A Study On Phonetic System Of Sheyang Dialect

Sheyang, the biggest county of Jiangsu province, lies on the verge of Yellow Sea. The town Hede functions as the county's capital, whose dialect belongs to Yanghuai Subsection of Jianghuai Mandarin. Because of immigration, Sheyang Dialect was affected by other dialects, so it is valuable to study it. On the base of fruitful but limited achievements made by former scholars, this thesis tries to further study on Sheyang Dialect (focusd on Hede dialect) through giving a general description, comparison and analysis of the dialect's phonetic system.This thesis consists of five parts:In Chapter One, the author gives a brief introduction the geographic and historical conditions of Sheyang and Hede. In addition, the author introduces the conditions of Sheyang Dialect as well as former researchers do on this Dialect.In Chapter Two, the author describes the phonetic system of Sheyang dialect, including its eighteen Shengmu (initial consonant of a syllable, that is, a character in Chinese), forty-five Yunmu(the rest of a syllable in Chinese except Shengmu with a vowel as its core) and five tones with traditional and modern methods.Furthermore, the author also traces back the origins of these Shengmu and tones to Guangyun phonetic system in the 7th century. In Chapter Three, the author analyzes the Yunmu of Sheyang Dialect by dividing it into thirteen categories according to their main vowels and nasal syllable ending, which are in turn listed by syllables. The author studies their origins, evolution regulations, abnormalities in evolution and the causes as well as certain synchronic comparisons. In Chapter Four, the author reports the dialect's inner differences caused by age, formal and colloquial reading, district and gender, some of which were never been recorded before. By analyzing these differences, the author discovers that the simplification is the main tendency of Sheyang Dialect's phonetic system. The author also finds that Sheyang dialect is mainly influenced by Wu Dialect in Sheyang and evolution rules of Sheyang Dialect itself, which have made systematic changes. Putonghua, however, merely caused some non-systematic changes. In Chapter Five, the author compares Sheyang Dialect with other dialects that belong to Yanghuai Subsection of Jianghuai Mandarin,, Tongtai Subsection of Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu Dialect through examining the criteria of eight characters in Shengmu, eight characters in Yunmu and six characters in tones. The author concludes that Sheyang Dialect still belongs to Yanghuai Subsection of Jianghuai Mandarin, though it has many characters of Wu Dialect.