A Study of the Hmong-Mien Languages and the Surrounding Languages in the Historical and Geographical Perspective

2003 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 13610651
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 言語学・音声学
• Research Institution: Chiba University
• Principal Investigator: TAGUCHI Yoshihisa Chiba University, Faculty of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (10291303)
• Project Period (FY): 2001 – 2003
• Keywords: Hmong-Mien languages / Historical linguistics / East Asian languages

Research Abstract

The report includes two papers. One of them is a comparative study of the Hmong-Mien prefixes. The other paper is a study of genetic relationship of Pana, which is a recently described Hmong-Mien language. In the first paper, the researcher pays a special attention to the prefixes of the Hmong-Mien languages. This is because prefixiation is one of a few grammatical processes that the Hmong-Mien languages have, and it provides a clue to reconstructing the syllable structure of Proto-Hmong-Mien. Based on the database of the Hmong-Mien prefixes, the researcher investigates the following three points : (1) How the prefixes are distributed ; (2) if the prefixes in the dialects correspond to one another; (3) if some common functions are found. The results are (1) the distribution is dense in the northwest, but sparse in the southeast ; (2) one prefix *q[a]-is seen in most dialects, and is to be reconstructed in Proto-Hmong-Mien ; (3) thee prefixes of the Hmong-Mien languages have the function of noun classification, but this is different in nature from that of classifiers. Some grammatical forms other than classifiers must have provided a way to classify nouns in the proto-language. The prefixes are considered to be relics of these forms.