Phonetic Research Of Tongjiang Dialect

Tong jiang is the northeast corner of Sichuan provinces and on shore of the Yangtze river,which close to Hubei and Shaanxi province,according to the Huang Xuezhen's Dividing partition of southwest mandarin,Tongjiang dialect belongs to the Chengdu-Chongqing plain,this section includes central,northern,eastern,southern sichuan province and it's 82 counties and cities and 19 counties and cities of Hubei province,9 counties in the south of shaanxi province,3 counties in northwest of Hunan province and a town in Gansu province.Although the internal consistency of southwest mandarin is very high,the Tongjiang dialect which under the influence of the geographical environment and immigrants also has some characteristics.But so far,there has not been a special,systematic treatise to describe the appearance of the local dialect phonology.Therefore,based on this condition,this paper presents the phonetic features of Tongjiang dialect phonology,when we finished a systematic investigation on the object of study.This paper gives a brief introduction to the geographical environment,historical evolution and population structure of Tongjiang area,and gives a relatively comprehensive description of the phenomena of the phonogical system of Tongjiang dialect.In addition,the paper compares and sorts out the diffirences between Tongjiang dialect and the Middle Ages phonetic system,and probes into the phonetic evolution of Tongjiang dialect from a diachronic perspective.Finally,We also analyzed some special phonetic phenomena in Tongjiang dialect.After we finished our investigation,We found out Tongjiang dialect includes 23 initials(including empty initial),40 finals and 4 tones.The biggest difference is that compared with mandarin,Tongjiang dialect has some special initials such as n and ?,and lack of finals e,but compared with mandarin,Tongjiang dialect has "?","?","u?","y?"and "io",but without "i?”.The difference of Tone between Tongjiang dialect and mandarin is not much,They both have 4 kind of value.Compared with Middle Ages phonetics,Tongjiang dialect has the following characteristics:Amost all of the entiring tone of Middle Ages are turn into Yang-level tone,with few exceptions.Just like other dialect in the same area.They conform to the characteristics of "the entiring tone of dialect which belong to southwest prefecture have been changed to Yang-level".Then the falling-rising tone characters of the entire voiced initial in Tongjiang dialect fit into falling tone,the same as north of china's dialect.The leveled tone of the Middle Ages divided into two parts Yin or Yang on the basis of surd or sonant.From the Middle Ages to today's tongjiang dialect,the vowels have changed too.All the entiring coda have fallen off,and the rhyme of nasal ending sound with tongue root and nose has the tendency to merge into the rhyme sound with tongue tip and nose.In terms of initial consonants,the two groups of "Ni-Lai"(?-?)are mixed with each other,while the "Fei-Xiao"(?-?)group is quite distinct from each other.The evolution of most initial consonants is relatively simple.Compared with them,the evolution of "Jing-Jian"(?-?)initials are slightly more complicated,because of the"Jian-Tuan"(??)phonetic phenomenon,Tongjiang dialect is in the transitional period so we can see there are some phonetic phenomenon such as consonants of“Jian-Tuan”(??)are mixed.