Bugan, Bogan, Pakan, or Bugeng (布甘语, 布干语, or 布赓语) is an Austroasiatic language.[2] The existence of the Bugan language was not known by the rest of world until recently. There are about 3000 speakers, mostly in some villages in southern Guangnan (广南) and northern Xichou (西畴), Yunnan Province, China. Bugan is an analytic language, and word order and auxiliary words have important functions in the grammar.[3]
Distribution
Li Jinfang (1996)
According to Li Jinfang (1996), the Bugan-speaking population is distributed in seven villages across southern Guangnan (广南) and northern Xichou (西畴), Yunnan Province, China. As the language is highly uniform, it is not divided into any dialects.
According to a more recent survey by Li Yunbing (2005), the Bugan people, comprising a total of 500+ households and 2,700+ individuals, live in the following locations.
Laowalong 老挖龙, Nasa Township 那洒镇;[4] Bugan language: pə31loŋ55
Li Yunbing also uses the term Bùgēng (布赓) in place of Bùgān (布甘).
People
The Bugan people's autonym is pə55ka̠n33, while the surrounding Han Chinese call them Huazu (Chinese:花族; literally "flower people") or Hualo (Chinese:花倮) due to their colorful clothing.[10] Other autonyms are pu55qe̠ŋ44 (in Manlong, Xichou County) and pə55qe̠ŋ44 (in Nala and Xinwalong in Guangnan County). They are an unrecognized ethnic minority, and are currently classified as Yi. The Bugan are endogamous, and thus do not usually marry people from other ethnic groups[11]
The Bugan people also hold their own New Year's Day celebration in April of the Chinese lunar calendar, which is separate from that of the Han Chinese New Year.
Common Bugan surnames include Li 李, Wang 王, Guo 郭, Luo 罗, Yan 严, Lu 卢, Pu 普, and Yi.
Phonology
Bugan is a tonal SVO language. Unlike the Bolyu language, Bugan distinguishes between tense and lax voice qualities. In current linguistic publications on Bugan, tense voice is indicated by underlining vowels. Bugan has a total of 49 onsets (including various consonant clusters) and 67 possible rimes.[12]
There is a small difference in the phonemic inventory between two Bugan dialects, Nala Bugan and Manlong Bugan.
Nala Bugan
The Nala Bugan dialect is spoken in the Nala village (那腊), Nala town, Guangnan County, Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan. The Bugan of this village call themselves pə⁵⁵qe̠ŋ⁴⁴ and their village pə³¹pʰja⁴⁴.
Data of the Nala dialect was collected by Li Jinfang (2006). A brief grammatical sketch of Nala Bugan was provided by Li & Luo (2015).
In the same syllable, tense and lax vowels do not co-occur. The restriction seems to be phonemic, because tense vowels are described as having a lower and more retracted tongue position than their lax counterparts. Eg. ta³¹ "near" is realized as a central-open [a], while tense /a̠/ in ta̠³¹ "to bet" is closer to [ɑ].[15]
In syllables with a rising tone, tense vowels are accompanied by a noticeably constricted or tight laryngeal setting, making the tense quality acoustically salient. In syllables with the falling tone (31), however, the laryngeal tension weakens, so the contrast relies more heavily on vowel quality itself. There are six contrastive tones in Nala Bugan. The neutral tone only occurs in some prefixes.[15]
Tone value
Contour
Context
0
neutral
open syllables
13
low rising
open syllables
35
high rising
open syllables
31
low falling
checked (-p̚, -t̚, -k̚) & open syllables
33
mid level
checked & open syllables
55
high level
checked & open syllables
Manlong Bugan
Manlong Bugan is spoken by the Bugan tribe of the Manlong (曼龙) village, Jijie Township, Xichou County, Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan. It is mutually intelligible with Nala Bugan. Bugans refer to this village by their native toponym pu³¹ɣu³¹ and call themselves pu⁵⁵qe̠ŋ⁴⁴. Neighboring communities of the Manlong Bugans often call them the Flowery Luo (花倮) people, due to their colorful ethnic clothing. A grammatical description of Manlong Bugan has been documented in detail by Li Yunbing (2005).[16]
Consonants
Manlong Bugan possesses a richer inventory of complex cluster onsets compared to Nala Bugan. It features a series of glided clusters, a series of prenasalized clusters, and three other labial clusters /pt͡s/, /pt͡sʰ/, /bd/.
