Review: Yan: Introduction to Chinese Dialectology
书评: Introduction to Chinese Dialectology 严棉: 《汉语方言学导论》
Robert S. Bauer 包睿舜

Abstract 摘要
1. Introduction As one of the world’s more linguistically diverse and complex countries, China is home to six major language families (or phyla), namely, Altaic, Austro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Austro-Tai, Indo-European, and Sino-Tibetan; belonging to the Sino-half of this last family are many varieties or方言 fangyan ‘dialects’ (and also known as topolects1) of the Chinese or Han language 漢語; in addition, there are several dozen non-Han languages spoken by officially- and unofficially-recognized ethnic minorities or nationalities (the dichotomy between Han 漢族 and non-Han 非漢族 shows some correspondence/overlap between terms for language 語言 and race 民族, both of which are important and sensitive sociopolitical issues in China). It is widely known both within and outside China that some of the Chinese “dialects”, such as Chiuchow (Chaozhou), Cantonese, Shanghainese, Fukiense, Hakka, etc., are all mutually unintelligible with each other, and so on that basis these varieties could just as well be referred to as languages, as is already being done by some Western and Chinese linguists; however, it is mainly for historical, political, and cultural reasons that within China these varieties are termed dialects. Multiple distinctive varieties of the Chinese language very likely began emerging, developing, and spreading to other regions more than three millennia ago. It was just about two thousand years ago that the world’s first book that documented in some detail the correlation between geographical differences and linguistic variation was written in China by the Western Han dynasty scholar Yang Xiong 揚雄 (58 BCE - 18 CE) who was from Chengdu in Sichuan province in southwestern China, namely, 《輶軒使者絕代語釋別國方言》, which is usually shortened to 《方言》 Fangyan and dated to about the beginning of the Common Era. Curiously, this very early interest in the local speech varieties within China did not set in motion the further development of a Chinese tradition of dialectology – this was not to happen until the early 20th century: As Margaret Yan Mian 嚴棉 has observed in her book, Introduction to Chinese Dialectology, no investigative work explicitly devoted to the Chinese dialects was produced until Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (章太炎) (1869-1936) classified the Chinese dialects into nine major groups. From 1910 to 1912 Bernard Karlgren 高本漢 (1889-1978), as a young Swedish (瑞典) student (not Swiss 瑞士, as misstated on page 20), had traveled around China with a questionnaire survey comprising 3,100 Chinese characters and collected detailed data on their pronunciations in 22 Chinese dialects, and so to Karlgren must go the credit for having carried out the first extensive, systematic survey of the Chinese dialects that recorded their phonetic diversity. In addition, he utilized this material for reconstructing earlier historical stages of the Chinese language, and so he also has the distinction of being the first scholar to apply to Chinese the historical comparative method which had been developed in Europe in the 19th century. Karlgren’s survey data were incorporated into his Ph.D. dissertation which was later published as the first part of Études sur la phonologie chinoise between 1915 and 1926. The value of Karlgren’s work was later recognized by three of China’s most prominent linguists of the time, Chao Yuen Ren趙元任, Li Fang-kuei李方桂, and Lo Chang-pei羅常培, who translated Études into Chinese and then published it under the title 《中國音韻學研究》 in 1940 (for an account of Karlgren’s academic career and contributions to historical Chinese phonology see Ramsey [1989:126-133]). The 20th century witnessed an enormous output in studies of the Chinese dialects to match the wealth of dialects that were being spoken. Even war with Japan during the 1930s and 1940s did not stop dialect research, as scholars moved further inland and turned their attention to the speech varieties (including some non-Han minority languages) which they heard being spoken around them in those areas. As Yan has stated in her book’s preface, her own interest in the Chinese dialects was stimulated by her personal experiences with family members and friends who spoke a variety of dialects. Indeed, multidialectalism has long been a linguistic feature of the individual speaker in China: it has been quite common for a person to acquire two or more Chinese varieties, depending on his or her familial and social circumstances, or even because of necessity. Within the family the mother and father may both speak different dialects if they have come from different places, and so their child who is exposed to the two varieties may learn both. Then there is the local variety spoken outside the home by the child’s peer group and this may differ again. At school the language of instruction may be another variety, such as a prestige regional variety that is centered on the provincial capital. Then at the top of the language pyramid is the standard national variety which traditionally has been northern Mandarin and which differs significantly from the numerous local and regional varieties spoken across central and southern China. While a few books written in English with chapters on the Chinese dialects have been published over the past couple of decades, e.g. Norman’s Chinese (1988), Ramsey’s The Languages of China (1989), , and Thurgood and LaPolla’s The Sino-Tibetan Languages (2003), Margaret Yan’s Introduction to Chinese Dialectology is the first full-length book that is devoted entirely to this subject. Given her lifetime of experience carrying out fieldwork on and writing about the Chinese dialects, she is especially well qualified to write this invaluable volume on Chinese dialectology. As she has recalled, the 1960s were her formative years in learning about Chinese dialectology and linguistics. At National Taiwan University she first studied with Tung T’ung-ho 董同龢 (to whom she has dedicated this book) and then worked as Tung’s research assistant at Academia Sinica. A few years later at NTU she worked as teaching assistant to William S-y. Wang who also served as an advisor when she pursued her Ph.D. degree at Stanford University in the early 1970s. At Cornell University she took classes with Chao Yuan Ren. Her long time service of teaching and research in the field shines throughout this book that brings introductory Chinese dialectology to a wider audience of English-speaking readers. That the Min dialects of Taiwan and Fujian have been the main area of her own research and publication is reflected in this book.