rethinking sinitic literacy - soh.ntu.edu.sg and events/documents/programme... · according to ding...

RETHINKING SINITIC LITERACY

09:30-10:00 Registration

10:00-11:00 Assoc Prof. Yow Cheun Hoe, Division of Chinese, Head, Welcome RemarksProf. David Holm, National Chengchi University, Keynote Speech

11:00-12:20 Panel 1: Moving Beyond the Sinitic: Linguistic Practices

Chairperson: Prof. Randy LaPolla, Nanyang Technological University

11:00-11:30 Dr. Picus Sizhi DingKobe City University of Foreign Studies

From Ang Moh to Pechun: The role of Southern Min in the early contact between Chinese and Europeanlanguages

11:30-12:00 Dr. Khin Khin AyeSwinburne University of Technology (Sarawak)

Replication of Sinitic lexicon in Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay in Singapore

12:00-12:20 General Q & A and Discussion

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:50 Panel 2: Sinophone Minorities and Regional Languages

Chairperson: Dr. Tom Hoogervorst, KITLV, Netherlands

13:30-14:00 Dr. Juliette HuberUniversity of Regensberg

The Hakka community of Timor-Leste: Past, present and future

14:00-14:30 Joanna Rose McFarland Nanyang Technological University

Insights from Cambodian Teochew Expressions


End of Day 1

10 August 2018. Friday. HSS Conference Room (05-57)

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10:00-11:30 Panel 3: Religious Practices in ‘Sinitic’ Southeast Asia

Chairperson: Prof. David Holm, National Chengchi University

10:10-10:40 Dr. Suchart SetthamalineePayap University

The Sinophone World and Multiple Identities of Chinese Muslim in Northern Thailand

10:40-11:10 Low Kok WaiIndependent ResearcherDiaspora-AsiaTheatreArts.com

San Fa: Requiem to the Dying Sound of Cantonese Taoist Funeral Rites in Singapore


12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00- Panel 4: Textual Production and Creativity of the Sinophone

Chairperson: Dr. Caroline Chia, Nanyang Technological University

13:00-13:30 Dr. Catherine ChurchmanVictoria University of Wellington

Lexical Innovation and Creativity inPenang Hokkien-thinking beyond‘Rojak’

13:30-14:00 Dr. Tom HoogervorstKITLV

“Do you love the Chinese people?”: Late-colonial materials to (re)learn Chinese through Malay

14:00-14:30 Dr. Caroline ChiaNanyang Technological University

Pinoyized Hokkien: Initial Study of Kaoka scripts from Manila


15:00-16:00 Roundtable Discussion

17:00-19:00 Symposium Dinner (For Speakers, Panel Chairs & Invited Guests)

11 August 2018. Saturday. HSS Conference Room (05-57)

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RETHINKING SINITIC LITERACYSpeakers’ abstracts

From Ang Moh (紅毛) to Pwechun (批准): The role of Southern Min in the early contact between Chinese and European languages

Picus Sizhi DingKobe City University of Foreign Studies

According to Ding (2016), the sociolinguistic status of Southern Min,or Hokkien, in many Southeast Asian countries has significantlydescended in recent decades. In spite of this trend in modern times,Southern Min is undeniably one of the earliest Sinitic languages (ifnot the first one) which spread from China to Southeast Asia. Withsettlement of a large number of speakers in Southeast Asia, SouthernMin was the Sinitic language which Walter Medhurst found andstudied in Malacca, and later compiled for English readers the firstdictionary of Hokkien, A Dictionary of the Hok-Këèn Dialect of theChinese Language (Medhurst 1832).Being a dominant language widely distributed outside mainlandChina, Southern Min played a significant role in the early contactbetween Chinese and European languages. This role, unfortunately,has barely been discussed in the sociolinguistic literature; this paperaims to present on Southern Min’s role in the early history of Chinesecontact with Europeans.This study focuses on two terms: ang moh (紅毛) and pwechun (批准), arguing for their origin in Southern Min. The former has its origin inTaiwan, where the Hokkien first encountered the Dutch (whose hair istypically red in color). Later its meaning was expanded from ‘Dutch’ to‘Europeans’ in general.

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Picus Sizhi Ding’s abstract (con’t)

Through the medium of Chinese characters, the term ang moh (紅毛)was spread to other Sinitic languages and Japanese, but it has becomearchaic in these languages nowadays.

It is generally held that the term pidgin derives from Chinesepronunciation of the English word business. However, linguisticassociation between these two forms is unconvincing. This papersubmits the hypothesis that Southern Min should be the sourcelanguage with pwechun (批准) ‘approval/license (for business)’ as theorigin of pidgin. A linguistic support for this lies in the possible use ofverbs/VP’s as nouns in Southern Min, but not in Mandarin. Laterpwechun (批准) was probably pronounced in a corrupted form ofChinese, giving rise to the sound-based loan of pidgin found in English.

