LSCHL 12: Zhangzhou Southern Min

Zhangzhou Southern Min

Rhyme Tables, Homonyms, Heteronyms, Vernacular Documentation

Yishan Huang

Australian National University

This book provides an accessible, up-to-date documentation of Zhangzhou speech, a source of Hokkienese that is spreading in Mainland China and beyond. It is the first to adopt the methods of Sinitic dialectology to document Zhangzhou Southern Min to an audience beyond the Chinese community. It presents some 2105 syllables that are used by the native speakers in terms of rhyme tables, showing 5215 gaps that may be further explored with respect to how constraints govern segmental sequencing, and segmental-suprasegmental assigning in utterances. The study tabulates 5712 monosyllabic morphemes, represented by individual characters with English glosses, across 2105 syllables, while containing an inventory of homophones and homographs. Examined are some 900 heteronyms across 793 diphonetic, 89 triphonetic, 14 quadriphonetic, and 4 quintphonetic characters, while exploring how the different pronunciations are related to each other.

The book also documents 1405 local lexical items across different semantic domains; 74 proverbs across sayings, allegorical sayings, quadrisyllabic and trisyllabic idioms; as well as 10 rhyming songs. These reflect how the local cultures are embodied and passed down in terms of speech acts, and facilitate future studies in semantics, pragmatics, and/or discourse analysis.

Yishan Huang recently completed her PhD at the Australian National University in 2018 with her thesis on tones in the Zhangzhou variety of Southern Min. Her primary research interest resides in segmental and suprasegmental phonetics and phonology of Sinitic languages, with an emphasis on quantitative analyses. She currently focuses on investigating and explaining syllables and phonotactics in Southern Min varieties.

ISBN 9783862889358 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Chinese Linguistics 12. 386pp. 2019.