A Study On Wang Yingdian’s Two Rhyme Books:Shengyunhuitong And Yunyaocushi

Shengyunhuitong{《声韵会通》) and Yunyaocushi (《韵要粗释》)which were completed in the19th year of Jiajing period in Ming Dynasty, are two rhyme books compiled by Wang Yingdian from Kunshan.Employing forty-five rhythms and twenty-eight consonants,the two books named rhythms and consonants strictly following the principle of "distinguishing rhythms with all of words in a consonant and distinguishing consonants with all of words in a rhythm",which created a new style for rhyme book compiling in Ming Dynasty.Not only will a profound understanding be gained of the reading form of Ming Mandarin,especially of the sound system of Ming Mandarin,through a study of these two books, it can also provide us an important reference for our further study of the history of Wu dialect.This thesis is based on material within these two books with a consultation of other rythme books and rythme maps of the same period of time as well as morden Kunshan dialect. Many methods have been employed in this thesis including the method of synchronic study, the method of comparing, historical connection method, inner-analyzing method, literature researching method, calculating and statistical method and phoneme analyzing method. With all these methods, this thesis has taken a close look at the phonological system,drafted the pronunciation of each of the phonological classifications, compared the phonological system of these two books as well as the phonological systems in related rythem books and morden Kunshan dialect, studyed the phenomenon that a word has many kinds of reading forms and then discussed the phonetic characters in Shengyunhuitong(《声韵会通》) and Yunyaocushi(《韵要粗释》).Through this research, we’ve found that the phonological system which shares some features of the Wu dialects, is a fairly exact reflection of the features of the reading form of Mandarin in the period of mid-Ming Dynasty,especially that of the Sound System of Ming Mandarin.