After the concept ofMandarin Chinese was proposed, the Jin dialects were universally included within it, mainly because Chinese linguists paid little attention to these dialects at the time. In order to promote Standard Mandarin in the early days ofPeople's Republic of China, linguists started to research various dialects in Shanxi, comparing these dialects with Standard Mandarin for helping the locals to learn it more quickly. During this period, a few linguists discovered some unique features of Jin Chinese that do not exist in other northern Mandarin dialects, planting the seeds for the future independence of Jin Chinese. Finally, in 1985,Li Rong proposed that Jin should be considered a separate top-level dialect group, similar toYue orWu. His main criterion was that Jin dialects had preserved theentering tone as a separate category, still marked with a glottal stop as in the Wu dialects, but distinct in this respect from most other Mandarin dialects. Some linguists have adopted this classification. However, others disagree that Jin should be considered a separate dialect group for these reasons:[2][3]
Use of the entering tone as a diagnostic feature is inconsistent with the way that all other Chinese dialect groups have been delineated based on the reflexes of theMiddle Chinese voiced initials.
Certain other Mandarin dialects also preserve the glottal stop, especially theJianghuai dialects, and so far, no linguist has claimed that these dialects should also be split from Mandarin.
Bingzhou group [zh] (Chinese:并州片), spoken in centralShanxi (the ancientBing Province), includingTaiyuan. Most dialects under this group can distinguish the light entering tone from the dark one, with only 1 level tone. In many dialects, especially those to the south of Taiyuan, the voiced obstruents from Middle Chinese become tenuis in all 4 tones, namely[b] →[p],[d] →[t] and[ɡ] →[k].
Lüliang group [zh] (Chinese:呂梁片), spoken in western Shanxi (includingLüliang) and northernShaanxi. Dialects under this group can differentiate light entering tone from dark entering tone. In most dialects, the voiced obstruents from Middle Chinese become aspirated in both level and entering tones, namely[b] →[pʰ],[d] →[tʰ] and[ɡ] →[kʰ].
Shangdang group [zh] (simplified Chinese:上党片;traditional Chinese:上黨片), spoken in the area ofChangzhi (ancientShangdang) in southeastern Shanxi. Dialects under this group can differentiate light entering tone from dark entering tone. The palatalization of velar consonants does not occur in some dialects.
Wutai group [zh] (simplified Chinese:五台片;traditional Chinese:五臺片), spoken in parts of northern Shanxi (includingWutai County) and centralInner Mongolia. A few Dialects under this group can differentiate light entering tone from dark entering tone, while the others cannot. The fusion of the level tone and the rising one occurred in some dialects, though some linguists claim every dialect under this group has this feature.[5]
Da-Bao group [zh] (Chinese:大包片), spoken in parts of northern Shanxi and central Inner Mongolia, includingBaotou.
TheTaiyuan dialect from the Bingzhou group is sometimes taken as a convenient representative of Jin because many studies of this dialect are available, but most linguists agree that the Taiyuan vocabulary is heavily influenced by Mandarin, making it unrepresentative of Jin.[6] The Lüliang group is usually regarded as the "core" of the Jin language group as it preserves most archaic features of Jin. However, there is no consensus as to which dialect among the Lüliang group is the representative dialect.
Unlike most varieties ofMandarin, Jin has preserved a finalglottal stop, which is the remnant of a finalstop consonant (/p/,/t/ or/k/). This is in common with theEarly Mandarin of theYuan dynasty (c. 14th century AD) and with a number of modern southern varieties of Chinese. In Middle Chinese, syllables closed with a stop consonant had no tone. However, Chinese linguists prefer to categorize such syllables as belonging to a separate tone class, traditionally called the "entering tone". Syllables closed with aglottal stop in Jin are still toneless, or alternatively, Jin can be said to still maintain the entering tone. In standard Mandarin Chinese, syllables formerly ending with a glottal stop have been reassigned to one of the other tone classes in aseemingly random fashion.
The diphthong/ɤu/ may also be realized as a monophthong close central vowel[ʉ].
Sounds ending in the sequence/-aʔ/ may also be heard as[-ɛʔ], then realized as[ɛʔ,iɛʔ,yɛʔ,uɛʔ].
/y/ can also be heard as a labio-palatal approximant[ɥ] when preceding initial consonants.
