HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The ''Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects'' ( zh, s=汉语方言地图集, p=Hànyǔ Fāngyán Dìtú Jí), edited by Cao Zhiyun and published in 2008 in three volumes, is a dialect atlas documenting the geography of
varieties of Chinese There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
. Unlike the ''
Language Atlas of China The ''Language Atlas of China'' ( zh, s=中国语言地图集, t=中國語言地圖集, p=Zhōngguó yǔyán dìtú jí), published by Hong Kong Longman Publishing Company in two parts in 1987 and 1989, maps the distribution of both the varietie ...
'' (1987), which aims to map the boundaries of both minority languages and Chinese dialect groups, the new atlas is a collection of
map A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on ...
s of various features of dialects, in the tradition of the '' Atlas linguistique de la France'' and its successors.


Methods

The project spanned 8 years, from 2001 to 2007. A year of preparatory work began in December 2001, including selecting survey sites, codifying fieldwork procedures and conducting trial surveys. The 930 sites throughout China and Taiwan were selected so that there was usually one site per county in southeast China and one site in every three or four counties in the
Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
and Jin areas, preferably in non-contiguous counties. Thus, for example, there were 92 sites each in
Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
and
Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...
, but only 19 in
Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...
and 21 in
Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...
. The metropolitan district of each of 36 cities – provincial capitals plus
Suzhou Suzhou is a major prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. As part of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis, it is a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Founded in 514 BC, Suzhou rapidly grew in size by the ...
,
Xiamen Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...
and
Meizhou Meizhou ( zh, t=梅州, Hakka Chinese: Mòichû) is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guangdong province, China. It has an area of , and a population of 3,873,239 as of the 2020 census. It comprises Meijiang District, Meixian District, Xing ...
– was included as a survey site. The remaining 894 sites were generally chosen to be representative of rural dialects of their county, so dialect islands were omitted. A questionnaire was compiled, to elicit the pronunciation of 425 characters representing common Chinese morphemes, the local term for 470 items and the local form of 110 grammatical forms. Of the 930 sites selected, 91 sites were identified as key sites representing various dialect subgroups, to be subject to additional surveys. At these sites
tone sandhi Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirec ...
phenomena were to be investigated, and a much longer character list would be used. Fieldwork was conducted between December 2002 and December 2006, and the resulting data entered into a
geographic information system A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and Geographic information system software, software that store, manage, Spatial analysis, analyze, edit, output, and Cartographic design, visualize Geographic data ...
. The 46 fieldworkers, 34 of whom held doctoral degrees in Chinese dialectology, were assigned to areas they were already familiar with. A single informant was used from each site, typically a male born between 1931 and 1945 who had spent almost all of his life at the site. This was in line with the usual practice in dialect geography elsewhere in the world of using nonmobile, older, rural males (NORMs), as such informants are considered more likely to reflect the traditional speech of the area. The maps were compiled and collated throughout 2007.


Contents

The finished work consists of 510 maps, each containing data for all 930 sites, in three volumes: # ''Yǔyīn juǎn'' 语音卷 honetics . These 205 maps trace various significant
phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
developments from earlier forms of Chinese, such as the development of the tonal categories,
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...
d initial
obstruent An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...
s, initial consonants in
palatal The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly sepa ...
environments and consonantal codas. # ''Cíhuì juǎn'' 词汇卷 exicon . Most of the 203
lexicon A lexicon (plural: lexicons, rarely lexica) is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word () ...
maps show the particular expression used at each site for a given concept, displayed as
Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...
standing for cognate morphemes. # ''Yǔfǎ juǎn'' 语法卷, rammar . The 102
grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
maps show the distribution of different syntactic constructions or grammatical morphemes. In each map of the atlas, the different forms are classified, but the classifications are not explained, and must be deduced by the reader. A digital version of the atlas is in preparation, to include additional maps and the full survey data.


See also

*
Languages of China There are several hundred languages in the People's Republic of China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijing dialect, Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as ''Hany ...
* Demographics of the People's Republic of China *
Languages of Hong Kong During the British Hong Kong, British colonial era, English was the sole official language until 1978. Today, the Hong Kong Basic Law, Basic Law of Hong Kong states that English_language, English and Chinese_language, Chinese are the two offic ...
* Languages of Macau


References


Citations


Sources

* * Translation of , with an additional section on future plans. * * *


Further reading

* *


External links


The Commercial Press description
{{DEFAULTSORT:Linguistic Atlas Of Chinese Dialects Books about the Chinese language Varieties of Chinese Chinese dialects Books about China