ACQUISITION IN A TRILINGUAL ENVIRONMENT AND PHILOLOGICAL EDUCATION: A RE-EXAMINATION OF REGULAR, UNIQUE AND UNUSUAL SINO-VIETNAMESE INITIAL FEATURES

Abstract

This dissertation is a re-examination of Sino-Vietnamese (SV) initial consonants in light of major developments regarding our understanding of SV definitions, comparisons with Chinese pronunciations, narratives regarding the origin of Sino-Vietnamese, and recent developments in Chinese as well as Vietic historical phonology. I focus on three layers of SV: Early Sino-Vietnamese ESV, Late Sino-Vietnamese LSV and Hán-Việt Việt-Hóa HVVH. Example Sino-Vietnamese words from each initial type and layer are compared with Old Chinese, Late Han Old Chinese, Early Middle Chinese and Late Middle Chinese pronunciations. I discuss the historical and areal linguistic implications behind SV initial consonant features that are regular, unusual, and unique within the context of SV compared to other Sino-Xenic initial features. For initial features that are unique and unusual, I compare those SV morphemes with cognates in modern Southern Chinese varieties, Tai languages such as Tày and Zhuang, and occasionally with cognates in Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean. I also compare those SV features to cognates and phonetic components in Sino-Xenic scripts such as Chữ Nôm, Chữ Nôm Tày and Zhuang Sawndip. I also compare SV morphemes to alternate Fǎnqiè 反切 spellings and discuss the effects and nuances of graphic analogy. This re-examination shows that the transmission of SV words of every layer was a complicated process that involved trade, small scale as well as large scale migration, and political interference that gave rise to premodern philological practices and an environment that hosted Vietic, Tai and Chinese. This trilingualism involves successive waves of Chinese speaking communities that were affected by their linguistic environment. Tai languages such as Tày and Zhuang can reveal more information on what John Phan (2010;2013) calls Annamese Middle Chinese (AMC), as well as the trilingual environment. I also explore the utility of Baxter & Sagart's (2014) Old Chinese (OC) reconstruction as a tool for researching ESV and SV initial lenition. This dissertation finds that some SV words with initial lenition such as v-, d- and g- indeed had OC pre-initials at the time of borrowing, but many SV words with lenited initials were not influenced by OC pre-initials or clusters. There are alternate causes for lenition such as sporadic betacism, phonological interpretation in Vietic and medial interference, thus many cases of lenition should be understood as Hán-Việt Việt-Hóa instead. I also offer nuance to the education vs. acquisition hypothesis; some features of SV, Chinese varieties, Zhuang and Sino-Tày provide implications for acquisition of loanwords through multilingualism. Some unusual pronunciations are also due to pronunciation prescriptions. In the medieval period, some older pronunciations became codified as the standard pronunciation, some Fǎnqiè 反切 spellings were preferred over others, and some pronunciations were prescribed via graphic analogy. Furthermore, some examples of graphic analogy were common across the empire, some were common across other Sino-Xenic varieties and other instances only occurred in the Red River Delta.