In identifying pwechun (批准) in Southern Min as the obscure sourceof pidgin, this hypothesis involves a lexical semantic extension in thesocio-historical context of British-colonized Malacca, where a largepopulation of Hokkien speakers resided and engaged trading betweenSoutheast Asia and China well before the European colonization. Itoffers another instance of effect resulted from Sino-European contactoutside Mainland China.


About the Speaker:Dr. Picus Ding was born in a Hokkien-speaking family in Myanmar. Hisresearch focuses on languages of China such as Mandarin, Cantonese,Southern Min, and Prinmi (a Tibeto-Burman language), etc. He is theauthor of Studies on Ba Resultative Construction, A Grammar ofPrinmi, and Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language, and alsoa co-editor of Sociohistorical Linguistics in Southeast Asia: NewHorizons for Tibeto-Burman Studies in Honor of David Bradley.

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Replication of Sinitic lexicon in Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay in Singapore

Khin Khin Aye School of Design and Arts, Faculty of Business, Design and Arts

Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak Campus)

With over 20 million oversea Chinese living in Southeast Asia, theSinitic influence is obviously felt through populace and economy ofthe region. Singapore has been both a magnet for people comingfrom different ethnolinguistic backgrounds who seek internationalbusiness opportunities and employment prospects since itsinauguration in 1819, and a cradle of such contact languages asBazaar Malay, Baba Malay and Singapore English. This paperinvestigates Sinitic linguistic influence, particularly that of Hokkien asthe major substrate language felt in Bazaar Malay and Baba Malaylexicon. This paper analyses Bazaar Malay data collected between2002 and 2005, and Si Hitam Yang Cantek, the Baba Malay translatedversion of the novel, ‘The Black Beauty’, the main audience of whichwas Peranakan Christian community.

Findings of this research highlight that Hokkien lexical influence iseither overt or convert, and that the extent of Hokkien loanwords inthese two varieties is determined by two factors, (i) sense ofcommunity and (ii) Baba Chinese identity.

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Khin Khin Aye’s abstract (con’t)

Influence of Hokkien lexicon in Bazaar Malay is manifested in fourareas: (i) terms of address, for instance, direct use of Hokkien firstand second personal pronouns wa (gua) ‘I’ and lu ‘you’ and Malaylexification of Hokkien structures in the plural and possessiveconstructions; (ii) names of the days of the week which showcaselexical calques whereby Hokkien lexical entries are replaced byappropriate Malay words; (iii) some business terms such as kongsi ‘‘acompany or firm; to share’ and (iv) terms for cooking ingredientssuch as tauge ‘bean sprouts’.

About the Speaker:Dr. Khin Khin Aye is Senior Lecturer at the School of Design and Arts,Faculty of Business, Design and Arts at Swinburne University ofTechnology (Sarawak Campus). Dr. Aye researches on Bazaar Malay andBaba Malay, and considers the extent of Hokkien influence as a substrateon these contact varieties. She has published articles and chapters on thetopic and is one of the contributors of The Atlas of Pidgin and CreoleLanguage Structures by Oxford University Press.

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The Hakka community of Timor-Leste: Past, present and future

Juliette Huber University of Regensburg

Before 1975, Timor-Leste was home to a thriving Hakka communitynumbering up to 25,000 individuals. During the 25-year Indonesianoccupation of East Timor that followed, however, the communitysuffered heavy casualties, and those who could emigrated. As a result,only a few hundred Hakka speakers remain in the country today.Community members still strongly identify as Timorese Hakka orTimorese Chinese, both in Timor-Leste itself as well as in the diaspora;however the Hakka competence of younger generations is declining,making the Hakka variety of Timor-Leste severely endangered. In thistalk, I will sketch the historical background of this little-known Hakkacommunity as well as their present-day situation, based on a pilotstudy I recently started working on. I will close with an outlook on thework I am hoping to undertake with the community in the future.

About the Speaker:Dr. Juliette Huber is a Research and Teaching Fellow at Department ofGeneral and Comparative Linguistics, University of Regensburg,Germany. Dr. Huber researches on the Makalero and Makasaelanguages in the eastern part of East Timor. She has published andpresented on several aspects of morphosyntax of these languages. Hercurrent research works on the endangered Hakka variety spoken by theChinese minority of Timor Leste.

