A Study On The Phonological System Of Yinghua 's

The speech sounds of Ming and Qing dynasties play an important part in Chinese phonetic history, especially the history of modern Chinese. At the middle of the 17th century and late Qing Dynasty, a large number of Western missionaries left for China. These Western scholars’ Romanised writings of the speech sounds are excellent materials for the study of Ming and Qing Mandarin, which are superior to the rhythmic dictionary and rhyme table. "Ying Hua Yun-fu Lih-kiai" compiled by American Protestant priest Samuel Wells Williams was completed in 1843 and was published in Paris in 1844. This book offers a great value for the studies of Sinology, phonology of Chinese language, linguistics as well as social-cultural studies, as one of important reference books for Western missionaries in those days learning Chinese.In this paper, we start the research from the perspective of phonology, adopted statistical, descriptive and conparative methods to make detailed description and analysis of the consonants, vowels and tones of "Ying Hua Yun-fu Lih-kiai". Furthermore, from the two aspects of synchronic and diachronic, conparison is made between "Ying Hua Yun-fu Lih-kiai"’and "Li Shi Yin Jian" "Audio-Visual Aid to Western Scholars", "Arte de la lengua China (Grammar of the Chinese Language)", "Mandarin New Testament" to draw the nature of its sound systemand. according to the analysis, "Ying Hua Yun-fu Lih-kiai" has 19 consonants (excluding zero initial),54 vowels (including 21 Yin rhyme,19 Yang rhyme, and 14 Ru rhyme). There are five tones:Yiping, Yangping, Shangsheng, Qusheng and Rusheng. Its phonetic system reflects the phenomenon of devoicing, non-palatalization of Jian and Jing group, non-retroflexion of "Zhi Zhuang Zhang", opposition of Han and Huan, the Ru terminal sound merging into glottal stop, opposition of nasal and after nasal etc. Voiced Shangsheng words are partly read as Shangsheng and partly read as Qusheng.By analyzing the phonetic system of "Ying Hua Yun-fu Lih-kiai", it enables us to know the Mandarin of the early 19th century. On the other hand, it helps to the study of the history of Chinese Mandarin speech. Based on a comparison study, we speculate that the characteristics of the prevailing Mandarin before the 19th century still are given priority to the ones of Nanking Kuan Hua. However, it also starts mixing some characteristics of Beiking Mandarin due to the impact of imperial city.