A Study Of Variant Pronunciation Characters In The Han And Wei Dynasties Sound Glosses

The phenomenon is quite common in Chinese that a graphic form often has multiple pronunciations. In this paper, a graphic form which has several different sounds is named "The Variant Pronunciation Character". The main objective of this paper is to collect and analyze the origin and development of the structure, the pronunciation and meaning of the variant pronunciation characters from the sound glosses of the Han and Wei Dynasties which is the earliest materials recording the information about the pronunciation of Chinese characters in the history of Chinese phonology.In addition to the introduction, this paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter consists of two parts:The first part sums up systematically the methods of collect and confirm the variant pronunciation character in the sound glosses of the Han and Wei Dynasties. The second part checks out the errors which include wrong words, derivative words, missing words and so on, in the sound glosses of the Han and Wei Dynasties.The second chapter compiles the Variant Pronunciation Characters which are directly marked by scholars of the Han and Wei Dynasties and analyzes the causes of the variant pronunciation.The third chapter analyzes the evolution of the structure, the pronunciation and the meaning of ten variant pronunciation characters, as follows:Bei(陂),Yi(易),Chang(长),Yu(与),Ju(句),Gao(告),Yi(遗),Ji(几),Juan(卷),Ren(任).The forth chapter reveals some information about the phonetic system of sound glosses in the Han and Wei Dynasties through analyzing the different of the variant pronunciation of the sound glosses in the Han and Wei Dynasties.The fifth chapter compares the different of the variant pronunciation character between the sound glosses of the Han and Wei Dynasties and Guangyun(广韻)The study shows that some variant pronunciation characters in Guangyun(广韻)can be traced to the sound glosses in the Han and Wei Dynasties. The cause of some variant pronunciations in Guangyun(广韻)is "Xi Fei Cheng Shi". This study indicates that the phenomenon that a character often has multiple pronunciations has existed for a long time in the history of Chinese. A number of variant pronunciation characters emerged in the sound glosses in the Han and Wei Dynasties. The ways to mark the variant pronunciation character are flexible and diversified. The causes of the variant pronunciation are very complicated. The sound glosses of the Han and Wei Dynasties is an important origin of the variant pronunciation characters in Guangyun(广韻).