The Pronunciation of Noun Suffix “ 子 ” in Pinghua Dialect Used by Miao and Yao Autonomous in Southwest Hunan of China

In Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan of China, Beijing dialect’s noun suffix “子” has different literary and colloquial forms such as the pronunciation [•ʦɿ] and many other unique colloquial pronunciations that each pronounced as a syllable. By synthetically analyzing many pronunciation forms of noun suffix “子” in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous, this paper gives an investigation on the phonetic change and historical levels.


Introduction
"Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in Southwest Hunan" is refers to the dialect used by the part of Miao (Yao) people in the Chengbu Miao Autonomous County, Suining County and Xinning County which are located at the border of southwest Hunan and Guangxi province.This dialect is called by local people as "Pinghua", "Renhua", "Miaohua", "Donghua", etc. (Hu, 2009).This dialect is mainly distributed in Guanxia Miao and Changpuzi Miao Autonomous Town in Suining, in Lanrong, Baimaoping, Tingping, Wutuan, Pengdong and Jiangtousi Town in southeast Chengbu, in Dankou and Yangshi Town in northwest Chengbu, as well as in Malin and Huangjin Town in Xinning.
In Mandarin Chinese the word-building ability of "子 [•ʦɿ]" is very strong.In Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan the suffix "子" also exists, but it is more common with different pronunciation forms.By synthetically analyzing many pronunciation forms of noun suffix "子" in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous, this paper gives an investigation on the phonetic change and historical levels.

Noun Suffix "子" in Pinghua Dialect Used by Miao and Yao Autonomous in Southwest Hunan and Pronunciation Forms
In Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan, the noun suffix "子" has different pronunciation forms of literary and colloquial pronunciations, such as [•ʦɿ] and other unique forms, which are all used as self-syllable.
According to the investigation and the existing data, in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan, the nouns suffix "子 [•ʦɿ]" are generally used for loanwords or after words, whose pronunciation has obvious characteristic of literary pronunciation, Whose amount is not much, and whose word-building ability is weak.Taking the Malin dialect in Xinning county as an example: In specific, some words above were borrowed with external things together, such as grapefruit, orange, pliers, tweezers, skirt, slippers, dumplings, etc.There were not these things in local place, so borrow of these things caused the whole borrow of words sounds and meanings.At the same time some words above had replaced the original nouns, such as "满伢子 [mai 22 ŋa 22 •ʦɿ]", "侄伢子 [ʨi 13 ŋa 22 •ʦɿ]".The meaning of "伢子" in Xinning dialect is child, while in Malin dialect the corresponding word is "崽崽 [ʦai 22 •ʦai]".The specific substitution of other words is to be further investigated.
On the contrary those unique forms of the noun suffix "子" belong to the local, which word-building ability is strong, and are generally used for local nouns calling the local things, being specific, small in semantics and derogatory and common in pragmatics.Taking the Ma Lin dialect in Xinning county as an example too: In several other points of Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous, there are different pronunciation forms of noun suffix "子", as shown in Table 1.
Obviously, the colloquial pronunciation of noun suffix "子" in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in Southwest Hunan is different from that in Mandarin.At the same time, although the colloquial pronunciation forms of Pinghua dialect area above are various, but the main vowels of which are all read as [ə] or [e], and the initials are all read as [t] or [l], the similar pronunciation indicates the direct or indirect speech contact.

Analysis of the Phonetic Change and Historical Levels Noun Suffix "子" in Pinghua Dialect Used by Miao and Yao Autonomous in Southwest Hunan
The variety of pronunciation forms of noun suffix "子" in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in 1 the shoes with upturned end worn by women with bound feet in former times.Southwest Hunan cited above is closely related to its affiliated status.As an unfree morpheme noun suffix "子" is always attached to other morphemes, it has strong word-building ability but is lack of real significance, so it often have a soft tone-variation trend or have read to a soft tone, will naturally promote weak pronunciation.The track of phonetic evolution of noun suffix "子" can be inferred from two aspects of initials and finals.

Vowel Centralization
On the reconstruction of the medieval phonetic of "子" Wang Li's result was *ʦĭə and Shao Rongfen's result was *ʦie, both were Diphthong vowel.The noun suffix "子" in Lanrong town read [•tie], meanwhile the pronunciation of other two Chinese characters in Lanrong dialect can be the circumstantial evidence: 耳 (耳朵) [nie 33 ] 里 (colloquial pronunciation: 街里) [lie 33 ] ear on the street Supposing the pronunciation in Lanrong was the earlier level, we can infer that the early third-class rhymes had head vowel [-i-], and lost the head vowel in the weakening trend, that is: The centralization centralization chain: ie > e > ə The original diphthong threw away head vowel [-i-] becoming to [e], and further to central vowel [ə].The latter two pronunciation forms appear in the Malin and Yangshi dialect successively.In "The study of Jin dialect grammar" Qiao Quansheng (2000) has pointed out the pronunciation of the initial consonant of noun suffix "子" in Shanxi JinYu is various, but the vowel mainly read [•ə].Visibly, the two situations are similar.

Consonant Weakening
The medieval phonetic of "子" was affricates [ʦ], in the weakening trend it firstly lost the fricative feature becoming to plosive [t], and further to Liquid [l].
The weakening chain: ʦ > t > l Wang Hongjun (1999) has pointed out that in Shanxi dialect along with the vowel centralization the consonant weakening chain of noun suffix "子" is "affricates > plosive/fricative > liquid".The two situations are similar.
Combined with the existing corpus and the phonological status of "子" in the medieval Chinese, writer considers that pronunciation of the noun suffix "子" maybe have the following evolution trend: Gradation: 1 st 2 nd 3 rd 4 th 5 th 6 th Pronunciation: *ʦie > tie > te > tə/le > (lə) > (ə) Sound system: medieval Lanrong Malin Yangshi/(Ningyuan town) phonetic town town Niutou, Guanxia town From a comparative perspective, the evolution trend of pronunciation of the suffix "子" in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan is clear, that is, affricate consonant firstly lost fricative property and weaken to the plosive [t], then further weaken to the liquid [l], accompanied by the vowel weakening and centralization.There are six gradations, the 1 st gradation is medieval phonetic, which is the source of the pronunciation development.All the colloquial pronunciations in southwest Hunan Pinghua dialect are reflected in the middle four gradations, that is the 2 nd to 4 th gradations on the pronunciation development chain.The 5 th and 6 th gradations are the writer's reference about the future development trend of suffix "子".
According to the pronunciations of noun suffix "子" in other Chinese dialects, the further evolution trend can be predicted to be [•lə], such as in Ningyuan Pinghua dialect, then to be [•lə], such as in Yuanping dialect in Shanxi province (Local Chronicles Compilation Committee of Yuanping County, 1963) suffix "子" reads [•ə] generally, which completely lost consonant and centralized vowel.Finally, the result of evolution should be the vowel change equivalent to suffix "子" which is already exists in some Chinese dialects.

Conclusion
Taken together, there are many pronunciation forms of noun suffix "子" in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan, literary pronunciation arising for the effect of Mandarin, while other colloquial pronunciations are the local unique pronunciation, which all come from the consonant weakening and vowel centralization, and maybe further evolve to be vowel change equivalent to suffix "子".About pronunciation evolution of Chinese suffix "子", in order to be more comprehensive and thorough, further study needs to develop analysis on typology combined with pronunciation forms of other dialects.

Table 1 .
Comparison table of colloquial pronunciation of noun suffix "子" in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in Southwest Hunan.