Chuntao Liu and Boyang Ni

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 Hlai-sourced 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.