A Grammar of Shaowu: A Sinitic Language of Northwestern Fujian in China (Issn, 5)

735 Pages·2021·261.04 MB·

by  Sing Sing Ngai

Sing Sing Ngai
A Grammar of Shaowu
Sinitic Languages of China
Typological Descriptions
Edited by
Hilary Chappell
Volume 5
Sing Sing Ngai
A Grammar
of Shaowu
A Sinitic Language of Northwestern Fujian
ISBN 978-1-5015-1772-3
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-1248-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-1230-8
ISSN 2365-8398
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938030
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de..
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To the memory of Professor Jerry Norman (1936–2012)

Preface
In the fifth volume to appear in this new series on Sinitic languages of China, Sing
Sing Ngai presents us with the culmination of ten years of research on the Shaowu
language, a Sinitic language spoken in the northwest of Fujian province in China,
found in proximity to the stunning landscapes of the Wuyi mountain range.
After completing her Honours degree in European Studies at the University
of Hong Kong, Sing Sing Ngai went on to obtain her Master of Philosophy degree
in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and subsequently won a PhD schol-
arship to work on the ERC Sinotype project at the EHESS in Paris from 2009 to
2013. A native speaker of several other Sinitic languages, Sing Sing chose, none-
theless, to carry out work on the Shaowu language, inspired by the studies on Min
Chinese by the renowned sinologist, Professor Jerry Norman of the University of
Washington. Apart from Professor Norman’s research, as well as several other
works on historical phonology and a small collection of 19th century missionary
documents, little is known about the grammar of this language, a gap that the
present volume ably and substantially fills.
The result is a magnificently comprehensive description of the Shaowu Min
language, based on an accumulated year of fieldwork comprising seven research
trips to the city of Shaowu, and over 300 hours of recording. In her analysis, Sing
Sing Ngai demonstrates that Shaowu is, at its core, a Min language, but one that
has become highly divergent within the Min group through contact with adjacent
Gan, Hakka and Wu languages. In this, she concurs with the earlier studies by
Professor Norman, yet skilfully adds more evidence to reinforce his conclusion,
above all from the perspectives of morphosyntax.
Readers are certain to appreciate the finely detailed descriptions of every
aspect of the grammar of Shaowu, framed in the perspective of linguistic typol-
ogy and accompanied by over a thousand examples, a small sample lexicon, and
a selection of natural discourse texts.
Sinitic languages of China: Typological descriptions is a new series spe-
cialising in the description of the grammar of Sinitic languages, ‘Sinitic’ being
the technical term for the Chinese branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.
As such, it includes well-known examples such as Cantonese 广东话, Hokkien
or Southern Min 闽南话, Shanghainese 上海话 and Hakka 客家话, lesser-known
ones such as the Hunanese Xiang languages 湘语, or the Jin languages 晋语 of
Shanxi, and, importantly, the national language of China, Pŭtōnghuà 普通话,
known as Standard Chinese or Mandarin in English. Even Mandarin comes in
many non-standardised forms including the Sichuanese variety of Southwestern
Mandarin 西南官话 spoken in Chengdu, the Southern Jiang-Huai Mandarin 江淮
官话 of Nanjing, the Central Plains Mandarin 中原官话 of Xi’an, not to overlook
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512483-202
VIII   Preface
the typologically unusual varieties spoken in Gansu and Qinghai in northwestern
China, such as Tangwang 唐汪话 and Linxia 临夏话.
The primary goal of this series is to promote scientific knowledge of Sinitic
languages and their typological characteristics through the publication of high
calibre linguistic research, based on empirical fieldwork, detailed analysis of
the data and solid, theoretical interpretations. The grammatical descriptions,
written in a functionalist and descriptive framework, are illustrated by linguistic
examples presented in a ‘value-added’ four-line glossing-alignment format that
includes romanisation, glossing, the idiomatic English translation, and also the
Chinese characters, relevant for historical and comparative research, as well as
for our sinophone readers.
The specific objective is to reveal the great structural diversity found in Sinitic
