A Comparative Study Of Phonology Of Dialects In The Ancient Prefecture Of Quanzhou

Both Quanzhou and Xiamen belonged to the prefecture of Quanzhou from711to1734. In this period, the city of Quanzhou had been at the same place, which made the dialects in these area show good consistence with each other. However, the distance of those counties in ancient Quanzhou caused these dialects to have some differences. In this paper, I attempt to show the consistence and differences of the dialects in the ancient prefecture of Quanzhou by comparing17dialects in Quanzhou and Xiamen. I try to explain the phonetic differences between these dialects by the help of two frames of reference, Middle Chinese and Huiyinmiaowu(《汇音妙悟》),an ancient rhyme book of Quanzhou Dialect. Then I reconstruct a proto-Quanzhou at the end of this paper.There are6chapters in this paper. In Chapter1, I introduce the administrative division and the historical evolution of Quanzhou and Xiamen. Then I summarize previous researches on the phonology of this area and Huiyinmiaowu(《汇音妙悟》).In Chapter2, I introduce the phonologies of the dialects. These dialects are arranged by every ancient county in the prefecture of Quanzhou. There is a simple classification for the dialects by the amounts of initials, finals and tones.In Chapter3, I introduce the phonological pattern of the17dialects by the reference of the Middle Chinese. The reflexes of every Middle Chinese sound category in these dialects are presented. This chapter sets forth preliminarily the corresponding relationship between the phonological system of these dialects and the Middle Chinese.Chapter3can help us know which Mid-century sound have differentiated in modern dialects, but it could not tell us which sounds have integrated. So in Chapter4, I introduce another frame of reference, Huiyinmiaowu(《汇音妙悟》).Through the comparison in Chapter3and Chapter4, we can also know the similarity and differences of these dialects. Of course, there are more similarities than differences.As an early work of the reconstruction of proto-Quanzhou, this paper discusses some special issues in Chapter5. This chapter is a centralized place of discussion. In Section one of this chapter, I analyse the phonetic strata of Yu(鱼) rhyme in Xiamen, Zhangzhou, and Chaozhou Dialect On the basis of Chen Zhongmin (2003a,2003b)and Zhu Titi(2011). In Section2, we discuss the necessity of the reconstruction of finals*y and*(?) based on Ang Uijin (2001). In Section3, wei talk about four issues in Paizhangzhiyin(《拍掌知音》),another rhyme book of ancient Quanzhou Dialect. The conclusions in this section are as follows:Ⅰ) by observing and studying the pronunciation of Zhao(赵)in Quanzhou area, we find that that the character Zhao(赵) could not be an evidence for the date of completion of this rhyme book. Ⅱ) the values of Lao(劳)rhyme and Lu (鲁) rhyme in Paizhangzhiyin(《拍掌知音》)are*-o and*-ou respectively. Ⅲ) the complementary relation between the rhymes in Paizhangzhiyin(《拍掌知音》)shows that there should be no nasalized syllable in literary pronunciation of ancient Quanzhou Dialect. IV) the emergence of the literary reading and colloquial reading-o/-o in Quanzhou Dialect was caused by the steps-broken of the phonetic changes*-o>-o. I discuss some phenomena of internal phonological diffusion in some dialects in Section4. Some differentiation of character pronunciation was attributed to steps-broken in this section. In Section4, I also reconstruct proto-Quanzhou finals*-ya,*-ya,*-ya?. In Section5, three phenomena of external phonological superposition are discussed. One of them was caused by the influence of Mandarin. Others were caused by the influence of Quanzhou Dialect to dialects in the suburban counties. In Section6, I discuss some phenomena of disappearance of literary reading and colloquial reading caused by the confluence of different phonological categories.In Chapter6, we reconstruct proto-Quanzhou by7selected dialects. There are15initials,84finals and8tones in it.