The Niujiaojing dialect of Caijia in Weining County, Guizhou, China

This paper introduces a newly described conservative dialect of the Caijia language spoken in Niujiaojing 牛角井村, Yangjie Town 羊街镇, Weining County 威宁县, Guizhou, China, for which a word list is also provided. The Niujiaojing dialect of Caijia has phonetic features that were previously unreported in Caijia, such as retroflex consonants, apical (fricativized) vowels, tense-lax vowel quality contrast, and vowel nasalization. These phonetic features are shared with neighboring languages such as the Gelao languages, which belong to the Kra branch of the Kra-Dai (or Tai-Kadai) language family, West Hmongic languages, and Northern Loloish languages.