The Standard Pronunciation Phonology In The Early Korean Transliteration Literature

Hongwu ZhengYun YiXun (1455)is a rhyming dictionary book which was translated from Chinese to Korean with Hangul pronunciation, in response to the request by the Korean King Sejong, Li Tao, after hunminjeongeum had been completed in the period of Korean Sejong. There are two language facts recorded in this book, i.e. official tone and vulgar tone. Official tone, i.e. musical rhyme, was adopted by Chinese at that time; while vulgar tone, i.e. the tone which was popular but did not step well with musical rhyme, was adopted by some rhyming dictionaries such as SiSheng TongJie,fanyilaoqida·piaotongshi etc. Through discussing the standard pronunciations in this phonetic system, this thesis will explore the structure of the phonetic system and the nature of the phonics, through the research approaches such as historical comparison, pronunciation checking and statistics, ect.The paper will be divided into five parts.In the introductory section, the history of the transliteration literature and the research methods employed by this paper will be briefly introduced.Chapter1 focuses on the "Hongwu ZhengYun"-related issues.Chapter2 briefly introduces Hunminjeongeum, early literature concerning korea transliteration and the standard pronunciation phonology and its development.Chapter3 focuses on the structure of the standard pronunciation phonology in HongWu Zheng Yun Yi Xun. As to the part of Initials, they will be discussed in groups in a way of historical comparison. The author will mainly analyze the following issues:the retention of voiced initial consonants, separation and mergence of initials groups Ni/Niang,Fei/Fu/Feng, Zhi/Zhuang/Zhang.As to the part of Vowels, a general picture of Vowels in HongWu Zheng Yun Yi Xun will be presented and then each Vowel will be discussed in details, in groups, from a perspective of historical comparison and the phonetic notation of the ancient Korean. And it focuses on the following issues:the state of [y], entering tone rhyme, vowel [a]/[ε],medial [i] ect. As to the part of Tone, this chapter mainly discusses it from the following three aspects: even tone feature, voiced initials not turning into Shangsheng and the existence of entering tone.Chapter4 is the syllables mosaic table of Hongwu Zhengyun, Hongwu Zhengyun YiXun, and SiSheng TongJie.This paper does some innovative works as it analyzes the phonological structure in Hongwu Zhengyun YiXun from the perspective of phonetic Hangul, verifies the nature and the existence of the speech sounds of the Chinese Mandarin dialect in 15th century, through comparing Hongwu Zhengyun and Hongwu Zhengyun YiXun, and makes comparison of the syllables in the following three Rhyming Dictionaries:Hongwu Zhengyun,Hongwu Zhengyun YiXun,and SiSheng TongJie.