The Influence Of Liucheng Baixinghua On Mulao Language Phonetics From The Perspective Of Language Contact

Mulao Town of Liucheng County is the only town of ethnic Mulao people in China.It is located in the mountains of north-central Guangxi,and is under the jurisdiction of Liuzhou City.Mulao language belongs to the Dong-Shui branch of Zhuang-Dong group of Sino-Tibetan family.It has no written language.Demographically,the population of Guzhai Town contains mostly Mulao,Zhuang and Han people,and the majority of Mulao people are proficient in Chinese dialect(s).It is common to speak bilingually.The common dialects spoken there include the Southern Guangxi Dialect-known as Baixinghua,and Southwest Mandarin-known as the Liuzhou Dialect.Baixinghua is more prevalent than the Southwest Mandarin.Having been surrounded by Baixinghua,a Chinese dialect,for a long time,the Mulao language in Guzhai has been under its influence extensively and profoundly.It is helpful to study the contact between Mulao language and Baixinighua to give this language a thorough depiction,and clear its linguistic evolution.Therefore,starting from the perspective of linguistic contact,and based on extensive field study,theories and methods of ethnolinguistics and Chinese dialectology are employed in this paper to find out the phonological contact history between Guzhai Mulao language and Baixinghua,hoping to reveal the influence of local Chinese dialect on the language.The paper is consisted of five chapters.Chapter 1 is the introduction.A basic introduction of Guzhai Ethnic Mulao Town of Liucheng County,including its geographical,cultural,demographics,and linguistic conditions.The current status of relevant studies,significance are explained;the theoretical basis and methodology of the research are described;and the source of corpus and enunciators are introduced.Chapter 2 is the phonemic systems.The phonemic systems of Guzhai Mulao language and Baixinghua are described.The phonetic characteristics of them are analyzed.Chapter 3,4 and 5 are the main part.The contact history between Guzhai Mulao language and Baixinghua is inspected from three aspects,which are initials,vowels and tones.First,their phonemic systems are compared to analyze the differences in phonetic characteristics.Second,starting from borrowed words,the pronunciation changes of the words borrowed by Mulao language from Baixinghua are found out,namely whether there are changes and how the changes to the initials,vowels and tones of the words borrowed happened.At last,the influence of Baixinghua on the phonetic system of Mulao language is revealed.Chapter 6 is the summary.The contents are summarized,the creative parts and parts to be improved are highlighted.The finding of the research: The words borrowed have had influence on the phonetic level after long time mutual exposure between Guzhai Mulao language and Baixinghua.For initials,there are less post-palatal initials,and less words where initials are voiceless nasals and laterals;for vowels,there are less phonemes,and certain vowels are pronounced closer to Baixinghua;for tones,some tones are combined,and there are similar change of tones like Baixinghua.In addition,the phonemic systems of both languages are demonstrating similarities,such as the tones are corresponding,plosives and tail vowels are identical.It means that Guzhai Mulao language have been jointly developing and evolving with Baixinghua throughout their long-time contact.However,most of the Mulao words are still their own,and its phonetic system is still showing typical characteristics of a Dong-Shui branch language.