonological system as shown in LMT displays several phonological peculiarities that have disappeared in the modern recording. For instances, (1) medial - u- appears after alveolar and bilabial stops; and (2) vowel -μ appears after alveolar affricatives and fricatives. All these discrepancies are interpreted as phonological changes; and nine rules are designed to account for the development. It is found that some of these changes were induced by the prestigious neighboring Gan dialects. As a result, the Shaowu dialect and the Gan dialects became increasingly alike in the past century.

QUELQUES CHANGEMENTS PHONETIQUES DANS LES CONSONNES INITIALES DES DIALECTES GAN

This article is a study of some of the sound changes which have affected the initial consonants in the Gan dialects. The changes are studied from the points of view of conditioning, geography, motivation and relative chronology. A distinction between northern and southern Gan is proposed.

Quelques changements phonétiques dans les consonnes initiales des dialectes Gan

This article is a study of some of the sound changes which have affected the initial consonants in the Gan dialects. The changes are studied from the points of view of conditioning, geography, motivation and relative chronology. A distinction between northern and southern Gan is proposed.

ESQUISSE DE LA PHONOLOGIE D'UN DIALECTE DU JIANGXI : NANCHENG

Based on over 400 character readings in the Nancheng city dialect of Eastern Jiangxi, a synchronic phonology is outlined and some sound correspondences with the Qie Yun system are worked out. Nancheng city dialect has the general characteristics of a Gan dialect and some Min-like developments in its rhyme system. Its principal feature of interest is the glottalization of upper Departing, a shortish tone with a sharp, metallic, ringing voice quality, ending in a clear-cut fashion, though not in a glottal stop. A comparison of the spectral properties of this and other tones shows upper Departing to be characterized by a weaker first harmonic. This dialect, as well as others in the same area, bears witness to the claim, made elsewhere, that Middle Chinese Departing tone was characterized by glottalized phonation.

Esquisse de la phonologie d'un dialecte du Jiangxi : Nancheng

Based on over 400 character readings in the Nancheng city dialect of Eastern Jiangxi, a synchronie phonology is outlined and some sound correspondences with the Qie Yun system are worked out. Nancheng city dialect has the general characteristics of a Gan dialect and some Min-like developments in its rhyme system. Its principal feature of interest is the glottalization of upper Departing, a shortish tone with a sharp, metallic, ringing voice quality, ending in a clear-cut fashion, though not in a glottal stop. A comparison of the spectral properties of this and other tones shows upper Departing to be characterized by a weaker first harmonic. This dialect, as well as others in the same area, bears witness to the claim, made elsewhere, that Middle Chinese Departing tone was characterized by glottalized phonation.