ABSTRACT
Languages that share the same historical sound changes are said to be genetically related. Based on how many sound changes languages share, they may be closely or remotely related. This type of information can help establish a family tree for all languages that are related, and this line of research is known as language subgrouping. This chapter tackles the very controversial issue of subgrouping Chinese dialects in general and Nantong Chinese in particular. It argues in favor of an approach based on a very small set of rules of historical sound change and demonstrates that even though Nantong Chinese is geographically tucked between Jiang-Huai Mandarin and Wu dialects, it does not belong to either. Instead, it belongs to an independent subgroup known as Tong-Tai-Hui. In addition, this chapter attempts to establish that Nantong Chinese and two dialects to the east, which belong to a different subgroup, form a dialectal sprachbund.