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Insights from Cambodian Teochew Expressions

Joanna Rose McFarlandNanyang Technological University

The Chinese have had a long history in Cambodia. Chandler (1983)wrote of 3,000 Chinese traders in Phnom Penh in 1540, while Chan(2005) and Edwards (2009) described Chinese communities inCambodia with histories of over 200 years. Despite governmentaloppression of these peoples during the 1970s and 1980s, many Sino-Cambodians continued speaking their native Chinese languages andpassed them on to the next generations. As such, Chinese varietiesincluding Mandarin, Cantonese, and Teochew are still spoken inCambodia today, though they have been scarcely studied. This paperfocuses on texts in Teochew (also Romanized as Chaozhou andTeochiu), a Sinitic Southern Min variety that originated from theChaoshan (Chaozhou-Shantou) region of eastern Guangdong provinceof China. Special attention is paid to oral expressions that are unique toCambodian Teochew, hypothesized to be a result of continued contactwith Khmer, the official language of Cambodia.

About the Speaker:Joanna is a PhD candidate from Nanyang Technological University inSingapore. She received her Bachelor’s from the University ofWashington in Seattle and her Master’s from the University of HongKong. Her doctoral thesis works on spoken Teochew in Cambodia.

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The Sinophone World and Multiple Identities of Chinese Muslim in Northern Thailand

Suchart SetthamalineeDepartment of Peace Studies, Payap University

Thailand consists of about 6 million Muslims, 60% of them are MalayMuslims residing in the south of the country. This article attempts toillustrate the history and development of Chinese Muslims in northernThailand, though small in number, is worthy of study because there arevery few studies on this group. In the mid-twentieth century, the firstgroup of Hui Muslim from Yunnan, China migrated to trade and settledin northern Thailand. Later, there were large Yunnan Muslim merchantswho traded in Burma, Laos and Thailand, and could not return to Chinaafter the Mao Revolution in 1949. These merchants joined the firstgeneration and built the largest Chinese Muslim community in northernThailand, with an estimated 15,000 Chinese Muslims in Thailand. It isalso interesting to observe how the second and third generations ofthis group sought to become a middle-class in Thai society within abrief period of time through modern education.

Exploring the everyday life of Chinese Muslims in the north, we foundthat, for example, they still use Chinese, along with Central Thai andNorthern Lanna; reading the Quran in Arabic but in a Chinese accent;the use of Arabic characters in Chinese motifs which differ from theArabs written in the Arab world; the diet culture mixed with variouscultures.

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Suchart Setthamalinee’s abstract (con’t)

Therefore, this article attempts to point out the multiple identities ofChinese Muslims in Thailand that are flexible and adaptable to thechanging context while the underlying roots of the Sinophone worldare still influential and used as a force to resist increasing Puritanismand transnational movements of Islam today.

About the Speaker:Dr. Suchart Setthamalinee is Assistant Professor at Department ofPeace Studies, Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Dr. Suchart’sresearch interests work mainly on Muslim minorities, including theChinese Muslim community in Northern Thailand. His publicationsinclude Violence, Peace and the Diversity of Islamic World (in Thai) andhe is the editor of Muslim Youths in the Modern World and hisforthcoming book is Sociological Imagination of Islam: Peace, Familyand Women. He is currently working on a research project entitled“Peacebuilding in Ethnoreligious Pluralistic Society: A Case Study ofMuslims in Northern Thailand.”

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San Fa: Requiem to the Dying Sound of Cantonese Taoist Funeral Rites in Singapore

Low Kok WaiIndependent Researcher

Diaspora-AsiaTheatreArts.com

Music has been an important part of Chinese funeral rites forcenturies. The diaspora Cantonese in Singapore are inheritors of thistradition. However, cultural erosion has emerged with rapid economicdevelopment and modernization. The number of Cantonese Taoistpriests who can and still perform San Fa (散花)- a classic Cantonesefuneral requiem–is diminishing rapidly to the level of extinction. As partof the effort to excavate and preserve the Cantonese sound culturelegacy in Singapore, the author will present the live recording of TaoistMaster Ho Yoke Chong (何育祥)’s performance from his San Faplaybook and discuss the historical, cultural and sociolinguisticlandscapes of the Cantonese sound culture in Singapore. Both thetranscript from the interview with Master Ho and his live performance(recorded) will be used to inform the discussion within the paper.

About the Speaker:Low Kok Wai is an independent researcher and is the founder ofDiasporaAsia-TheatreArts.com, an online creative community formedto discuss and document all things diasporic. His doctoral thesis onCantonese Taoist Funeral Rites in Singapore is due to complete. Besideshis research work, Kok Wai is also an award-winning arts educator(Teaching Excellence Award 2014) and theatre practitioner who hasdirected many productions.

