Re: Mandarin demonstratives (Re: Charyan novel! (was: Re: [CONLANG] I'm back!))

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 09:27:24PM -0500, laokou wrote:
> From: "H. S. Teoh"
[snip]
> > 1) tua3 gua4 chi1 peng2 (in my idiolect; probably "chi1 tau1"
> >                          elsewhere)
> >    at   me   this side
>
> Is your "dao1" (tau1) the same "dao1" as in "lai7dao1" e5 "dao1" (inside)?
> That'd be cool.
Hmm, I'm not sure. Probably is. :-)
In my idiolect, "inside" is _lai7bin7_.

> > 2) tua3 lu4 hi1  peng2 (or "hi1 tau1")
> >    at   you that side
>
> I learned "di7" for "at", but dialects is dialects. The only "dua7" I can
> think of that might be cognate is "live"  ("Li2 dua3 dou2 wi7?", "Ni3
> zhu4(zai4) na3li3?" "Where do you live?"
Yeah, basically my idiolect uses _dua3_ and _di7_ interchangeably when the
meaning is "at". It's always _dua3_ for "live", though.

Strangely, my idiolect prefers _dou2 lou2_ instead of _dou2 wi7_ for
"which place" or "where". There also seem to have been a sound change from
_li2_ to _lu(35)_, so "where do you live?" would be rendered as:
        lu1 dua3 dou2 lou2?
or,     lu1 dua3 di1 dou2 lou2?
(_lu1_ and _di1_ are sandhi'd here. :-)

> > It's definitely not possessive, as Hokkien would always stick the
> > *genitive marker (-e) on all possessive constructs. It would sound
> > extremely weird if you said
> >         tua3 gua4-e chi1 peng2
>
> I don't really know how to parse this construction either, even after
> trolling Li & Thompson and Matthews & Yip. A smashing together of apposition
> ("ta1 nei4ge ren2"; "him, that guy") and locative structures ("zai4 wo3
> hou4mian4"; "behind me";; "zai4 zhuo1zi shang4"; "on the table")?
Hmm, for some odd reason, "zai4 wo3 hou4mian4" seems to me to be a
contraction of "zai4 wo3 de hou4mian4" ("my behind" = "behind me", but
without the connotations it has in English.)

> > [Note: _hi1_ in my idiolect might be a contraction of _hia1_ or _hia4_??
>
> Other way 'round, I should think. "hia1" (55;44) (which is the way I learned
> it), hia2 (52) (apparently another Taiwan variant), or hia5 (24) (given as
> Xiamen dialect) mean "there" (nei4li3/na4li3); it's also a contraction of
> "hit4 e5" (nei4ge/nei4xie1), "that", when used as a pronoun.
Interesting. My idiolect must've had a sound change here as well:
_hit4 e5_ has become _hi1 le1_ (yes, both are tone 1, go figure).

[snip]
> Similarly, "jia1" (55;44) is "here" (zhei4li3/zhe4li3); it's also a
> contraction of "jit4 e5" (zhei4ge/zhe4xie1), "this", when used as a pronoun.
>
> "jit4 bing5" = "zhei4bian1" ("this side", "over here")
[snip]

Hmm, my idiolect almost exclusively uses _jit1 bing5_ instead of _jia1_.
But this could be a very localized phenomenon, though. Singaporean
Hokkien, which is in many similar to my idiolect, still uses _jia1_
regularly. Apparently there have been more sound (and other) changes in my
area than elsewhere.

E.g., Singaporean Hokkien (*and* my grandparents, for that matter) still
uses _meng5_ for "door", but my idiolect has _mui5_. Ditto for _seng1_,
"sour", --> _sui~1_. And tone 2 is 52 in Singaporean Hokkien (and
Taiwanese, from my observation), but my idiolect has 24 (or 35) instead.
Amazing how much language can change just in two generations :-)


T

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