Exploring the first person pronoun in the Wuzhou dialectal region: Example from the Yiwu dialects

More than one form of first person pronouns is attested in Wuzhou, some of which are found having alveolar or alveolar-palatal affricate initials,and others velar nasal finals,or both. This article deals with nine phonetic forms of the first person pronoun in the Yiwu dialects and claims that these variations fall into two types,the wo (我) type and the nong ( 侬) type. The type of nong includes shinong ( 是侬) and wonong ( 我侬) ,and the wo type contains wo and shiwo ( 是我) . The article also discusses the evolutions of nong, which,as a first person pronoun in Wu dialects at early times, competed with wo from the Zhongyuan Mandarin and then juxtaposed with it to engender the new form of wonong. Nong gradually becomes a suffix to wo with plural meaning.