ABSTRACT
As noted by Norman (1988: 217-18), the defining characteristic of a Yue dialect (with only a few exceptions) appears to be the division of the Yin Ru tone category into two subcategories which has been conditioned by vowel length in the reading pronunciation of standard Chinese characters (colloquial pronunciations of some lexical items may not follow this generalization); e.g. upper Yin Ru with high stopped tone and short vowel: hɐk7a ‘black’, sɐp7a ‘wet’; and lower Yin Ru with mid stopped tone and long vowel: hak7b ‘guest’, sap7b ‘sound of wind’. Given the early historical contact between Proto-Yue and the Tai languages (which contrast long and short vowels) in Southern China, this distinctive development in Yue may represent an early Tai substratum (Bauer 1996).
