Title

The Interrelationships Between the Mergers of Nasal Codas in the Min Dialect of Eastern Guangdong and Their Geographical Distributions

Author

Li Jung-min

Genre

Article

Pages

143-164

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

Chaoshan 潮汕 dialect, linguistic geography, glottogram, theory of concentricity

Abstract

　　The merger of the nasal codas -m, -n, and -ng is a special phonological phenomenon of the Min dialect of Eastern Guangdong. Through the linguistic map, it is noted that we can find that Type 1 (only -ng coda) is found in the center, Type 3 (-m, -n, -ng codas) are distributed on the periphery, and Type 2 (-m and -ng codas) are in between, which fits perfectly with the theory of concentricity. By using glottograms, I show that Type 1 and Type 2 are expanding outward and that the merging of nasal codas forming Type 2 happened in the 16th century instead of in the 19th century, as previously indicated in the literature.