英文摘要 |
This paper probes the nature of the dialect represented in the kua-a (歌仔) songbook (booklet) Lōng-tsir Her-thau Sin Kua (New Ballad of the Prodigal Son; 浪子回頭新歌), published by Phok-tsin Siā (博進社) in Taichung in 1926. I begin by summarizing the narrative and outlining the genealogy of the seven known versions of the underlying ballad. Linguistically, I approach the songbook via four axes: initials, rimes, tones, and dialect-specific lexicon. In terms of initials, phonetic borrowings in the songbook show evidence of the Tsuan-tsiu (泉州) /j/ ~ /l/ merger. Rimes-wise, I highlight 13 dialect-specific patterns of rhyming. Four trans-tonemic patterns of phonetic borrowing and 16 dialectically marked lexical usages round out the analysis, leading to the conclusion that while this 1926 version presents a smattering of Tsiang-tsiu (漳州) dialect features, the original ballad was written in a conservative Tsuan-tsiu dialect. |