The Development Of Phonology And Understandings Reflected In The Qieyun Series Rhyme Books

From Lu Fayan's book of Qieyun in Sui dynasty to Guangyun, the officially-edicted rhymebook of Song dynasty, the Qieyun series rhyme books went through over four hundred years of time. During this period, many versions of Qieyun appeared, and the pholonogical systems each refleced had very much in common, only a little difference. It is surely important for us to master the general character of the Qieyun series rhyme books, also, the tiny differences between them are too essential to neglect, it is from which can we observe the changes of the sounds and also the development of contemporary phonological understandings within the period of Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties and Song.Focusing on the following three questions:initial consonants, adding rhymes and rhyme order, this dissertation compares the identicality and difference between various versions of Qieyun, so as to analyse the changes of sounds and the development of phonological understandings in the middle Chinese age. About the initial consonants, on the one hand, Qieyun series rhyme books had already finished the analysis and induction of the initials in the phonological system, and gradually differentiated the places of articulation of the initials, which indicates the achievement of the understanding was elegant. On the other hand, compared to rhymes and tones, the development of the classification of the initial consonants was much later and slower, which resulted from the social and cultural atmosphere of that period in which the Qieyun series rhyme books were. As for the question of adding rhymes, Wang Ren-xu's adding two rhymes to Qieyun, corresponded to yan respectively with Shang and Qu tones, reflected the distinction between yan and fan, but not as it has always been believed that Wang just attempted to fill the phonological structural blanks of yan. Actually, since the bilabials underwent labiodentalization, during the late ancient Chinese period, yan and fan differed from one another more and more distinctively, which can be seen in such materials as the ancient poem rhymes, the tongyong rules in the official books of rhymes like Guangyun and Jiyun and the modern Chinese dialects. Besides, Sunmian's dividing eleven rhymes from the systems of zhen, han, and ge, largely showed the differences between the vowels of these old and new rhymes, which can be proved by the materials of the late Qieyun series rhyme book, the vowel distinctions in modern Chinese dialects and the deduction of phonological development. About the question of rhyme order, the existence of rhyme clusters showed that the editors of the Qieyun series rhyme books had already formed systematic understanding of the mid-Chinese phonology and they ordered the rhymes according to their similarities in pronounciation. There were basicly three types of rhyme order among the Qieyun series rhyme books, each reflected the special phonological understandings of the book editor, especially from the order of the entering rhymes. After researching the diachronic development of the understanding of the matching of Middle Chinese four tones, the nature of the so-called Ru tone had to be reconsidered profoundly:the Ru tone of Middle Chinese was a kind of structural form of yun in nature with an unexplosive consonantal ending, so the traditional thought of Four Tones had actually combined yun with tone, which were two different typologies, into one concept.