/i/ when occurring after alveolar sounds/ts,tsʰ,s/ can be heard as an alveolar syllabic[ɹ̩], and is heard as a retroflex syllabic[ɻ̩] when occurring after retroflex consonants/tʂ,tʂʰ,ʂ,ʐ/.
Jin employs extremely complextone sandhi, or tone changes that occur when words are put together into phrases. The tone sandhi of Jin is notable in two ways among Chinese varieties:
Tone sandhi rules depend on the grammatical structure of the words being put together. Hence, an adjective–noun compound may go through different sets of changes compared to a verb–object compound.[11]
There are Jin varieties in which the "dark level" tone category (yīnpíng 阴平) and "light level" (yángpíng 阳平) tone have merged in isolation but can still be distinguished in tone sandhi contexts. That is, while e.g. Standard Mandarin has a tonal distinction between Tone 1 and Tone 2, corresponding words in Jin Chinese may have the same tone when pronounced separately. However, these words can still be distinguished in connected speech. For example, in Pingyao Jin, dark leveltou 偷 'secretly' andting 听 'to listen' on the one hand, and light leveltao 桃 'peach' andhong 红 'red' on the other hand, all have the same rising tone [˩˧] when pronounced in isolation. Yet, when these words are combined intotouting 偷听 'eavesdropping' andtaohong 桃红 'peach red', the tonal distinction emerges. Intouting,tou has a falling tone [˧˩] andting has a high-rising tone [˧˥], whereas both syllables intaohong still have the same low-rising tone [˩˧] as in isolation.[12]
According to Guo (1989)[13] and also noted by Sagart (1999), the departing (qusheng 去声) tone category in the Jin dialect ofXiaoyi is characterized by -ʰ and a high falling tone [˥˧]. Xiaoyi also lacks a voicing split in the level tone.[14] The rising (shangsheng 上声) tone in Xiaoyi is also "characterized by a glottal break in the middle of the syllable [˧˩ʔ˩˨]".[15]
Jin readily employs prefixes such as圪/kəʔ/,黑/xəʔ/,忽/xuəʔ/, and入(日)/ʐəʔ/, in a variety ofderivational constructions. For example: 入鬼 "fool around" <鬼 "ghost, devil"
In addition, there are a number of words in Jin that evolved, evidently, by splitting a mono-syllabic word into two, adding an 'l' in between (cf.Ubbi Dubbi, but with/l/ instead of/b/). For example:
A similar process can in fact be found in most Mandarin dialects (e.g.窟窿 kulong <孔 kong), but it is especially common in Jin.
This may be a kind of reservation for double-initials inOld Chinese, although this is still controversial. For example, the character孔 (pronounced/kʰoːŋ/ in Mandarin) which appears more often as窟窿/kʰuəʔluŋ/ in Jin, had the pronunciation like/kʰloːŋ/ inOld Chinese.[citation needed]
Some dialects of Jin make a three-way distinction indemonstratives. (Modern English, for example, has only a two-way distinction between "this" and "that", with "yon" being archaic.)[citation needed]
There is considerable lexical diversity in Jin Chinese, with some words having very distinct regional forms. Usually, there are more unique words in the core dialects than in the non-core dialects. Moreover, some cannot be easily represented using Chinese characters.
^abWen, Duanzheng 溫端政; Shen, Ming 沈明 (1999). Hou, Jingyi 侯精一 (ed.).Tàiyuánhuà yīndàng太原话音档 [The Sound System of the Taiyuan Dialect] (in Chinese). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. pp. 4–12.
^Sagart, Laurent (1999)."The origin of Chinese tones".Proceedings of the Symposium/Cross-Linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena/Tonogenesis, Typology and Related Topics. Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Retrieved2024-06-15.
Hou 侯, Jingyi 精一; Shen 沈, Ming 明 (2002), Hou, Jingyi (ed.),现代汉语方言概论 [Overview of Modern Chinese Dialects] (in Chinese (China)), Shanghai Education Publishing House,ISBN7-5320-8084-6
Kurpaska, Maria (2010),Chinese Language(s): A Look Through the Prism ofThe Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects, De Gruyter Mouton,ISBN978-3-11-021914-2
Yan, Margaret Mian (2006),Introduction to Chinese Dialectology, LINCOM Europa,ISBN978-3-89586-629-6.
