A Study On Khitan, Liao Chinese And The Contact Between Them

This dissertation was a research on Khitan and Liao Chinese based on Khitan scripts and Chinese texts relating to Khitan. The key work was to abstract the correspondences between Khitan charactors and Chinese (or Mongolian languages) elemengts and find the conditions for the correspondences. Based on the phonology of Liao Chinese and Khitan that were reconstructed on the key work, we induced the patterns of the matchings between Khitan and Liao Chinese.We revealed the language situation (distribution, status and contact of languages) in Liao Dynasty by analysing the historical texts. The nature and roles of the Khitan Lardge Script and the Khitan Small Script were introduced intensively. By checking the photoes of the rubbings of the Khitan scripts, we correcked some important Khitan charactors. We also proposed the principle of determining the authenticity of Khitan scripts.We reviewed the methods of decipherding Khitan Small script texts. The Yuanzi(the elements of the Khitan Small script) of the Khitan Small Scripts could not be assinged precise phonetic values sytemly, which was the bottleneck of current study. This problem was caused by many-one or one-many correspondences between Yuanzi and Chinese sound class. We found some important conditions for the correspondences:(1) the Yuanzi representing the aspirated consonants could also represent unaspirated ones usually. This was a manner copied from the Uighu scripts which inspired the devisers of the Khitan Small Script. An initiative reform of writing system made the manner chandged.(2) the three patterns (VV/Vvv/VCV) of Chinese finals belonging to Chinese Qu tone represented the creaky voice in the finals.(3) the different Yuanzi for alveolar arricate and palato-alveolar affricate belonged to different layers of the language contact. Besides, supported by new clues, we reassigned new phonetic values to velars, middle vowels, low vowels and diphthongs.Some features of the sound system of Liao Chinese were revealed:(1) there were no differences between the second division "zhi"(知)and the second division "zhuang"(庄)Also was the third division "zhi" and "zhang’’(章)There were no medials in the finals after the third division "zhuang". There were no medial "u" in the syllables with Jiangyang(江阳)finals and "zhuang" initials.(2) the thirs division and open finals of the "zhi"(止)group became apical vowels gradually in the order "jing(精),zhuang and zhang(庄章)’’.(3) the "ru" finals of the middle Chinese divided to two layers in Liao Chinese:the first one with-k and-p codas, the second one with no consant codas. The-t coda of the middle Chinese disappeared earlier than-k and-p.(4) all the second dicision finals were different from other division finals. The second division finals with "jian"(见)initials had-i-medial.(5) the nuclear vowel of the finals in the "guo"(果)group were low vowels. The first dicison and open finals became same as close finals which had-u-medial when the open finals preceded by alveolar arricates or alveolar plosives.(6) the phonetic value of the "ri’’(日)initial(include the initial of the character“儿”)was blade-palatal voiced frictive.(7) there was light tone in Liao Chinese. Besides, based on the writing pattern of the finals and modern succestors of Liao Chinese, the tone values of Liao Chinese were explored and reconstructed.In the study on the rules of the matchings between Khitan and Liao Chinese, the concept "element of match" and "the smallest free element of match" were proposed and used for discrimnating the stages of the matchings:first stage, advanced stage and high stage. The smallest free element of match in first satge was syllable, and the advanced stage was phoneme or sound class, and the high stage was feature. The Khitan-Sino system was in the high stage, but some transliterations belonging to first stage and advanced stage could be found in the Khitan texts. The Khitan texts showed the process of the deepening of the language contact. The match from Chinese to Khitan stayed in the first stage and varianted among the participators of language contact, which was caused by the nature of Chinese charactors and the status of Liao Chinese. The three stages deschimnated by the element of match could be used to analysize matchings between other languages:Chinese-English, Tai-Chinese, etc.