Lakkia language

Lakkia
拉珈语
Lakkja
Native toChina
RegionJinxiu Yao Autonomous County, Guangxi
Native speakers
9,000 (2007)
Kra–Dai
Early form
Language codes
ISO 639-3lbc
Glottologlakk1238
ELPLakkia

The Lakkia language (Chinese: 拉珈语; pinyin: Lājiāyǔ), also spelled Lakkja after its IPA transcription, is a Kra–Dai language spoken in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County, Laibin, East-Central Guangxi, China.

Lakkia speakers are thought to have migrated from further east, possibly from the Biao-speaking areas of Northwestern Guangdong Province (L.-Thongkum 1992). Today, they live mostly in the Dayaoshan (Chinese: 大瑶山; lit. 'Big Yao Mountain') region of Jinxiu County.

Names

Lakkia people are also known as the Cháshān Yáo 茶山瑶, meaning "Tea Mountain Yao", since they were traditionally considered by neighboring peoples to be ethnic Yao people. The name Lakkia is an autonym (self-designated name) that means "mountain people". All Lakkia dialects have 5 tones.

Classification

There is currently no consensus on the classification of Lakkia within the Kra–Dai family. Solnit (1988) and Hansell (1988) classify Lakkia as a sister of the Kam–Sui branch. Additionally, Solnit (1988) classifies Biao and Lakkia together as part of a Biao–Lakkia branch that is coordinate to Kam-Sui. However, L.-Thongkum (1992) considers Lakkia to be most closely related to the Tai branch, based on the large number of shared lexical items.

Norquest (2021) proposes a Biao–Lakkja branch as the first branch to split off from Kra-Dai.

Dialects

Dialects of Lakkia include (L.-Thongkum 1992):

The Lingzu dialect still preserves /kl-/ initial clusters, which corresponds to /kj-/ in most other dialects (L.-Thongkum 1992). Additionally, Changdong 长洞 and Jintian 金田 tone /˥˩/ (51) corresponds to Jinxiu 金秀 tone /˨˧˩/ (231). Also, L.-Thongkum (1992) reports that Jintian 金田 is a less conservative dialect.

Classification of Lakkia dialects by Norquest (2021):

Distribution

Lakkia is spoken in the following locations.

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Dental/
Alveolar		 Palatal Velar Glottal
plain lat. plain lab. plain lab. plain lab. pal. plain lab. pal.
Stop voiceless p pˡ t tʷ k kʷ kʲ ʔ
aspirated pʰ pʰˡ tʰ kʰ kʰʷ kʰʲ
glottalized/vd. ˀb bˡ
Affricate voiceless ts
aspirated tsʰ tsʰʷ
Nasal voiceless m̥ n̥ ŋ̊ ŋ̊ʲ
voiced m mˡ n ŋ ŋʷ ŋʲ
Fricative f s sʷ h hʷ hʲ
Approximant w j jʷ
Lateral median l
fricative ɬ

Vowels

Oral vowels
Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e ə o
Open-mid ɛ
Open a
Nasal vowels
Front Back
Close ĩ ũ
Close-mid ẽ õ
Open-mid ɛ̃
Open ã

Historical phonology

Lakkia is notable for preserving many prefixes that have been lost in most other Kra-Dai languages, including prefixes (such as *k.-) in archaic Chinese loanwords that are crucial for the reconstruction of Old Chinese.

Lexical isoglosses

Some Biao–Lakkja lexical isoglosses as proposed by Norquest (2021):

GlossProto-Biao–LakkjaProto-Kam-SuiProto-KraProto-HlaiProto-BeProto-Tai
‘house’*ljaːk*r̥aːn*qran*hrɯːn*raːn*rɤːn
‘road’*tsaːŋ*qʰwən*qron*kuːn*ʃwən*r̥wɤn
‘heavy’*N-tsak*C-dʑan*qχəl*kʰɯn*xən*n̥ak
‘leg’*puk*p-qaː*C-qaː*kʰok*kok*f-qaː
‘neck’*ʔən*ʔdənʔ*C-joː*hljoŋʔ*liəŋX*ɣoː

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Lakkia at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. 1 2 3 Norquest, Peter (2021). "Classification of (Tai-)Kadai/Kra-Dai languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 225–246. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-013.
  3. ↑ Guangxi Minority Languages Orthography Committee. 2008. Vocabularies of Guangxi ethnic languages [广西民族语言方音词汇]. Beijing: Nationalities Publishing House [民族出版社].
  4. ↑ Baxter, William H. and Laurent Sagart. 2014. Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-994537-5.

References

Further reading