Manlong Bugan reportedly has four contour tones: /55/, /44/, /24/, and /31/.[18]
Morphosyntax
Nominal morphology
Proforms
In possessive constructions, tone contour in pronouns is raised to /55/ to express possessive relation with the syntactically NP head. Eg. pa²⁴ ʔɔ⁵⁵ (father 1SG.POSS) "my father".[19]
singular
dual
plural
1st person
exclusive
ʔɔ³¹
wi³¹ bi̠ɔ̱³¹
pɛ³¹
inclusive
wi³¹
2nd person
mɯ³¹
mi³¹ bi̠ɔ̱³¹
mi³¹
3rd person
ʔi³¹
hɛ³¹ bi̠ɔ̱³¹
hɛ³¹
Interrogatives
Bugan appears to build interrogatives analytically by attaching the element -pau³⁵ to nominal or pronominal bases. For example, mɯ⁵⁵ pau³⁵ means "who?" but can also function as an infinitive pronoun "anyone". This also holds true with mə dze⁵⁵ "what, whatever".[20]
Bugan has a typical Austroasiatic decimal counting system with head-first combining forms for higher numerals. For examples, nineteen in Bugan is mã³¹ ɕi³³ (10 + 9), forty is pau³³ mã³¹ (4 x 10), 200 is bi³¹ ʑu³¹ (2 x 100), and 10,010 is mə⁵⁵ vã¹³ lɛ³³ ma³¹ or 1 x 10,000 + 10.[22] Comparison of some cardinal numerals of Bugan, Mang (Mangic), and Gorum (South Munda):
Nala Bugan has two copulas: generic ni³³/ȵu³³ and negative mə⁵⁵sa̱ŋ⁵⁵. ȵu³³, presumably derived from the same root which means "do", is not frequently used as copula.[24]
ʔɔ³¹
I
ni³³/ȵu³³
COP
pə⁵⁵ka̱n³³
Bugan
ʔɔ³¹ ni³³/ȵu³³ pə⁵⁵ka̱n³³
I COP Bugan
'I am a Bugan.'
The preverbal negative mə⁵⁵ appears to be deeply connected with a wide array of Munda and Austroasiatic preverbal negatives otherwise, such as the conservative South Munda Juang finite negative ma-, Gtaʔma=, Khariaum, Gorumambu.[25]
Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2020). "Proto-Munda Prosody, Morphotactics and Morphosyntax in South Asian and Austroasiatic Contexts". In Jenny, Mathias; Sidwell, Paul; Alves, Mark (eds.). Austroasiatic Syntax in Areal and Diachronic Perspective. Brill. pp.157–197. doi:10.1163/9789004425606_008.
Li, Jinfang 李锦芳 (2006). Xīnán dìqū bīnwēi yǔyán diàochá yánjiū 西南地区濒危语言调查研究 [Studies on Endangered Languages in the Southwest China] (in Chinese). Beijing shi: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe.
Li, Yunbing 李云兵 (2005). Bùgēngyǔ yánjiū 布赓语研究 [A Study of Bugeng [Bugan]] (in Chinese). Beijing: Minzu chubanshe.
Li, Jinfang; Luo, Yongxian (2015). Bugan. In Paul Sidwell and Mathias Jenny (eds.), The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages: Leiden: Brill. pp.1033–1064.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Sidwell, Paul (2021). "Northern Austroasiatic languages of MSEA". The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. De Gruyter. pp.499–546. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-023.