languages and to dispel many recurrent linguistic myths about Chinese. The
authors involved in this series are all highly trained fieldwork linguists with a
background in both typology and Chinese linguistics.
The series thus aims to reach an international readership for the first time,
given that most literature available on Sinitic languages other than Mandarin, up
until now, has been mainly written in the medium of (Standard Written) Chinese.
The large-scale research project, The hybrid syntactic typology of Sinitic lan-
guages (Sinotype), provided the initial impetus behind this series. Sinotype ben-
efitted from funding in the form of an Advanced Grant (No. 230388) awarded by
the European Research Council (ERC) for the period 2009–2013 which included
a generous publication subsidy for this series. The host institute, the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), graciously provided managerial
support and accounting resources, not to mention spacious premises for the
Sinotype research centre in inner-city Paris, located at 2, rue Küss in the 13th
arrondissement, for the entire period of the project. We take this opportunity to
express our many thanks to both the ERC and the EHESS.
The other volumes planned for this series are:
Volume 2: A grammar of Nanning Pinghua, by Hilário de Sousa
Volume 4: A grammar of Central Plains Mandarin, by Yujie Chen
Volume 6: A reference grammar of Jixi Hui, by Wang Jian
Volume 7: A grammar of Waxiang, a Sinitic language of northwestern Hunan,
by Hilary Chappell
Volume 8: A reference grammar of Caijia, an unclassified language of Guizhou,
China
H.M. Chappell
Series Editor
Paris, 2021
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Professor
Hilary Chappell, for her constant guidance and unwavering support over the
years, and for her enduring patience as my thesis gradually took shape, which
would not have been possible without her inspirational teaching, encourage-
ment and generosity. I am greatly indebted to her. I am also indebted to Professor
Stephen Matthews, Professor Alain Peyraube and Professor Laurent Sagart for
their unswerving support and great insights into my work all these years.
My research forms part of the ERC Sinotype project (2009–2013), which was
directed by Professor Chappell and hosted by the EHESS in Paris, France. The
project was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European
Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agree-
ment n° 230388. I was the only doctoral student in the Sinotype team; I wish to
thank the team members Dr Chen Weirong, Dr Chen Yujie, Dr Li Xuping, Dr Hilário
de Sousa and Dr Wang Jian for the vivid discussions and inspirations.
I also wish to thank Professor Redouane Djamouri, Professor Françoise
Bottéro, Dr Guillaume Jacques and other colleagues at the Centre de Recherches
Linguistiques sur l’Asie Orientale (CRLAO), to which I am affiliated, for their kind
advice and support. During 2015–2018, I worked as a full-time translator at the
Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission in Brus-
sels, Belgium. I am very grateful to the many colleagues there, who were very
inspiring and supportive of my academic work.
My linguistic consultants in Shaowu – Ms Li Jingxin, Mr Li Hougong, Ms Gao
Ying and the late Ms Wei Yixin – were most passionate in teaching me their lan-
guage and local customs during my multiple field trips to the beautiful city of
Shaowu. The data in this book drew from their teaching and stories, as well as
family conversations in which I was invited to participate. I am grateful for their
corrections and patience, and for the hospitality of the people of Shaowu.
A special thanks goes to Professor Giorgio Arcodia, Professor Wendy Ayres-
Bennett, Professor William Croft, Professor Zev Handel, Professor Liu Danqing,
Professor Marie-Claude Paris and Professor Xu Dan. A big thank you to Graham
Cansdale, Nancy Chan, Isabelle Chen, Jeremy Collins, Tim Cooper, Selim Earls,
Daniel Gile, Alex Heliotis, Darcy Hurford, Ane Jelinić, Adrien Lecerf, Mattis
List, Michael Ngai, Clark Ngai, Gilles Ouvrard, Mike Pang, Samuel Rémy, Karin
Spranger, Michèle Thill, Jakob von Weizsäcker, Sarah Wheeler and Rico Wu for
their friendship.
I would like to thank Ms Kirstin Börgen and Ms Birgit Sievert at De Gruyter
Mouton, and Mr David Jüngst at Integra Software Services, for their great editorial
help.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501512483-203