| He Xun is a famous poet of Qi and Liang dynasty in literary circles, who lived in a critical period when Old Chinese phonology converts to Middle Chinese phonology. Based on the fact of sound changes, poets of Qi and Liang Dynasty emphasized demonstrating the poetry rhythm by tonal prosody and put forward a new theory of Poetic metrical pattern called Yung-ming tonal prosody and Yong-ming Style Poetry. Greatly influenced by this creation surge of thoughts, He Xun got a lot of practice on tonal patterns. The study of tonal partern and rhyme scheme of He Xun’s poems will not only help us understanding the nature of Yung-ming tonal prosody, it also has a great significance on tracing the sound changes of Qi and Liang dynasty.A number of studies have been made on the features of He Xun’s poems over the past 1500 years, however, they cannot make clear the nature of the metrical pattern of He Xun’s poems due to the limitations of Materials and methods. This article tries to make a deep investigation on He Xun’s poems, analyzing their patterns and the rules of rhyming using the methods of modern linguistics and philology. Through a close and exhaustive study on the data of He Xun’s poem, we try to summarize the principles and essence of tonal patterns through fixed amount to determining its nature.The research approach of this paper is to import He Xun’s poems into database, indicate the tones and rhymes for the text and analyz the metrical features sentence by sentence, then classify and make a statistics to show the quantity and frequency in order to generalize the main metrical patterns of He Xun’s poems. The main contents include the following five:Chapter 1 will make an objective description of the former study on He Xun’s poems, and then make clear its lingual context and literal circumstances of his creation, upon which we analyze their deficiencies and pointed that the theories and methods will give us a lot of help and enlightenment to investigate poetical meter. The study on oetical meter will help us probe into the metrical pattern of Yong-ming style poetry tracing the development of metrical pattern and pronunciation system.Chapter 2 will introduce the specific research methods. Phonological research achievements about language rhythm will be introduced first, explaining its significances to versification, expounding the concepts which related the versification. Then the development of versifications will be stated and some important concepts, such as versification, meter, tonal prosody and rhyme will be specified. At last the metrical grid and its significance for analyzing poetic meters will be presented and indicated it is our main method to analyze tonal pattern of He Xun’s poetry.Chapter 3 puts emphasis on analyzing the tonal patterns of He Xun’s poems. Through observing and analyzing the tonal patterns of lines and couplets, we get three features about He Xun’s poems. The first feature is that there exist several kinds of tonal contrast patterns in lines which 2-4 and 2-5constrast patterns are more important, of these two patterns He Xun tended to use the former one which opposites to She Yueh, who is the pioneer to create Yung-ming Style poetry. The second feature lies in that there is a tendency to establishing contrast pattern in a couplet, and the contrastive points are the second and fourth syllable respectively, which is similar to the case within lines. The third feature is no contrast pattern can be found between two couplets. We hold the opinion that the reason why 2-4contrast pattern is in excess of 2-5 contrast pattern is for that the division of prosodic structures had been no longer restricted by syntactic structures. A closer and more reasonable structure is used to display poetical meter. Actually, according to the comparison of He Xun’s poems and those created by other poets living in the same period, we can say these features above are all belong to Yong-ming style poetry.Chapter 4 makes a comparison of He Xun’s poems with Liu Xiaochuo and Yin Keng’s, which further proves that that the metrical pattern features are so closely identified between He Xun and Liu Xiaochuo, this reflects the nature of Yung-ming metrical patterns. From He Xun to Yin Keng, the 2-4 contrast pattern had been fully established in lines and couplets. And the 2-4 unify pattern could been seen between adjacent lines between two couplets. The reason for this change falls in that the contrast elements of tonal prosody had not been four tones but level and oblique, the latter of which results in the dividing of four tone again. The poetic tonal patterns grow more complete within lines and make rhythm more complete and systematic.Chapter 5 we will discuss rhyming in He Xun’s poems. Firstly we will investigate the split and merge of rhyme category in rhyming. Secondly we compare the rhyming in He’s poems and QieYun (segmenting Rhymes), illustrating