A Grammar of Xong (Mouton Grammar Library [Mgl])

Despite the fact that Miao-Yao (or Hmong-Mien) is one of the major language families of East and Southeast Asia, this work is only the second full-length descriptive grammar of any Miao-Yao language published in English. It focuses on Xong, a language belonging to the Miao branch of the family. Xong has approximately 900, 000 speakers, the vast majority lives in Hunan and Guizhou Provinces in South-Central China. In particular, this description concentrates on several fully mutually intelligible Xong varieties spoken in Fenghuang County, located in the Hunan Province. In producing this work, the author primarily relies on the fieldwork data he collected over a period of ten months in Fenghuang County. He also made use of many of the previously published Chinese-language descriptions of Xong. The results are of use to scholars with an interest in the Miao-Yao family in particular or in the languages of East and Southeast Asia more in general. Acknowledgments 5 Table of contents 7 List of figures 15 List of tables 17 List of glossing abbreviations 19 1 Introduction 21 2 Background 32 3 Phonology 80 4 Orthographies 143 5 Nouns 165 6 Classifiers and numerals 247 7 Deictic forms 318 8 Complex nominal constructions 367 9 Clauses 422 10 Verbs 495 11 Expressive forms 535 12 Multiverbal constructions 569 Text 1 Oub Meinl Yaos Geud 607 Text 2 Tooth conversation 649 References 671 Index 679