A Study On The Phonetics Of The Seven - Party Towns In Zaoyang

Located at the northwest of Hubei province, on the border of Hubei and He’nan province, Zaoyang is the transition region of Zhongyuan Mandarin dialects and Southwest Mandarin dialects. Because of the special geographical location and the frequent immigration in history, Zaoyang dialects have the mixed features. According to the preliminary statistics, the dialects of other regions of Northwest Hubei also present similar features. For a long time, the survey and research on the dialects of Northwest Hubei is rare and weak, and the Zaoyang dialects are nearly neglected, which directly results in the shortage of quotable datas and systematic dialect research results of Zaoyang dialects. Up to the present, there is none systematic book on the phonetic research of Zaoyang dialects. Through the overall survey and systematic research, we can present a systematic and complete phonetic system of the Qifang town of Zaoyang dialects, which will make up the shortage of the existing dialect datas and provide credible datas for the in-depth research of Zaoyang dialects and dialects of Northwest Hubei. Meanwhile, the rational interpretation on some language phenomena in the transition region will offer some clues and facts for solving the ownership question of the Northwest Hubei dialects.This paper mainly studies the phonetic system of Qifang town of Zaoyang dialect. It consists of six parts, respectively the introduction, the phonetic analysis of the Qifang town of Zaoyang dialects, the syllabary of Qifang town of Zaoyang dialects, the synchronic phonetic changes of Qifang town of Zaoyang dialects, the phonetic comparison between Qifang dialect and ancient Chinese phonology and the phonetic comparison between Qifang dialect and its neighboring region dialects. Chapter1introduces the overview of Zaoyang, the research significance, methods and actuality of this topic. Chapter2introduces the system of phonology, differences of new and old variety in dialect and the phonology table. Chapter3shows the syllabary of Qifang town of Zaoyang dialect. Chapter4makes a detailed and all-sided description and analysis from the contemporary angle, including the continuing reading tonal modification, light tone, r-colored vowel, patterns of various types of reduplication of nouns and adjectives, chorus and crossover and so on. Chapter5concludes the corresponding law between the phonetic system of the mediaeval times and Qifang dialect. Chapter6discusses deeply the nature and the question of the dialect ownership, through the comparison with the neighboring region dialects.The paper presents a systematic and complete phonetic system of the Qifang town of Zaoyang dialect, by means of detailed and in-depth investigation in the field and analysis of linguistic datas. In the study,we use some research theories and methods of experimental phonetics, dialect geography and so on to explain the phonetic phenomena in the Qifang dialect, except for the conventional means of depiction and historical comparative method,which can reveal its phonetic characteristics and developing rules.