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The Distribution of Initials and Tones in the Sui Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Fang-Kuei Li
Fang-Kuei Li*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The Sui language is spoken in the southeastern part of Kweichow, China. While the language can be shown to have certain relations with the Tai group, it exhibits many peculiarities and divergences from the ordinary Tai languages. The material for this study is taken chiefly from an analysis of over 2600 lines of folk songs, gathered by the writer in 1942 from two small villages, Li and Ngam, in Lipo, Kweichow.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 24 , Issue 2-Part1: April-June , June 1948, pp. 160 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © 1948 Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 These two villages are only a few miles distant from each other, but there are already slight dialectal differences. Thus, the low level tone of Ngam is pronounced in Li with a slight rise at the end; and a few Ngam words such as /k'au3/ wine, /k'an1/ nephew, /kaŋ1/ bright are pronounced in Li with uvular stops, although the velars and the uvulars are distinct phonemes in both dialects. Aside from such differences in a few individual words, the phonological system is the same for both.

2 Kam is a language with numerous dialects spoken to the east of the Sui territory along the Hunan and Kwangsi border in Kweichou; Mak is a language spoken in a very limited area in the northwestern part of Lipo, Kweichou; and Yanghuang is spoken only in a few villages in Tingfan, south of Kweiyang. I have tentatively called this group the Kam-Sui languages; cf. F.-K. Li, Notes on the Mak language, Monograph of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Series A, No. 20 (1943). I have also gathered material, texts, and vocabulary from two Kam dialects, two Sui dialects, and Yanghuang.

3 Cf. K. Wulff, Chinesisch und Tai 123–66 (Copenhagen, 1934). Other factors— aspiration, vocalic length, glottal stop, presence of nasals, etc.—may exert a special influence on the tone under special conditions in different dialects.

4 A, B, and C represent the tones in syllables without final /-p, -t, -k/; D represents the tone in syllables with final /-p, -t, -k/.

5 The Siamese tones are not noted in the examples, since the form and meaning will be sufficient to identify the words.

6 Cf. F.-K. Li, The hypothesis of a series of pre-glottalized consonants in Primitive Tai, Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Vol. 11, Part 2 (1943).