Title

“Giao Chỉ” (Jiaozhi交趾) as a Diffusion Center of Middle Chinese Diachronic Changes: Syllabic Weight Contrast and Phonologisation of Its Phonetic Correlates

Author

Pain Frederic

Genre

Article

Pages

355-437

DOI

10.6503/THJCS.202009_50(3).0001

Download

PDF

Language

English

Key words

Areal Linguistics, registro-tonogenesis, Southeast Asia, Sinosphere, Chinese, Vietic

Abstract

The essay tackles a particular linguistic facet of the sinicisation process in Southeast Asia. The focal argument addressed throughout this essay lies in the claim that Giao Chỉ (Jiaozhi交趾) should be granted a central position regarding the transfer of Old and Middle Chinese diachronic features into Southeast Asian languages from Jiaozhi down to the Gulf of Thailand and Mekong Delta. The major linguistic argument underlying this essay is that the hallmark of the sinicisation process in Southeast Asia is not so much the monosyllabisation process per se but rather the “phonologisation” of its phonetic correlates. Exploiting Ferlus’s lifelong seminal work on Chinese and “Southeast Asian” Diachronic Linguistics, it will be demonstrated that a pertaining consequence of this monosyllabisation was the phonologisation of a vowel lowering, high pitch and a modal voice developing along the tense Middle Chinese syllables (that is, originating from ancient Old Chinese sesquisyllables) and a contrastive vowel raising, low pitch and a breathy voice along the lax Middle Chinese syllables (that is, originating from ancient OC monosyllables); in other words, the monosyllabisation process was conductive to a split of the vocalic system associated with a suprasegmental contrast based on the breathy vs. modal feature and a pitch height distinction. It will be shown that the processes that Chinese transferred into proto-Vietic from the urban areas of Jiaozhi is the monosyllabisation and the phonologisation of the tension vs. laxness contrast alongside its phonetic correlates; it will also be demonstrated that, at a certain point during the Chinese and Southeast Asian tonogenetic process, there emerged a contrast between what is glottalised and what is not.