Nantong Chinese

Benjamin Ao earned his doctoral degree in theoretical linguistics in 1993 from the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Since then, he has been mostly working as a computational linguist in the information industry. Currently, he is an unaffiliated independent scholar living in Los Angeles, California.

• Table of ContentsList of FiguresList of TablesForewordPrefaceAcknowledementsGeneral Information1. Geological History2. Administrative History3. Demographic History4. Dialects in Greater Nantong5. Usage and Peculiarities6. Vitality and Endangerment7. Previous ResearchThe Sound System1. The Syllable 2. The Consonants 3. The Vowels 4. The Suprasegmentals 5. Phonotactics and Distribution 6. Phones and Phonemes Sounds That Change 1. Segmental Change 2. Tone Sandhi 3. Prosodic Hierarchy Journey from the Past 1. The Middle Chinese Sound System 2. Phonetic Correspondence 3. Seeking Patterns from Chaos 4. Regular Sound Changes 5. Irregular Sound Changes 6. Reading and Colloquial Pronunciation Place in the Family 1. Subgrouping of Chinese Dialects2. Nantong Chinese Is No Mandarin 3. The Tong-Tai-Hui Dialect Group 4. The Tongzhou Sprachbund The Writing System 1. Sample Texts 2. The Challenges 3. The Quest for Authenticity 4. A Phonetic Script The Vocabulary 1. Previous Studies 2. Language Contact and Loan Words 3. Sources of Dialectal Words Words and Word Classes 1. Parts of Speech 2. Nouns and Pronouns 3. Number, Case and Class 4. Adjectives, Numerals and Classifiers 5. Verbs6. Tense, Mood, Voice and Aspect 7. Function Words Phrases and Sentences 1. Types of Phrases 2. Transformation 3. Sentence Definition 4. Speech Act Markers 5. Basic Sentence Types 6. Special Constructs 7. Negative Sentences 8. Interrogative Sentences 9. Focus and Focalization A Literary Sampler 1. A Lullaby 2. Children’s Rhymes 3. Love Songs 4. Narrative Poems 5. Fairy tales 6. A GlossaryIndex