the status of the phonetic system of his time in Middle Chinese phonetic system. At the same time, through discussing how He Xun detailed divide rhymes, we will elaborate his intuition in the notion of Kai kou and he kou(rounded and unrounded, rhyming groups and division, indicating he has a great influence to constructing the dividing principle of QieYun. Through observing and analyzing the tonal patterns and rhyming of He Xun’s poems, we believed that He’s poems is the exploring practice for poetic meters in the special language historical background and literary environment. The main characters of his poems include the following:(1) The poetical meter of his poems reflects the essence of Yung-ming metrical patterns, that is whenever there is floating sound in first line of a couplet, it must be followed by a cut-off echo in the corresponding syllable of the second line. Within a single line the sound and rhymes should all be unique, and between the two lines of a couplet the patterns of light and heavy should be completely different. There are several tonal patterns in the lines of He’s poems which is 2-4,2-5,3-5,1-3 contrast patterns, they show rhythm all by the tonal contrast of two syllables in a line. We noticed that the 2-4 contrast pattern which included in He’s tonal pattern was determined as the standard pattern in lushi of Tang dynasty. Though thers is no regular tonal pattern in couplet, the tendency to establishing contrast pattern is very strong, which contributing the formation of tonal pattern in couplet. The features we talk above is same to those of lianju which created by He Xun and other poets living in the same period, and this further proved the tonal pattern features of He Xun’s poems have distinctive characteristics of The Times, reflecting the commonness of Yung-ming Style poetry.(2) The features of He Xun’s poems faithfully reflect the details of the development of poetical metesr. It is a important link for us exploring the process of Chinese poetry. At first, the establishment of metrical pattern is based on the formation of four tones system. Secondly, the Yong-ming metrical pattern is very abstract and vague, this mean there would be many attempts for the metrical pattern establishment and people would choose one of the best methods eventually. Thirdly, the producing order of metrical pattern must from line to couplet. The tonal patterns of He Xun’s poems are based on the contrast of four tones, and the 2-4,2-5,3-5,1-3 contrast patterns reflects the repeated attempts for tonal patterns. We can see 2-4,2-5 contrast patterns as the main objects, are usually used in the poems of this period, but the applications for them are different between He Xun and Shen Yue who are earlier. He Xun more inclined to use the 2-4 contrast pattern which opposite to Shen. This action means the division of prosodic structures had been no longer restricted by syntactic structures. A closer and more reasonable structure is used to display poetical meter. Meanwhile, He Xun is conscious of establishing metrical patterns in couplet by tonal contrast between the second and fourth syllable of two lines. For the metrical pattern foundation is contrast of four tones, He Xun is hard to establish unified relationship between two couplets. This problem was solved eventually by later poets. Through constant practice, Yin Keng and other poets living in the same period found a new metrical pattern foundation that is level and oblique, the result in the dividing of four tones again. This change is a great progress of metrical pattern, from now on, the metrical pattern of poetry is very similar to lushi.(3)He Xun is good at distinguishing rhymes; the rhyming of his poems can well represent the detail changes of Chinese phonetic systerm. Through analyzing the rhyming of He Xun, we can see there are 52 rhymes in Qieyun have Independent status and 22 rhymes have independent tendency. He Xun also pay emphasize the distinguishing of Kai kou and he kou, the pronunciation effect are different between真and谆,翰and换in He Xun’s mind. This feature reflects that the rhyming division of He Xun is more rigorous than that of Qieyun. In addition, the single usingof',先and锡means He Xun also has the concept of division(等)All above proof that He Xun provides guidance and inspiration to the compiling of rhyming book. Meanwhile, He Xun pursues the harmonious effect of rhyming which expand the scope or rhyming. He made a difference on language ontology and language performance, which is the optimal performance to respect and make good use of language principle. To sum up, we think He Xun’s poems is the precious text for us to understant the nature of Chinese poetical meter and it also has an important significance for us to understand the developments of poetry patterns and the historical phonetic change. |
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