A Grammar Of Zoulei, Southwest China by Xia Li, Jinfang Li, and Yongxian Luo (review)
- A Grammar Of Zoulei, Southwest China by Xia Li, Jinfang Li, and Yongxian Luo
1. OVERVIEW
Zoulei, literally Red Gelao, is a language in the Gelao () dialect cluster of Kra (Mandarin Geyang, ), which itself is a major branch of the Kra-Dai family (Ostapirat 2000).1 Zoulei is also known as Bigong, a toponym based on the name of the village in Guizhou Province where it is spoken. Like many Kra languages, Zoulei is severely endangered: only 368 people live in the village of Bigong, and in their book Li, Li, and Luo (2014) report that of those less than 30 individuals are fluent speakers of the language, all over the age of 60. Moreover, Kra is the least described branch of Kra-Dai, and this is the first full-length published grammar of any Kra language. With these considerations, the publication of A Grammar of Zoulei is an important contribution for Kra-Dai studies.
This grammar was based on the dissertation of Xia Li under the supervision of Jifang Li at Minzu University. Professor Jifang Li had previously collaborated with the third author, Yongxian Luo, on The Buyang language of south China: grammatical notes, glossary, texts and translations in 2010 (Li and Luo 2010, see also Li and Luo 2006). As [End Page 231] Zoulei and Buyang come from different branches of Kra, the two books together provide a glimpse as to what grammatical features might be characteristic of the family as a whole, and any linguist with an interest in Kra-Dai languages or Southeast Asian languages more generally will be grateful for the work of these scholars.
A Grammar of Zoulei is comprised of eight chapters of introductory material and grammatical description, texts, and a lexicon. In this review I summarize the grammar by chapter, provide a general discussion of its strengths and weaknesses, then comment on the grammar of Zoulei in the context of Kra and Kra-Dai languages more generally.
2. OVERVIEW OF A GRAMMAR OF ZOULEI
Chapter 1 of the grammar is the introduction, which begins with a discussion of the sociolinguistic situation of Zoulei, including its endangerment status. The discussion of Gelao, of which Zoulei is one dialect, is quite illuminating, as it indicates that Gelao is better considered a subgroup of closely related but mutually unintelligible Kra langauges.2 It also provides an overview of the cultural and geographical setting of the language, a literature review, and the theoretical framework that the researchers adopt, which is the approach of documentary linguisticics that has gained prominence in the last twenty years.
Chapter 2 describes the phonology of Zoulei, including minimal pairs testifying the contrastiveness of all initials, medials, and finals. The chapter also includes a thorough discussion of the four phonemic tones of Zoulei, including the attested tone sandhi patterns.
Chapter 3 describes morphological processes in Zoulei, which primarily include derivational affixation, reduplication, and compounding. Of particular interest among these processes are a productive set of derivational prefixes which are organized by semantic characteristics and obligatorily occur on many nouns. For example, the prefix ma55 occurs on female animals, flying animals, fruit bearing plants, body parts, and buildings. The basic thirteen word classes of Zoulei are also included in this chapter, although they are presented without any grammatical diagnostics or justification. [End Page 232]
Chapter 4 focuses on noun phrases in Zoulei, including discussion of different classes of nouns, pronouns, numerals, various types of (numeral) classifiers, and modification. A few brief comments are also made on possession and relative clauses. A highlight of this section is the description of (numeral) classifiers, which comprise an unusually large open class of lexemes with relatively transparent semantics. These include special classifiers for tents and sedan chairs, as well as very general classifiers, including ma55, which occurs mostly with long-thin objects (p. 118), despite being synonymous with the noun prefix discussed above with distinct semantics. While noun phrase syntax is not discussed systematically, it can be gleaned from the text that...
