Linguistic Diversity Challenge Day 1: Lizu
What is the language called in English and the language itself?
The language is called Lizu (but can also be written as Lyuzu or Lǚsū) in English and 栗苏 (Lìsū) in Chinese. The Lizu people refer to themselves as /lî-zû/ or /lŷ-zû/.
Where is the language spoken?
The language is spoken in southwestern Sichuan, China. It tends to be spoken along the banks of the Yalong River in the three counties of Muli Tibetan Autonomous County, Jiulong County, & Mianning County.
How many people speak the language?
It is spoken by approximately 7000 people.
Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?
It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan languages under the Tibeto-Burman language family and in the Quiangic subgroup. Lizu is classified as one of three mutually unintelligible dialects of the Ersu language (Ersu, Lizu & Duoxu). The Lizu language has three varieties: Mianning Lizu, Kala Lizu, and Naiqu Lizu.
What writing system does the language use?
It does not have a writing system. IPA is used by linguists to write about it.
What kind of grammatical features does the language have?
Lizu is an isolating, verb-final, and head-final language. The grammatical relations of subject and object are not grammaticalized in Lizu. Instead, its clause structure is based on the pragmatic relations of topical vs. focal material. The unmarked word order is S/A- Dir O - Ind O -V. The basic distinction between Lizu perfective and imperfective aspect is expressed by lexical-derivational means.
What does the language sound like?*
This is a link to a video of Lizu folk dance. Chirkova’s website has links where you can listen to the 3 folk songs from the video with a transcription of them.
Consonant clusters are a prominent feature of the Lizu language. Most consonant clusters involve bilabials and laterals.
Lizu has an additional set of nasalized vowels, which are restricted to loanwords from Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese. It also has a sparse or ‘culminative’ tonal system, in which no more than one pitch pattern is pronounced per word. For monosyllabic words, there are two contrastive tones: low rising vs. high falling. In disyllabic words, three pitch patterns are observed
What do you personally find interesting about the language?
I’m not very familiar with what sounds are less common so I can’t say how unique the language sounds, but I find the sound inventory of the language to be very rich and especially think the h̃ (voiceless nasal glottal fricative) to be an interesting feature. I also think that the sound differences in the three dialects, as mentioned by Yu, to be something I would like to look at once I have a bit more linguistic knowledge under my belt.
Chirkova, Katia. (2008). “Essential characteristics of Lizu, a Qiangic language of Western Sichuan”. Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, 43:191-233.
Chirkova, Katia; Chen, Yiya (2013), "Lizu", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (1): 75–86
Chirkova, Katia. 2017. "Lizu (Ersu)," The Sino-Tibetan Languages. New York: Routledge, 16:823-839.
Sūn Hóngkāi 孙宏开. 2001. 論藏緬語族中的羌語支語言 Lùn Zàng-Miǎn yǔzú zhōng de Qiāng yǔzhī yǔyán [On language of the Qiangic branch in Tibeto-Burman]. Language and linguistics, 2:157–181.
Yu, Dominic (2009). Lizu and Proto-Tibeto-Burman. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Department of Linguistics.
