Unpacking the history of Middle Chinese *ɣu- in the Yue dialects in Guangdong: a dialect geographical analysis

Abstract

The main focus of this dissertation is the developments of the Middle Chinese sequence *ɣu- in 54 Yue dialects in Guangdong. The reflexes of MC *ɣu- sequence invites attention because (a) the traditional dialect description does not capture the developments of this sequence across all the dialects systematically, (b) the phonological history of *ɣu- in Yue remains in the descriptive stage without reference to sound changes involved between Middle Chinese and present day Yue dialects and (c) the inter- and intra-dialect variation of the reflexes of *ɣu- is still unexplored.

I use Yue dialect survey data (Zhan & Cheung 1987, Zhan & Cheung 1994, Zhan & Cheung 1998, Shao 2016 and Beijing University Linguistics Faculty 1989) to answer the following research questions:

1) Are there geographical patterns for the variation of the reflexes of MC *ɣu- in Yue? 2) Do all the words have the same MC *ɣu- reflex within one dialect? 3) How many steps were involved in the changes from Middle Chinese to present day varieties? 4) Were there specific phonological contexts for certain changes to occur? 5) Was there contact or diffusion of these changes between Yue and other neighbouring varieties such as Hakka? 6) Did linguistically similar but geographically distant patterns develop from the same changes?

The data shows that based on the reflexes of MC *ɣu--, (1) Yue dialects in Guangdong can be divided into four groups, (2) there can be more than one reflex for MC *ɣu- within a dialect, (3) different dialect groups have different number of steps from MC *ɣu- to the present day reflex, (4) most dialects show that MC *-u- triggers ɣ loss in the history of Yue , ( I propose that the current geolinguistic pattern resulting from the contact with Hakka is unlikely; the current dialect landscape was created by contact between Yue varieties, and lastly (6) two groups of dialects (Bao’an and Maoming type dialects) appear to be linked historically despite them being separated by the Taishan type dialect geographically.