Language contact in an asymmetrical sociolinguistic environment: The Case of Nuosu, a Tibeto-Burman language of Sichuan, China

The present study presents two cases of grammatical borrowing in Nuosu, a Tibeto-Burman language of Sichuan, in Southwest China, due to its long-term contact with Southwest Mandarin: the Nuosu take/hold-resultative construction and the Nuosu genitive marking. The former is a functional borrowing of the Chinese ba Resultative Construction from the model language Southwest Mandarin into Shynra Nuosu, headed by the Nuosu take/hold-verb si²¹; the latter is the likely borrowing of the Southwest Mandarin genitive marker li⁵⁵, with only tone 55 being retained after syllable reduction, into both Yynuo and Shynra Nuosu. What is special about the two Nuosu cases of borrowing is that the Nuosu traditional features co-exist with the contact features without any sign of loss under an asymmetrical sociolinguistic environment. The present study compares the Nuosu cases with displacive language contact occurring to Hakka in Hong Kong, a southern Sinitic language. The fate of Hong Kong Hakka is different from that of Nuosu after its contact with Cantonese, the dominant language. The present study also explains the different fates of the two languages by looking at their vitality, as well as at linguistic and psycho-cultural reasons. Copyright © 2023 Ding Hongdi.