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Lexical Innovation and Creativity in Penang Hokkien – thinking beyond “Rojak”

Catherine ChurchmanVictoria University of Wellington

The most noticeable feature of Penang Hokkien that marks it out asdifferent from other varieties of Hokkien is its propensity to adoptloanwords. Intense contact with Malay, English, and other languagesover two centuries has resulted in a creole variety, often referred tojocularly as “rojak Hokkien” (fruit salad Hokkien) that accepts ofloanwords to a level largely unknown in other Sinitic languages.However, emphasis on speakers’ lexical borrowing overshadowsanother significant factor in the lexical divergence of Penang Hokkienfrom other varieties, namely the creative capabilities of its speakers toinvent new words and expressions from Sinitic morphemes. Over tenyears I have collected examples of Sinitic-based lexical innovationunique to Penang Hokkien that are incomprehensible, (or at leastsound extremely odd) to Hokkien speakers from China or Taiwan,although some may be understood in Singapore. This paper examinesthese lexical creations under two broad categories (compounding andsemantic extension) discussing at length the historical, societal,cultural and educational backgrounds of Penang Hokkien speakers thathave been instrumental in their creation.

About the Speaker:Dr. Churchman is Lecturer in Asian Studies at the School of Languagesand Cultures, University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her researchinterests include Chinese contact creole languages of Southeast Asia(in particular Malaysian Hokkien), Southern Chinese local identitiesboth within China and amongst the Chinese diaspora, Vietnamese andTai literature written in Nôm (Chinese-based demotic script). She hasalso published on Penang Hokkien and is currently working on aHokkien dictionary spoken by ethnic Chinese in Penang and Kedah.

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“Do you love the Chinese people?”: Late-colonial materials to (re)learn Chinese through Malay

Tom Hoogervorst, KITLV

In late-colonial Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, the Malay languagehad become the vehicle of literary expression for the region’s oldestChinese-descended families, coexisting with or replacing theirancestral variety of Hokkien. In these localized, multiculturalPeranakan or Baba-Nyonya milieus, a vibrant movement torefamiliarize the community with its Sinophone heritage took shape inthe wake of mid-19th century print capitalism. These developmentswere accelerated by China’s reformist movement, which yielded a pro-education, anti-imperialist brand of chauvinism that was adamant tomove beyond provincial divisions. One of its major aspirations was theestablishment of Mandarin as the language of a united Chinesecommunity, including those residing abroad.

This paper examines the contemporaneous Malay publications dealingwith the acquisition of Chinese and the need to learn this language.These competing teaching methods were often commercialpublications advertised by invoking nationalistic sentiments; a trueChinese person must learn the true Chinese language. They arelinguistically interesting for two reasons.

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Tom Hoogervorst’s abstract (con’t)

On the one hand, they teach an early form of Mandarin that wassuperseded by later standardizations in China and Taiwan. On theother, the language of instruction was a remarkably hybrid form ofMalay, consisting of elements from Hokkien, Dutch, and Javanese. Thismixed language, which has now been replaced by standardizedIndonesian, was an apt marker of the equally diverse Chinesecommunity in late-colonial Southeast Asia.

About the Speaker:Dr. Hoogervorst is a researcher at KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute ofSoutheast Asian and Carribean Studies. He focuses on languagecontact and Malay linguistics. Dr. Hoogervorst is currently studying thedevelopment of the (Indonesian) Malay language through the KITLV’scollection of Sino-Malay literature.

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Pinoyized Hokkien: Initial Study of Kaoka scripts from Manila

Caroline ChiaNanyang Technological University

Once known to have the first and largest group of Chinese to settle inthe sixteenth century, Philippines was the most popular destinationfor Chinese migrants partly due to its geographical proximity withsouthern Fujian. Until the mid-twentieth century, Philippines was oneof the major nodes besides Taiwan and Hong Kong in what wastermed the “Hokkien Quadrangle”. However, to date, there is littledocumentation on the theatrical practices of this community. Thispaper studies Kao Ka (Gaojia opera), a cultural import from southernFujian during the late nineteenth century and seeks to understand itscontinued existence in Manila, which has otherwise disappeared inother parts of Southeast Asia. A preliminary analysis of the Kaokascripts, written in Romanized Hokkien with some Tagalog translation,will be included.

About the Speaker:Dr. Chia is postdoctoral fellow at School of Humanities, NanyangTechnological University, Singapore. Her research interests includetraditional Chinese theatre, oral/folk literature, Chinese regionallanguages and the Chinese diaspora. Dr. Chia’s monograph HokkienTheatre Across the Seas: A Sociocultural Study will be due forpublication later this year.

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