A brief account of my research work [with an appended bibliography]

Abstract

I graduated from Peking University in 1954. [1] On university fieldtrips I had had the chance to record various Chinese dialects, as well as material on the Kam-Sui (- Dorig-Shui) languages. After graduation I was assigned to the Linguistic Research Section of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1955 I accompanied Professor Wang Fushi and other scholars on a research trip to study the Miao dialects of Guizhou, Yunnan, and Guangxi. For nearly a year we recorded the "Chuan-Qian-Dian" Miao dialect [2], as well as the dialect of E. Guizhou (- Qiandong), which gave me a thorough understanding of the relationship between the initials and tonal categories of Miao and the Zhuang-Dong (- Kam-Tai) languages. This was a good initiation for me into the problems of undertaking large-scale field research.