ABSTRACT

This chapter will summarise the findings concerning the reconstruction of Proto-Southern Mǐn and the subgrouping of its modern varieties. It will also discuss the origins and linguistic peculiarities of the different lexical layers of Proto-Southern Mǐn. The proto-sound system suggested here provides a solid and reliable basis for further, comparative Southern Mǐn studies. For instance, in the future if a new Southern Mǐn variety is discovered, it may be studied from a Proto-Southern Mǐn perspective. The reconstruction of Proto-Southern Mǐn may also be viewed as the first step in a bottom-up approach to achieving a more comprehensive reconstruction of Proto-Mǐn. It will be suggested that the reconstruction of a language family with highly diverse members could be divided into two steps: (a) reconstruction of the lower level subgroups; and (b) reconstruction of the proto-language by comparing the results obtained in (a).