“Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in Southwest Hunan” is refers to the dialect used by the part of Miao (Yao) people in the Chengbu Miao Autonomous County, Suining County and Xinning County which are located at the border of southwest Hunan and Guangxi province. This dialect is called by local people as “Pinghua”, “Renhua”, “Miaohua”, “Donghua”, etc. (Hu, 2009) . This dialect is mainly distributed in Guanxia Miao and Changpuzi Miao Autonomous Town in Suining, in Lanrong, Baimaoping, Tingping, Wutuan, Pengdong and Jiangtousi Town in southeast Chengbu, in Dankou and Yangshi Town in northwest Chengbu, as well as in Malin and Huangjin Town in Xinning.

In Mandarin Chinese the word-building ability of “子 [•ʦɿ]” is very strong. In Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan the suffix “子” also exists, but it is more common with different pronunciation forms. By synthetically analyzing many pronunciation forms of noun suffix “子” in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous, this paper gives an investigation on the phonetic change and historical levels.

In Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan, the noun suffix “子” has different pronunciation forms of literary and colloquial pronunciations, such as [•ʦɿ] and other unique forms, which are all used as self-syllable.

According to the investigation and the existing data, in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan, the nouns suffix “子 [•ʦɿ]” are generally used for loanwords or after words, whose pronunciation has obvious characteristic of literary pronunciation, Whose amount is not much, and whose word-build- ing ability is weak. Taking the Malin dialect in Xinning county as an example:

柚子 [iɤu³⁵•ʦɿ] 橘子 [ʨy¹³•ʦɿ] 驴子 [lo¹³•ʦɿ] 虫块子 [din¹³kuai²²•ʦɿ] 刷子 [sa¹³•ʦɿ]

grapefruit orange donkey earthworm brush

瓶子 [bin²²•ʦɿ] 篓子 [lɤu²²•ʦɿ] 钳子 [ʥian²²•ʦɿ] 镊子 [ȵie²²•ʦɿ] 败家子 [bia¹¹ka⁴⁴•ʦɿ]

bottle basket pliers tweezers spendthrift

坏人子 [ya¹¹ŋ̍²²•ʦɿ] 婊子 [piao²²•ʦɿ] 痞子 [pʰi²²•ʦɿ] 伢子 [ŋa²²•ʦɿ] 沙痱子 [sa³³fei⁴⁴•ʦɿ]

baddy prostitute riffraff child rubra

平班子 (人) [bin¹³paŋ⁴⁴•ʦɿ (ŋ̍²²)] 摊子 [tʰan³³•ʦɿ] 馆子 [kuan²²•ʦɿ] 裙子 [ʥyn¹³•ʦɿ]

fellow stall restaurant skirt

粽子 [ʦoŋ³⁵•ʦɿ] 铜毫子 [doŋ¹³ɦao³³•ʦɿ] □□子 [ȵia³⁵pʰai²²•ʦɿ] 车子 [ʦʰe³³•ʦɿ]

dumpling coin slippers vehicle

In specific, some words above were borrowed with external things together, such as grapefruit, orange, pliers, tweezers, skirt, slippers, dumplings, etc. There were not these things in local place, so borrow of these things caused the whole borrow of words sounds and meanings. At the same time some words above had replaced the original nouns, such as “满伢子 [mai²²ŋa²²•ʦɿ]”, “侄伢子 [ʨi¹³ŋa²²•ʦɿ]”. The meaning of “伢子” in Xinning dialect is child, while in Malin dialect the corresponding word is “崽崽 [ʦai²²•ʦai]”. The specific substitution of other words is to be further investigated.

On the contrary those unique forms of the noun suffix “子” belong to the local, which word-building ability is strong, and are generally used for local nouns calling the local things, being specific, small in semantics and derogatory and common in pragmatics. Taking the Ma Lin dialect in Xinning county as an example too:

(Specific things) wheat 麦子 [ma¹¹•te], rhododendron 红花子 [ɦoŋ¹³fa³³•te], horse 马公子 [ma²²koŋ³⁵•te], face 面子 [mie¹¹lo²²•te], fine hair 寒毛子 [ɦo²²mo¹³•te]; (small things) star 星子[sai³⁵•te], sand 沙子 [ɕia³⁵•te], town 镇子[ȵia³⁵ʨia³⁵•te], mosquito 蚊子 [moŋ³⁵•te], bow shoe¹ 包子鞋 [ha³³pɤu⁴⁴•te ia¹³]; (derogatory things) lunatic 摆子 [pai²²•te], lunatic 癫子 [tie³⁵•te], cripple □子 (瘸子) [pai³³•te], human trader 人贩子 [ŋ̍¹³fai⁴⁴te], deaf-mute 聋子 [laŋ¹³•te]; (common things) chair 椅子[i²²•te], box 箱子 [ɕio³⁵•te], cup 酒瓯子 [ʦei³³ao⁴⁴•te], thimble 手□子 [ɕy²²tie²²•te], roller □子[lei¹³•te], etc..

In several other points of Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous, there are different pronunciation forms of noun suffix “子”, as shown in Table 1.

Obviously, the colloquial pronunciation of noun suffix “子” in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in Southwest Hunan is different from that in Mandarin. At the same time, although the colloquial pronunciation forms of Pinghua dialect area above are various, but the main vowels of which are all read as [ə] or [e], and the initials are all read as [t] or [l], the similar pronunciation indicates the direct or indirect speech contact.

The variety of pronunciation forms of noun suffix “子” in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in

Southwest Hunan cited above is closely related to its affiliated status. As an unfree morpheme noun suffix “子” is always attached to other morphemes, it has strong word-building ability but is lack of real significance, so it often have a soft tone-variation trend or have read to a soft tone, will naturally promote weak pronunciation. The track of phonetic evolution of noun suffix “子” can be inferred from two aspects of initials and finals.

Taken together, there are many pronunciation forms of noun suffix “子” in Pinghua dialect used by Miao and Yao autonomous in southwest Hunan, literary pronunciation arising for the effect of Mandarin, while other colloquial pronunciations are the local unique pronunciation, which all come from the consonant weakening and vowel centralization, and maybe further evolve to be vowel change equivalent to suffix “子”. About pronunciation evolution of Chinese suffix “子”, in order to be more comprehensive and thorough, further study needs to develop analysis on typology combined with pronunciation forms of other dialects.

Sincere appreciation must be given to all persons who have given their support to the research. This paper is the research result of Research on Endangered Characteristics and Language Contact of Donghua Used by Yao Autonomous in Xinning County which belongs to the “Philosophy and Social Science Fund Project of Hunan Province” (Project No. 2010 YBB351) and the “Youth Fund Project of Central South University of Forestry and Technology” (Project No. 2011QJ002).