The sociophonetics of uvular and prosodic variation in Dongxiang

Dongxiang is currently undergoing significant sociolinguistic changes, as yet almost unaddressed. This sociophonetic case study compares the phonetic difference between the countryside and the city, on the basis of fieldwork conducted in 2019 in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture (Gansu Province). It focuses on the partial loss of uvulars and the emerging tonal prosody, as features observed predominantly among the Linxia speakers, in contrast, absent or at an earlier stage elsewhere. The study takes into account the linguistic attitudes of the speakers to give an account of the divergence and provides preliminary findings on the social meanings of these variations, indicating the variables as indexicals.