From: chou@cs.washington.edu (Pai Hsiang Chou)
Subject: Re: Language
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 92 00:23:51 GMT

In article <78951@ut-emx.uucp> joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang) writes:
>In article <1992Aug31.212815.15941@beaver.cs.washington.edu> chou@cs.washington.edu (Pai Hsiang Chou) writes:
>>But most important factor is the grammar.  H"ol"o is the only
>>one that's grammatically toned. 
>
>That's not true.  Cantonese is also grammatically toned.  According to
>Ramsey in _The Languages of China_ by Robert Ramsey (Princeton
>University Press, 1987) page 104
>
>  Tones are also used as a kind of rudimentary inflection.  Tonal
------------------------------------**********************
>Cantonese has a complicated set of tone changes for word derivations
>(using a noun as a verb for example).

Inflections and derivations are _morphological_ operations.
Sino-Tibetan languages are _lexically_ toned, and morphology
is a lexical operation motivated by syntax.
When I said "grammatic" I meant a _syntactic_ operation.

Only Wu (Shanghainese) has comparable complexity in the
sandhi tone at the compound word level.  H"ol"o sandhi
tones operate on the phrase level and inter-phrasesal
which are much larger units than just compound words
(which are between syntax and morphology).

By the way, Ramsey does not really understand the Min family
that well.  He devotes only 2.5 pages on the whole region,
giving a very cursory view, and admits that this region
is much more heterogeneous than people have previously
thought.  (in comparison he has 6 pages on Hakka, 9.5 pages
on Cantonese, both of which are much less varied)

Again, min-nan is the wrong term to use.  Min-nan contains
Chaozhou but they are not mutuallly intelligible (there are
at least 9 mutually unintelligible groups).


>According to Ramsey (page 37)
>
>   We must careful, of course, not to exaggerate the importance of
>   these [non-Han] substrata in the structure of the modern Chinese
>   language.  The Southern dialects are not "mixed languages," they
>   are Chinese. 
>
>Your assertion that Min-nan dialect is not even a Sino-Tibetan
------------------------------------***
>language is one that I have never heard before.

I used the past tense "was".  I was talking about the origin.
(if you recall, we were talking about where H"ol"o people
originated)  It is undisputable that H"ol"o people have been
been sinitized.  I don't think my statement contradicted
Ramsey's claim.  The point I was trying to get across was
that there are enough evidences that suggest H"ol"o was
originally non-Sino-Tibetan.  Ramsey also noted a fact that
there is a sharp contrast between colloquial and literary
pronunciations in H"ol"o.  These are well known signs of
fossilized interactions between the aboriginal H"ol"o and
the Han people from the north.  Many theories that claim
H"ol"o people were pure Han from Honan/Losui area base
their claims on one of the many possible Hanzi names,
and to me it is not at all plausible.


>Since your assertion contradicts my reading on the subject, I hope you
>don't mind if I ask for a reference on your assertion that Min-nan is
--------------------------------------------------------------------***
>not a member of the Sino-Tibetan family.

Not "is", but "was".  Huang WeiWen's _Guangdong Difang Zhi_, 1906.
Hong WeiRen in his many recent books (in particular, _Taiyu
Wenxue yu Taiyu wenzi_, Feb 1992, cites many historical references
as well as cross-linguistic comparison of cognates.  In particular,
page 216-247.  His point is that sinitization is not quite
complete for H"ol"o and traces of the original non-Sinotibetan
language exist and are still in the grammatic particles, many
frequently used words from the old days that have no cognates
in its neighboring languages.  Sing Young in the book he is
currently writing uses the syntactic tone rules and comparison
of cognates with Dong/Tai (Miao) neighbors to conclude the
non-Sinotibetan origin of H"ol"o.  There has been very little study
of the H"ol"o grammar, and Young's discovery is a very new one.

Han culture makes it a shameful thing to be non-Han.
Plus politics has helped this bias.  This is why H"ol"o == Han
theories have been readily embraced, and all other theories get
rejected almost indiscriminantly.

Pai
Newsgroups: soc.culture.taiwan