Nantong Chinese

Benjamin Ao earned his doctoral degree in theoretical linguistics in 1993 from the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Since then, he has been mostly working as a computational linguist in the information industry. Currently, he is an unaffiliated independent scholar living in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledements

General Information

1. Geological History

2. Administrative History

3. Demographic History

4. Dialects in Greater Nantong

5. Usage and Peculiarities

6. Vitality and Endangerment

7. Previous Research

The Sound System

1. The Syllable

2. The Consonants

3. The Vowels

4. The Suprasegmentals

5. Phonotactics and Distribution

6. Phones and Phonemes

Sounds That Change

1. Segmental Change

2. Tone Sandhi

3. Prosodic Hierarchy

Journey from the Past

1. The Middle Chinese Sound System

2. Phonetic Correspondence

3. Seeking Patterns from Chaos

4. Regular Sound Changes

5. Irregular Sound Changes

6. Reading and Colloquial Pronunciation

Place in the Family

1. Subgrouping of Chinese Dialects

2. Nantong Chinese Is No Mandarin

3. The Tong-Tai-Hui Dialect Group

4. The Tongzhou Sprachbund

The Writing System

1. Sample Texts

2. The Challenges

3. The Quest for Authenticity

4. A Phonetic Script

The Vocabulary

1. Previous Studies

2. Language Contact and Loan Words

3. Sources of Dialectal Words

Words and Word Classes

1. Parts of Speech

2. Nouns and Pronouns

3. Number, Case and Class

4. Adjectives, Numerals and Classifiers

5. Verbs

6. Tense, Mood, Voice and Aspect

7. Function Words

Phrases and Sentences

1. Types of Phrases

2. Transformation

3. Sentence Definition

4. Speech Act Markers

5. Basic Sentence Types

6. Special Constructs

7. Negative Sentences

8. Interrogative Sentences

9. Focus and Focalization

A Literary Sampler

1. A Lullaby

2. Children’s Rhymes

3. Love Songs

4. Narrative Poems

5. Fairy tales

6. A Glossary

Index