Contact or cognate: A case study of the sound correspondences between Cun and Hlai in Hainan

ABSTRACT: Chinese and Hlai serve as two main sources of Cun vocabulary. The coronal initials of Cun's Chinese-sourced words have undergone the chain shift *t>ɗ→*s>tθ, in which the involved sound classes of Middle Chinese are different from the surrounding Chinese dialects, indicating Cun's independent evolution in the language contact. Though Cun being defined as a vernacular of Hlai by previous studies, regular correspondences of coronal initials cannot be established between Cun and Hlai dialects. This paper proposes that Chinese-sourced words are inherent, whereas the Hlaisourced words are borrowed after the migration of Cun. The inherent sound changes took place in the process of an ongoing phoneme borrowing and adapting, creating multiple historical strata in the correspondences of loan phonemes. 摘要: 汉语和黎语是村话词汇的两个主要来源。村话中来自汉语的词汇的舌齿 音经历了 *t>ɗ→*s>tθ 的链式音变，其中涉及的中古汉语音类与周边汉 语方言不同，表明村话在语言接触中经历了独立的演变。尽管以往的研 究将村话定义为黎语的一种方言，但村话与黎语方言之间无法建立舌齿 音的规律对应关系。本文认为，村话中来自汉语的词汇是固有的，而来 自黎语的词汇是在村话到达海南之后借入的。固有层次的音变发生在语 音借用和适应过程中，形成借词音系中的复杂历史层次。