Yang Zhuang poetry

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a brief description of the poetry of Yang Zhuang, a Central Tai language, which is spoken by approximately 600,000 native speakers mainly living in the southwestern corner of Guangxi, China (Jackson et al. 2011). Although there are many types of Yang Zhuang poetry with different social communication functions, literarily all these different poetry forms can be put under two categories –mɔt DS2 ‘sorcery’ and θej A1 ‘poem’. Li Fang Kuei (1970) has analyzed the metrical and rhyming system of what he calls “songs” of T’ien-Pao (a variety of Yang Zhuang) which are actually under the categories of θej A1 and mɔt DS2 respectively, and has concluded that the songs indicates “a poetic tradition common to Tho, Lao and Thai” (Li 1970:21). However, when comparing with the poetry of other Tai groups, although some types of Yang Zhuang poetry preserves an amount of Taic features, other types show more influence from classical Chinese poetry. Taking two sentences of mɔt DS2 lɐn A2 and ɲɐmt A2 θej A1 as an example, the former one has the same foot waist rhyme (脚腰韵) structure with the sole style in Southwestern Tai and Northern Thai groups, while the later one shares the same tail rhyme (尾韵) structure with classical Chinese poetry such as seven-character octave (律诗), as illustrated in (1)and (2). (1) mɔt DS2 lɐn A2 : Tai inherited rhyme structure Former sentence non A2 ˀdɐk DS1 pa: B2 kʰwaj B1 tɕən B2(foot rhyme) sleep deep god quickly awake Later sentence ˀdɐj C1 ɲən B2 (waist rhyme) pa: B2 kʰwaj B1 ʔɐj A1 get hear god quickly cough My god, please wake up if you are asleep; My god, please give an answer if you hear me. (2) Southern Debao ɲɐmt A2 θej A1 : Sino-influenced rhyme structure Former sentence nin A1 tɕɐw C1 laj A1 a³¹ nin A1 tɕɐw C1 laj A1 (tail rhyme) miss 2p much PRT miss 2p much Later sentence nin A1 tɕɐw C1 tʰɐn A1 mo: A2 laj B2 ja: C2 ʋaj A2 (tail rhyme) miss 2p see cow misunderstand buffalo Oh, I am missing you so much! I see a buffalo in mistake for a cow because my mind is wandering for missing you. Besides, rhymes in Yang Zhuang poetry always follow a principle of píngzè (平仄level and oblique tones) which is also found in classical Chinese poetry. According to this principle, words that have different proto-tones cannot rhyme with one another even though they have the same vowels and codas. Furthermore, Yang Zhuang poetry also presents some common Taic poetry features such as parallelism, elaboration, and grammatical efficiency. REFERENCES Jackson, Eric M., Emily H. S. Jackson, & Lau Shuh Huey. 2011. A sociolinguistic survey of the Dejing Zhuang dialect area (SIL international, East Asia Group in cooperation with the Guangxi Minorities Language and Scripts Work Commission). [Li, Fang Kuei. 1970. The songs of T'ien-Pao: With a phonological sketch. Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica 30:1-21] 李方桂.1970.〈天保土歌-附音系〉，《中央研究院民族学研究所集刊》第30期，第1-21页。