Language Contact and Areal Diffusion of Sinitic Languages in the Greater Bay Area – CLDA

The Greater Bay Area (GBA) in China, which is home to some 80 million speakers of several Sinitic languages, such as Cantonese, Hakka, Min, Pinghua, Southwest Mandarin, Tankas, Mai, Danzhou, and the minority languages of Zhuang, Dong, Hlai and Hmong-Mien, as well as various other languages, is one of the most language-rich regions in China. Among these Sinitic languages, Cantonese has long served as a local high language with the most widespread distribution and the largest native population. Long-term contact has existed between Cantonese and other Sinitic languages. In order to clarify the relationship between Cantonese dialect and other Sinitic languages to observe the typological features of languages in the GBA, this joint project aims to exam language contact and language endangerment through a large-scale typological study of languages in the GBA based on Cantonese, Tankas, and Southern Pinghua.
This project is going to adopt a mixed research methodology, including the meticulous fieldwork method, the combination of diachronic and synchronic approaches, and the approach of coevolution of language and gene. When planning the project, we considered three interrelated aspects. The first aspect is to conduct three fieldwork phases on the Sinitic languages, including Cantonese and Tankas dialect in Hong Kong and Cantonese and Southern Pinghua in Guangxi. The second aspect is to further explore the relationship between the above two Sinitic languages and Cantonese from the perspective of language contact to examine the typological features of languages in GBA. Finally, the third aspect is to investigate the Sinitic languages of the GBA in the context of Mainland Southeast Asia.
This project introduces the GBA languages to the world through investigating first-hand linguistic data on Tankas and Southern Pinghua, the two rarely studied languages, providing an insight into the mechanisms of language contact and language changes as well as a comprehensive understanding of language divergence and convergence in this particular region of MSEA. This project likewise highlights the critical role of Cantonese in GBA languages and will benefit to boost the research of Sinitic languages. Finally, in studying language origins and gene-related languages in GBA, this project will also contribute significantly to humankind’s evolution by providing the rich data of Tankas and Southern Pinghua for the communities.