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Language and Linguistics
Vol. 22:1 (2021) ► pp.71–110

Diverse sources and an internal foundation for voiced onsets in Northern Mǐn

| Christopher Newport University

The voiced onsets and associated tonal reflexes of Northern Mǐn (NM), motivation for Norman’s (1973; 1974) proto-Mǐn “softened” stops and affricates, remain a subject of controversy. Following a brief introduction (§ 1), I begin by reviewing the various apparent sources of voiced onsets in NM, including old complex onsets, non-Sinitic substrate, voicing alternations, and late koine material (§ 2). I then take up Akitani’s (2008) colloquial glossary of Shíbēi 石陂 and Norman’s (1969) of Jiànyáng 建陽, outlining on this basis an adjusted account of the subgroup’s development: pre-PNM preserved early Sinitic voiced onsets in Tone A2, with a conditioned split isolating voiced stops in so-called Yángpíng yǐ 陽平乙, here “A2+” (§ 3). It was this conservative feature which allowed items in § 2 to take on voiced onsets across tonal categories, at times leading to further splits. A conclusion considers Mǐn more generally, proposing that the voicing alternants of Huang Chin-wen (2001a) may be NM reflections of group-wide tone sandhi processes (§ 4).

Keywords: Northern Mǐn, softened onsets, tone 9, tone sandhi, dialect contact
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Multiple sources of voiced onsets in NM
    • 2.1Source 1: Complex onset configurations
    • 2.2Source 2: Local and substrate words
    • 2.3Source 3: Voiced members of NM voiceless-voiced alternant pairs
    • 2.4Source 4: Voiced-onset koine loans
    • 2.5Towards a fuller solution to NM onset voicing
  • 3.NM in light of historical lower register voiced onsets in Shíbēi and Jiànyáng
    • 3.1Tone C2 D- in Shíbēi
    • 3.2Tones B2 and D2 D- in Shíbēi
    • 3.3Tone A2 D- in Shíbēi
    • 3.4The Jiànyáng historical lower register in Norman (1969) and a new NM model
  • 4.Stress and sandhi: Northern Mǐn as typical Mǐn with a twist
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

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Published online: 16 December 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00078.smi
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