Bai (language)

The question of the place of the Bai language within the Sino-Tibetan family is the subject of much discussion. Initially, supporters of the ethnic distancing of the Chinese from the Bayes proceeded from the fact that the language of the latter belongs to Tibeto-Burmese , and a large number of Chinese vocabulary was explained by the presence of several layers of borrowings. The turning point in this matter was the study of S. A. Starostin , which quite convincingly showed that on the basis of both phonological reflexes and lexicostatistical calculations, the Bai language can be considered one of the Chinese languages that separated most from the main array (around II – I centuries BC). The Chinese researcher Zhengzhang Shangfang (Zhengzhang Shangfang 1999) came to similar conclusions, although he relates the separation from the rest of the Chinese to a much earlier period, believing that a separate Proto-Bai language already existed in parallel with the ancient Chinese . Nevertheless, not all researchers have accepted this point of view and the search for Tibeto-Burmese ties continues (see, for example, Lee & Sagart 1998). The most dense Bai language has been recently studied by Chinese linguist Feng Wang, who spent several years conducting field studies of Bai dialects.

Dialects

The buy language has a large number of dialects, which sometimes differ quite strongly.

Bai is used primarily as a spoken language, although there is a small amount of traditional literature written in Chinese characters. This tradition has existed since the 8th century under the name 白文baiwen (老 白文 lao baiwen ).

During the 1950s and 1960s, Bai Chinese linguists Zhao Yansun and Xu Lin developed Latin scripts and published the Bai grammar and vocabulary using it. This writing is based on the dialect of Jinhua City, Jianchuan County Center.

Consonants

Vowels

The Bai language is characterized by rich vocalism and an abundance of nasal vowels:

Tones

Jianchuan dialect has 8 tones . 4 of them (those on the right in the table) are laryngeal .

In the most recent version of the Latin alphabet (1993), laryngualized tones are indicated only by the letter of the tone (and in one case, again, by the absence of a letter). As a result, the new system thus corresponds to the 1982 system: rt → p; rx → []; [] → d; rl → b.

In the dialect of Bijiang city there is another non-laryngalized tone, its curve is 32. It is indicated by the letter “z”.

Syntax

The syntactic order in a Bai sentence is similar to Chinese. Exceptions to this rule can be found in ancient Tibetan-Burmese writing.

Vocabulary

Including word formation, borrowing, current trends

• François Dell, La Langue bai. Phonologie et lexique , Paris, Editions de l'EHESS, 1981. ISBN 2-7132-0417-8
• Lee Yeon-ju & Sagart, L. 1998 The strata of Bai, paper presented 31th ICSTLL, University of Lund, Sweden, Sep. 30 - Oct. 4, 1998.
• Matisoff, JA 2001 On the genetic position of Bai within Tibeto-Burman. Paper presented at 34th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan languages ​​and linguistics, Yunnan minzu xueyuan.
• Starostin SA The Historical Position of Bai . // Moscow Linguistic Journal, vol. 1: 174-190. Moscow, 1995.
• Wang, Feng. On the genetic position of the Bai language . Cahiers de Linguistique - Asie Orientale. Vol. 34 (1): 101-127. Paris, 2005.
• Wang, Feng. Comparison of languages ​​in contact: the distillation method and the case of Bai. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series B: Frontiers in Linguistics III. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, 2006.
• Wiersma, Grace. 1990. Investigation of the Bai (Minjia) language along historical lines, UC Berkeley: PhD thesis.
• Zhengzhang, Shangfang (鄭 張尚芳) Baiyu shi hanbai yuzu de yizhi duli de yuyan (白 語 是 漢 白 語 族 的 一支 獨立 的 語言) [Bai is an independent language of the Sino-Bai family] //. Shi, Feng 石 鋒, Pan, Wuyun 潘 悟 雲 (ed.) Zhongguo yuyanxue de xintuozhan 中國 語言學 的 新 拓展 [New Development of Chinese Linguistics], Hong Kong: Xianggang chengshi daxue chubanshe 香港 城市 大學 出版社, 1999. 19-73.