An Analysis of the AB-type Geolinguistic Distribution in the Huizhou Dialect: With a Focus on the Shift of the Xiushe Line(休歙線)

There are some words in the Huizhou dialect whose lexical forms or phonetic forms exhibit a clear AB-type contiguous distribution. This article presents the geographical distribution maps of the phonetic forms of the initial consonants of ‘fu· hu(扶·胡)’ and ‘hou(猴)’ and the synonymous forms of <moon>, <peas>, <yesterday> in the Huizhou dialect. It is found that the geographical distribution line of the AB-type in the Huizhou dialect approximately locates on Xiushe line(休歙線), with some lexical forms showing certain deviations in the east-west direction of the line. Through analysis, we believe that the reason for this phenomenon is that the relevant lexical forms or phonetic forms are dominant in the Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, represented by Nanjing and Yangzhou. These dominant forms have scattered to the areas east to the Xiushe line in Huizhou through frequent language contact.